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.

it’s funny; i’m not healed.

that dude reemerged on facebook, and i’m not over it…

it’s kind of obnoxious.
i’m in love, but still, i’m not over it.

before rose moved, she gave me his copy of henry miller’s the tropic of capricorn.

i hadn’t finished it before i finished my book, but there was a section that made it into the opening prologue of my book…

Everything that happens, when it has significance, is in the nature of a contradiction. Until the one for whom this is written came along I imagined that somewhere outside, in life, as they say, lay the solution to all things. I thought, when I came upon her, that I was seizing hold of life, seizing hold of something which I could bite into. Instead I lost hold of life completely. I reached out for something to attach myself to — and I found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach myself, left high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not looked for — myself. I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live — if what others are doing is called living — but to express myself. I realized that I had never the least interest in living, but only in this which I am doing now, something which is parallel to life, of it at the same time, and beyond it.

and just now, this…

He was continually talking about himself and his relation to the world about, a quality which created the unfortunate impression that he was simply a blatant egotist… To come into is presence gave me the sensation of being undressed, or rather peeled, for it was much more than mere nakedness which he demanded of the person he was talking to. In talking to me he addressed himself to a me whose existence I had only dimly suspected, the me, for example, which emerged when, suddenly, reading a book, I realized that I had been dreaming. Few books had this faculty of putting me into a trance, this trance of utter lucidity in which, unknown to oneself, one makes the deepest resolutions. Roy Hamilton’s conversation partook of this quality. It made me more than ever alert, preternaturally alert, without at the same time crumbling the fabric of dream. He was appealing in other words, to the m of the self, to the being who would eventually outgrow the naked personality, the synthetic individuality leave me truly alone and solitary in order to work out my own proper destiny.

Our talk was like a secret language in the midst of which the others went to sleep or faded away like ghosts… Hamilton opened my eyes and gave me new values, and though later I was able to lose the vision which he had bequeathed me nevertheless I could never again see the world, or my friends, as I had seen them prior to his coming. Hamilton altered me profoundly, as only a rare book, a rare personality, a rare experience, can alter one. For the first time in my life I understood what it was to experience a vital friendship and not to feel enslaved or attached because of the experience. Never, after we parted, did I feel the need of his actual presence; he had given himself completely and I possessed him without being possessed. It was the first, clean, whole experience of friendship, and it was never duplicated by any other friend. He was the symbol personified and consequently entirely satisfactory, hence no longer necessary to me. He himself understood this thoroughly. Perhaps it was the fact of having no father that pushed him alone road toward the discovery of the self, which is the final process of identification with the world and the realization consequently of the uselessness of ties.

i need to learn the latter bit… i’m so self-actualized lately, but fuck, to realize with a start that i’m not really over it????????????????????????????????

obnoxious. really, really obnoxious.

intention, intently.

i think the first time i really knew that i liked troy, for real, was when we were at the shpongle show. i don’t know what we were discussing, but his answer to some bit of perhaps unconventional unselfish behavior was, “i don’t know, i just really care about people.” or something to that effect. it’s too cute.

i just realized just now that our 6-month anniversary just passed, and we didn’t make a deal of it! ah, well. also, unrelated: their next record is going to totally rule…

i am reminded of this because i am going through my things and i’ve found some notices… three “talk to us” signs, one that says, “i want to encourage cross-disciplinary collabz.” (from new york and the whole wall street protest), and lastly, this poem. this is from when i was volunteering at helen swindell’s. i am a bit regretful that i went on my travels and then just stopped going there altogether. i had many people who i felt bonded to, but it just became a matter of whether i wanted to sacrifice my personal time for it. it’s selfish. and i feel bad, now. maybe sometime soon i will be able to start it up again, but at the heart of it was that, while i enjoyed my time there very much, there ended up being like three volunteers at any given time, and it felt unnecessary. i will say, though, at the time, that i felt like i had more real conversation with the residents there… ah, i’m sad. there are a few people i namely miss, which are:

- darcy, a lesbian lady who got stabbed and got her stomach ripped open to the point that they were hanging out;
- chris, the guy with whom i co-wrote the poem below… dude was always happy and encouraging smiles, and was really metaphysical and cosmic and out there and wanted to be some sort of counselor;
- ____, who i often discussed matters of space with;
- j___, who had formerly lived in hawaii and japan for a long time, and would always say konichiwa to me and minor japanese phrases (he knew i wasn’t japanese but knew that i knew some…) and took the only photo of myself at helen swindell’s that there is, and he had me draw an image for him or something which he kept;
- john, who always was teasing and giving shit and looked — strange to say — typically veteran-y, and always wore a cap! man, he gave so much shit, and was always saying how i was a trouble-maker…
- ____, who i somehow forget the face of now, which is crazy…! but he was definitely one that i enjoyed speaking with most… i had referenced him before, as i had discussed many things related to psychedelia and time-space with him…

it was just so interesting… all of them were so interesting, such remnants of the ’60s… i wish i could commit more. maybe soon when the weather is warmer…

here’s the joint poem i wrote with chris:

i can’t wait for the weather to get warmer again; i should really do “talk to us” again… i hadn’t written about this, but there were definitely girls (2) at the wall st. protest who had “talk to us” signs, and i directed them to my website and told them it was something that i did. i should really update i love social experiments with my new data…

anyway, in other news. pretty much been busy planning our sxsw show. here’s my initial teaser flyer for it…

gina and i spent the afternoon today holed up at pied cow, basically just writing letters. the primary aim was to write to caroline casey, the lady who gave us the venusian love ritual that we practiced, but i ended up writing back to a lot of people. it felt good to write, and kinda maddening to realize that man, do the hands get tired easy, simply because that stuff never happens anymore

i have a lot to write about. i was mulling over today that after sxsw — since i am touring with swahili — that i think i want to spend some time traveling or staying in california… since tour is two weeks+, it would be nice to be able to sublet out my room for that month and save that money. but i don’t know yet where i would go; the only place i kinda wanna go is new mexico, but last time, that become rather uncomfortable, so who knows… and i’m trying to save up money for spain and portugal in july, and i guess burning man in august, so it seems unlikely that i’ll be able to do all of the traveling that i actually wanna do. blOorg. i suppose if some cheap ass plane tickets to go to some south american country pop up between now and april, that that might need to be what happens. if not, probably a train or bus from reno to the bay area post-sxsw, for a couple weeks of mad work action. i don’t know, i don’t know, i don’t know.

i was discussing these plans and desires yesterday with troy, and he was apologizing for being a boyfriend that doesn’t have the money to travel. i told him it was fine; i don’t realistically expect anyone to be able to keep up with me in terms of traveling money and time. it doesn’t bother me… i just –need– to nomad life it, though… it’s already been way too long (like half a year… well i suppose it was only since october, so like, 5 months)… but i’m already feeling a bit mad and need to go somewhere really bad! and i guess i have been to california a couple times in that duration, but it’s not the same. the desire to travel is incessant, it’s crazy… :L but yeah, he was surprised that it didn’t bother me that he couldn’t afford to travel and said i am repeatedly “the first” but to me it’s just… it’s fine, because it’s realistic that other people can’t??? i dunno.

anyway…

we went to tao of tea tonight and drank this pine-smoked black tea. dude, it was so amazing. but it caffeinated me to the point of insanity! i’ve boycotted coffee and i feel wayyyy better, but it makes me feel nuts to drink hugely caffeinated stuff now. interesting.

ah, so much to do. i can’t decide WHAT to do. there’s just too much.

i gotta get to recording snippets from this:

it maybe seems a bit ridiculous, but this book “came to me” through a series of dreams, and like we all know, i really trust dreams. the first dream told me that i needed to look into learning about alchemy; it wasn’t so overt, but it was just the notion that i woke up thinking. i don’t remember anything else from the dream. a few days later, i was dream-land told that i should look into egypt. again, i don’t really know anything about it. that was when sherry was in town, though, and i took her to powell’s that day. i looked in the alchemy section — there barely is one — and there was ONE book about egypt. i saw it and thought it was totally incredibly ridiculous and could barely believe that THAT was the book i would “need” to read, but seriously, there was nothing else even remotely calling to me. so i was like, well, fuck, here it is.

what this book is is a series of meditations and visualizations that basically take you to deconstructing and rebuilding yourself. i had originally given myself a loose deadline of “finishing this” project by the end of april, but it has since changed, since troy asked me last week if i wanted to go to portland evolver meeting. legitimately, the evolver meeting we went to was totally fucking whack. however… coming up:

> Wednesday, February 22nd — Linda Star Wolf Evolver talk on “Visionary Shamanism”

linda star wolf is one of the authors of the egyptian shamanism book. it is WAY too much of a coincidence that she is coming, so i’m definitely going to: 1) record all of the meditations by the end of this month, preferably by the 23rd; 2) at least start to do the meditations, and ideally finish them, by february 22nd, so that i can talk to her about them.

i dunno what it’s going to yield. we will see. when sherry was here on my birthday, she was TOTALLY engrossed in that book and spent the whole of the evening almost reading it. yet, while she seems to find those things fascinating, i think she’s scared of them; i bought carl jung’s man and his symbols for her for christmas, and, as far as i know, she hasn’t delved into it yet. i think she’s kind of scared, and i asked her if that was the case, and she said yes. i think that books like that stir up the unconscious in a scary way, but i think sherry is totally ripe for it. i am sending her my book on monday. i sincerely hope that the book plants the seed that will cause her to read jung’s man and his symbols… i dunno what the fuck kind of “work” i am doing, but whatever it is, it feel really, important.

last couple notes, again relating to literature: evolver’s kent had mentioned this book >>>

and that is exactly the kind of mapping work i want to start doing. synopsis:

From a philosopher whose magisterial history of Western thought was praised by Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith comes a brilliant new book that traces the connection between cosmic cycles and archetypal patterns of human experience. Drawing on years of research and on thinkers from Plato to Jung, Richard Tarnas explores the planetary correlations of epochal events like the French Revolution, the two world wars, and September 11. Whether read as astrology updated for the quantum age or as a contemporary classic of spirituality, Cosmos and Psyche is a work of immense sophistication, deep learning, and lasting importance.

i can’t wait i can’t wait! i can’t wait!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

blahblahblah. what else. man, there’s so much. but seriously, all i wanna do is write books.

but i just recently finally dropped the $45 to buy this fucking book that changed my life (i originally read it from shawn but the book is SUPER fragile and i can’t look at his anymore, especially since it was from his grandfather, and the binding is really fragile… and this book is fucking IMPOSSIBLE to find… it’s ridiculous):

i am definitely wanting to use it as a primer for how to solve the social problems of the world. tis going to require a shit ton of research and effort, but like i said… all i seriously want to do now is write books… sample from ends and means (that has made it into my book):

In the contemporary world there are two classes of bad plans — the plans invented and put into practice by men who do not accept our ideal postulates, and the plans invented and put into practice by the men who accept them, but imagine that the ends proposed by the prophets can be achieved by wicked or unsuitable means. Hell is paved with good intentions, and it is probable that plans made by well-meaning people of the second class may have results no less disastrous than plans made by the evil-intentioned people of the first class. Which only shows, yet once more, how right the Buddha was in classing unawareness and stupidity among the deadly sins.

i can’t wait i can’t wait i can’t wait. i woke up this morning and all i could think was:

LIFE IS GREAT. THANKS, UNIVERSE.

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.

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!

not gonna lie…

parents were just here, visiting me, in portland, for a few days.

what can i say… the first couple days were fine, even pleasant, even, though it has to be taken into consideration that it was mostly pleasant because of what it wasn’t — that it was pleasant because i had expected worse and gotten dished out less than “worse.” but hey, standards are standards, although they may not be extremely high. so there’s that.

this particular evening, we went to shandong in portland. first time going to that restaurant, and i must say that i was quite very stoked that there is! indeed! close-in! portland! good! chinese! food! shandong was half americanized, but in a really good way… it was authentic although it catered very much to americans. so i am into it. the dan dan mian (which i will now make in the future nearest) was of particular note, and they have a really good koreanized jja jjang myun… so i’m into that, too. i will definitely be going back, oh yessss. so excited. funny that it is down the street from the ambassador — this really funny chinese food / karaoke place that troy and i went to on our first date. dare i say the ambassador even had a better chinese eggplant dish than shandong, and i’d say the ma po tofu, too? i dare. funny fun fun funs.

anyway. when the parents came, we did some hefty driving, first to silver falls state park — apparently in the amazingly named city called sublimity. that place has like this trail that is 8.5 miles long and goes through 10 waterfalls. the north falls were AMAZING because they fall from pretty high and then have a seating area behind them that is carved into the rock and is basically a circular section looking out onto the opening of the rest of the park. hard to explain — will have to snag a photograph from the mother who actually took photographs — but yeah.

yesterday, we went to astoria (pretty pointless, i must admit) and then to seaside, which looks totally different in the summer! last time i went there was in the winter, or fall or something, with sherry and tinwin. i don’t feel like half the shit that was open this time was open then. i bought a shit ton of salt water taffy. some that was super cheap and some that was more expensive… i must say… more expensive salt water taffy is WAY better than cheaper salt water taffy. the chocolate peanut butter ones i got (more expensive) had real peanut butter and just generally hella ruled. the other kind all kind of tasted artificial, and very little like what flavor it was supposed to, no matter what flavor you got…

the rents met troy and really, really liked him. and generally, they gave everyone a good impression when in a public setting. i feel bad in some ways, because hanging out with them too much makes me turn into this ugly, ugly person that i am usually never like around anyone else; it is just that they are so, so, so suffocating, and negative… and there’s so much a reason that i broke away and live on my own and will never go back. i mean… it’s nice to see them occasionally, but rather horrible to feel like i am constantly being judged and micro-managed. i felt bad in some ways that troy would ask me how my day was — when the rents were here — and i could kind of only answer in the negative because it was a negative… because whereas usually i can make shit roll right off my back, in the case of my immediate family, it is truly, truly something else. i just can’t let shit slide in that way. it’s just not possible… everything is just such, such a far cry from who i am. i am the opposite of planning out every second of my day, of worrying about every little thing… and though i care about those things sometimes more than my friends, the degree to which i’ve scaled it down from my origins is like… almost insurmountable.

but anyway. originally my dad had really not wanted to go to dinner because he thought he’d have to pay for everyone, but he ended up footing the bill, though i have to say that literally the reasoning he gave me was (said in chinese): “it looks better this way.” and yes, it did, but… yeah. i mean… i pick up the details that may get lost in translation but i suppose in every family and with every set of facades, only those who were really in it know the truth? and there are a lot of things i could say but suppress. today, i found myself taking deep breaths a couple of times to get a double-take and to not say things that were biting and unnecessary… but those deep breaths and second thoughts only accounted for like, 2% of the things i probably did end up saying, or the bad attitude that i gave off when i shouldn’t have… i don’t know, man. i don’t know. it’s something i have to work on… because yes, they are in the wrong, but i could act better, too… i could take the attitudes that i take in other aspects of life… of going with the flow… of letting things go… and apply it to these difficult familial situations, as well. i’m learning…

i haven’t updated in a while, so this is a complete brain dump.

my parents met troy a couple nights ago and were quite stoked on him. (we went to blossoming lotus, and i was rather surprised that they kinda liked it… but i was glad to give them the new experience because it was their first time eating at a place with food that said GF — gluten-free, R — raw, and … something else i forget… dad said it made him poop well… dad loves to comment on toilets and bathroom facilities… seriously…) anyhoot. troy seems like the type who would probably please any parent. but seriously, they had nothing but nice things to say about him, which is good. dad even went as far as saying he was pretty good-looking, haha. it’s funny, though, because dad barely said anything to him — but, as troy was pointing out today, of the three things dad DID say to him, one involved inviting him to taiwan in november. which is pretty hilarious. like. dude. we’ve been dating for a month! luckily, i can say these things to troy, and dad can say shit to him (like tonight at dinner: “take care of my daughter!”) amongst a table full of 7 other friends (robby, rachel, shawn, andrew, christopher, rose, gina)… and troy won’t get frightened away. haha. i guess that’s good. the other night at blossoming lotus troy thanked dad for paying for dinner, and he said, “it’s family!” and in a lot of circumstances it would be truly head-in-the-hands “fuuuuuuuuuuuck” — and in this case it was subtle and he barely heard it, but “take care of my daughter!” today was definitely met with a head-in-the-hands reaction on my part and a lot of laughter on everyone else’s part. luckily, it was funny enough that it wasn’t uhhhh hugely awkward. it’s just funny because money is such a “thing” with the rents, and such not a thing for me… they said multiple times, “troy seems nice!” to which i would respond, “he’s the best!” and mom would respond with something like, “the best should still need to know how to earn money!” once, dad said, “i hope he makes enough money to take care of the both of you!” or that “he knows how to plan for your future!” and… firstly, it’s like, dude… we have been dating for a month… secondly, it’s like… dude, we split payment on a lot of things, and i do that with all guys i date… and thirdly, it’s like… dude… we’ve been dating for a month. haha. even if it feels like longer than that…

a couple days ago troy and i went and had a picnic at colonel summers, and i started telling him about a dream i had about george clooney. when i initially told gina this dream, she said, “troy is kind of a george clooney,” and it was only until i started telling him this dream that i began to realize that fuck, the dream kind of was about him, or something. what happened in the dream was that the police were looking for george clooney in this city with super narrow streets and high walls (kind of like siena in italy, or something). they looked for a really long time and could not find him. finally, i think they stop looking, and i run into him. i jump up and hug onto him, like a koala bear, and am bawling FURIOUSLY. i have never cried like this in a dream or in real life. soon thereafter, he lets me down or something, and says, “but i am going to see you in a couple days!” and i instantly start laughing. end of dream. this was when troy was on tour… totally was about him… and i don’t know why i didn’t realize it until that moment when i was retelling it to him. sooooooooooo weird. sooooooooooooooooooo weird.

life is funny, anyway. shit just pops out and punches you in the face and you’re just like… whaaaaaaaaaaaat. there have been no use of words like the “L” word — whatever — but there certainly has this feeling of just this thing being the realest, easiest thing i’ve ever had. it’s pretty fucking crazy. i am really, really happy.

in the work world, too — life is good and easy. i pretty much have not had to look for graphic design projects in a really long time, and everything is just… easy… and it’s good… 2011 is the most magical of years. and i’m just trying to figure out the best way to round the rest of it out. for starters, beginning in mid-september, i will be embarking on a cross-country road trip with rose, who is moving out to new york. it will be something else, i am sure. until then… i have a little more than a month (man, time is flying, again) to do a million things… psychedelic things… helsing junction farm sleepover things… camping under the stars things… loving life things… eating food things… soaking in everything wonderful and wonderful and wonderful and wonderful and wonderful and wonderful things…

i’m ready.

OH DUH. it is to be noted that last saturday, rose, gina, robby, andrew, and i went camping and found an amazing, amazing, amazing situation for ourselves. these are robby’s photographs from his iphone. see below. OH MY GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT SO GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.

basically, gina / niko’s friend bobby had a space out in southern washington that he shares with this hippie retreat place… they have a bunch of land friends can camp on. we had a bonfire and basically slept under the stars — no tent — and then went hiking the next day. gina destroyed her really awesome sneakers hiking in the river. ah man. it was good times… there were a lot of s’mores eaten. probably too many s’mores. but it happens…

campground area:

but yeah. we found a really amazing swimming hole with a waterfall. below are pictures from it. pretty much there was life before the waterfall and life after the waterfall… haha.

robby tried to dive into the river with us but then froze to death (0 body fat) and then had to get out. as for andrew and i, we went close to the waterfall and it was seriously 2x closer there. like, it was cold when we got in, but when you got near the waterfall it was some serious shit. afterwards, the four of us were so cold we were seriously retarded. for starters, we could only — in andrew’s terms — “shrimp” to the shore… as in — we were walking upright when we went into the water but crawling on all fours when we got out. it was also like a three mile hike into the waterfall area, through rivers, and while it was slightly challenging and uncomfortable on the way there, on the way back we were seriously being so retarded… practically falling off logs… i felt like i was way closer to nature because of the poor decision-making skills i’d newly possessed: rather than going over a set of fallen branches, for example, i would crawl in between them and find my face now inches from ferns i would have otherwise simply risen above… it was strange, profoundly strange, deliriously delightfully naturally strange. high, high, high!!!!

adventures from parents and portland.

[1]
Me: It’s a good time to go over the bridge!
Mom: Are there so many bridges because of the river?
Dad: No, there’s so many bridges because of the mountains. Stupid question!

[2]
Me: There’s a really big bookstore! Is that of interest?
Dad: No.

Went to Toro Bravo with the parents. Oh, so delicious. They were less critical than expected and actually found my apartment somewhat decently nice. Amazing. It’s just funny because the 716 apartment permanently scarred them into thinking the worst of the worst (since that was, after all, the worst apartment-living situation ever, ever, ever!)

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.)

too busy to write is actually not a good feeling.

i’m listening to… the zombies.

—

i thought this week would be a piece of cake! i suppose it is in the conventional regard but i was telling robby, “oh sure! i can meet up anytime this week!” but that turned out to be a huge ball of lie as this week, which had seemed so very free, in fact was not… for starters there are like, three friends’ birthdays this week, one of which will probably be celebrated twice, and it’s just all around “aaaaaaaaaaghhhhhhhhhhh!!!” insanity!!

but you know, whatever.

there has been an all-time high use of that thing we call mary jane at our home because shawn is out of town on the east coast and austin is living in his place. austin is quite a fan of such, and rose and sarah have been coming over to hang, and andrew is quite a fan of such, too… so it’s an all-around… smokery mess… the household dynamic is ever-interesting. man. not gonna lie. been paying only minimal attention to all of the responsibilities i should probably be taking care offffffff in terms of redefine. i mean. i’m doing a bunch of shit but there’s a never-ending amount of additional shit to do which has been neglected ;s need more hours in the day…

anyway. i really want to not write right now because it takes time but i think i need to.

life is been unbelievable in terms of synchronicities this year, as i have already been talking about, but it’s kind of at an all-time high, particularly since i started realizing it. gawsh, i hope our minds are not literally just our minds and that all of THIS is not some elaborate fantasy. it’d be quite elaborate and quite fascinating that a mind could construct such butttttttttttt. yeah.

the past few days have been non-stop philosophical conversation, to the point of some serious, serious life reflection… in this… mind-numbing, all-of-this-is-way-too-big-for-us-to-possibly comprehend type fashion. the other night after watching “pi,” rose and austin and i were talking outside on the porch and they were totally on the extreme frOo-frOo spiritual side of things, making me feel like this scientific extremist even though i’m not. blake was passed out on the couch so he was not able to join the discussion which was too bad, because they were just like, “i feel so much!” and i was like, “what the fuck!!” i wasn’t angry, but it was a very like, involved discussion… but in either case, it was interesting because there were these points that kept coming up that they were saying but that blake had said other nights… for example… they were talking about how it would be great to change education in a way that taught children how to rely on emotions and intuition… whereas the other night, blake was talking about how it would be great to change humanity by teaching people to reason and think logically. so fucking weird these polarizations, and hearing both sides, and being essentially the mediator of these sides that stand in stark contrast to one another… it’s kind of maddening. actually, i think my body is pretty pissed at me and is really stressed out. i really want to stretch non-stop…

anyway, another portion of our conversation was brought up by austin, who said that perhaps a solution to some of life’s problems of extreme emotions was turning to this buddhist way of thought… by clearing the mind of thought so that one could think about nothing until an emotion passed… because emotions supposedly only last a short amount of time. to this, i was like WHAT THE FUCK THAT MAKES NO SENSE. and i was trying to argue it from the standpoint that firstly, you couldn’t clear your mind completely really, and even if you did… it would not be at all useful in a modern world because the thought that were bothering you would probably just re-emerge like 5 minutes later, and what could you possibly do? clear your mind non-stop every 5 minutes? it’s simply not practical.

(man… side note… i haven’t had the impetus or time to listen to ANY new music. it’s a fucking problem, seriously…)

what else did we argue about… back to the emotional teaching model of thinking… they were both saying how it would be great if we could teach people to properly emote because that would solve all the problems, and i thought that that was missing the point entirely; teaching someone to rationalize was one thing… scary potentially, yes, but more possible than teaching someone emotion because we have absolutely no grasp on emotions… the prospect of teaching people how to emote is WAY scarier than the prospect of teaching people how to think logically. i don’t know if it is was cause they were stoned (probably a contributing factor) but this line of thinking was rather maddening to me, and again, it was like, “GODAMMIT BLAKE WAKE UP CAUSE I FEEL LIKE AN EXTREME SCIENTIST WHEN REALLY I’M JUST PRETTY MIDDLE OF THE ROAD AND THEY ARE FAR FAR FAR IN LEFT FIELD!”

anyh00t. they were also talking about how teaching emotional awareness would lead to the solving of the earth’s problems, that humans would stop destroying the world around us and realize that we are all connected to everything around us and we should therefore take care of it… and i ended up taking this stance that everything is ultimately selfish, from every human to every tree that is struggling simply to live… and that the trees were not destroying things not because they didn’t want to but because they literally did not have the faculties. that they couldn’t even consider destroying everything because they don’t have godamn arms and shit. they brought up that chimpanzees were similar to people and that they didn’t destroy the earth like we do, and i had to say that they do, that they war and fight against one another, and would probably do more only they don’t have the tools to do so… that we destroy because it’s in our nature, to a degree, and because we have the faculties to do so… they seemed to take on a super pessimistic viewpoint, but only of humanity, saying that it is only humans who sets out to destroy all things, and that all other beings in life work together to help each other. austin talked about how there’s evidence that cells group together and work together to help each other and that animals do too (? i don’t know details and he didn’t say specifics ?) and i had to be like, “wtf, human beings do all sorts of great things and work together on all sorts of great things!” to which rose was like, “like what?” (?!) and i was like, “what do you mean like what? look at this fucking fence! it’s fucking great!” it ended up being a point in my argument that human beings, even with the best of intentions — even if instilled with love of the earth — intrinsically need to create and by creating end up creating waste… that we destroy the earth by virtue of being curious and having large enough of brains! i don’t know why this argument even needed to be argued! it seems like a no brainer!!! again, being stoned probably didn’t help them with their thinking, but!! aaaghhh! maddening!!!

MADDENINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG.

other than that, went to sauvie’s island this past weekend with rose and blake for the first time, which was quite nice. ugh, i’m sleepy. it’s midnight-thirty, and i have oh-so-many errands to run tomorrow. i think i will actually be able to wake up early and get everything i need to fucking do fucking done, yo.

ugh. i actually wanted to write down a why-life-is-so-fucking-crazy-this-year type equation or list of events but this is going to take a while. i will try to summarize quickly.

january > sucked, essentially, haha. got better towards the end, but what-in-the-hell-ever.

febuary > started realizing some interesting coincidences and feeling a different kind of energy. horoscope lineups and all sorts of synchronicities. psyching oneself out on the amazingness of life, generally-speaking.

march > everything everything everything seemed to go flawlessly, effortlessly well. mysterious energies, again, found in things like horoscopes, tarot, etc. interest in duality, stemming a lot from literature, in re-readings of vladimir nabokov, in aldous huxley and related things… slight bent on spirituality, though spirituality from a very concretely written point of view… not entirely frou-frou, but grounded in a pretty solid kind of way (other than baudelaire). all of these books which pointed in this direction were attained rather synchronicitously, baudelaire by random excursion into a borders bookstore that was closing down; aldous huxley by random trip to a bookstore in new mexico; etc. comparisons between baudelaire and metaphysics, symmetry in asymmetry, order in chaos… influenced my writing a lot, lots of pattern-based writing and careful attention to structures… as if i didn’t do that enough already, ugh, but baudelaire kind of contributed a lot more to that…

april > bit the butt in many ways. spent a month alone contemplating the concept of duality. every piece of literature i read — particularly charles baudelaire — began to shape my reality more and more, and interesting that i only probably became interested in baudelaire because of troy… and all the more interested because “it”: a) didn’t work out; b) gave me a lot of introspection in a period when i spent all my time by myself in california. timing could not have been better. seriously. picked up book by sartre, in the only place i could find it, which was the dublin library. read it and the timing was perfect. being by myself in california, had the occasion to begin writing my own book, highly inspired by sartre’s nausea… slightly philosophically, but more in structure and writing style. again, the whole troy thing lighting a fire under my creative ass…

may > began noticing dualities between metaphysics and spirituality… something kind of intrinsically felt in my life but difficult to explain as i barely know anything about either… kind of just a feeling. continue writing book. continue exploring such concepts through conversations. finding a close duality in another human being that makes for some senses of knowledge-completion. two sides of the same coin, both providing me with viewpoints — literature, one, with a focus on poetry; science, two, with a focus on philosophy… both equally abstract, but not to them… but very obvious to me, as a middle-of-the-roader, and the timing is just sheer insanity, and the parallels between the two even larger insanities. in addition to that parallel, though, it all just kind of clicked one night at a party, being sandwiched between a spiritual-minded individual and a science-minded individual, both with quite similar ideas, via different terminology and interpretations. but again. me = middle of the road.

june > conversations intensifying with themes of duality, but moreso this exploration between metaphysics / physics and spirituality… things practically falling into my lap. books being introduced which address the idea of parallels between quantum-level physics and spirituality, lectures and quotes coming up without my even looking…. and this month has only just begun. i resolved a couple days ago to begin dedicating myself, in a way, to studying this topic and trying to synthesize the information in a meaningful way because i know not what else i can do with these topics which keep coming up. i am trying to find the connection between intuition and rationalization — in what ways they are two sides of the same coin. errrf, i guess i am trying to explore the relationship between quantum-level physics and spirituality, via philosophy and literature. what.

hopefully these notes make sense. fuck.
probably will make sense to very few people.
the coincidental power… i don’t know what to do with it.

i think my body is not stoked. i feel suuuuuuuuuper stressed out, my thyroid is super swollen, and oh yeah, i think i can never smoke mary jane again. seriously. it makes me feel like shit — about myself, the universe, etc.

:>>> :>>> :>>>

but yeah here is the problem with studying this stuff; a scientist is largely isolated from religion, a religious person largely isolated from science. the idea is to find the cross-over… i am looking for patterns by loosely studying both ends, and then the goal is to interview the proper people to find more parallels and patterns. fuck. this seems fucking like a crazy undertaking… there are very few human beings to talk to about this, honestly.

—

lenny: (about above)
it makes sense
but i have a hard time relating that to the world i guess

me:
i can understand that
i can barely relate
just kind of happened
as, if you believe in this kind of bullshit, happens..

lenny:
like, what exactly happens to make you realize stuff like this exists
i dont even know what the stuff i’m referring to is

me:
i dont know man. this year i just started feeling this really weird way like everything was working out really well
and then throguh books that were introduced
these ideas just came up
and then kept going
so i guess it started with intrinsic feeling and got solidified by knowledge shared by other people which vibed similarly with feelings i was unexplainably feeling
whoa.
this is a new idea i hadnt thought of.

lenny:
im still pretty lost
what kind of ideas?

me:
let me give you some quotes
ok so life was going really well
effortlessly well
in feb/march
to the point where im like… this is barely life… life cant be this easy
and then i read this book. and this quote kinda describes how i felt

http://hellomynameisvee.tumblr.com/post/4218407856/from-the-french-window-i-walked-out-under-a-kind

it’s like pseudo-spiritual, kinda, but not like super out there… pseudo-spiritual but in a really concretely written literary way
this was only a jump-off point
and from there i just read a LOT and all of these ideas seemed to like
converge.
and a lot fo the books i didnt even look for, i mean i kind of did by the sheer act of going to bookstores and looking at books
but they just happened to be there and appealed to me for whatever vague reasons
and then meeting two people who are very similar in many ways and i have very similar relationships with… yet are complete opposites of people in a lot of ways and opened up two worlds for me: (1) world of abstraction through writing and literature; (2) world of abstraction through philosophy
and also these meetings/intense connections being rather chance in and of themselves…
and fleeting
as though used only for the purpose of gathering knowledge
does this make a lick of sense haha

lenny:
yeah the idea of it makes sense
like i get what youre saying
that recently youve been having these eye opening experiences and synchronicites in your life

me:
yeah i mean i can understand how it’s hard to realte
like a year ago i woulda been like wtf
but that’s the thing with these weird kinda spiritual things
they jut like
… pop up
and then it’s like oh i kinda get it
or something
so they’re kind of hard to explain by nature