the dreams are messing with my head, man! i can’t tell if they are symbolic or predictive — and if they are predictive, there seems to be some turbulent times ahead, though temporary, i’m sure. in any case, whatever they mean, they’re reminding me to appreciate the now, the moments, and to actually be present for them. it’s something i need to work on; i really need to work on it.

oh yeah, my dream, scored.

http://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F37128249&show_artwork=true

forgot to post this before, but dustin wong scored my dream!! one of the most intense, perspective-changing ones. it’s funny. all things are pointing towards the fact that i should do visual art… most importantly, motion art. it’s fucked up. it’s super fucked.

i am happy to lie here!

morning wake-up rambles, sure, why not.
it’s been some time since writing has been the first thing to happen.
i will copy out the dream from last night.

we are searching for the house of burke, the casa de burke. coming up it, it is difficult to tell if it is the proper place. the wooden sign bearing its name is tiny. we drive past many potential places before discovering this building; this is the one. think it is a jeep that we are riding with. don’t know who i am with. there is confusion with the driver because my eyesight is too bad to read the sign well, and we are looking for casa de burke but the sign says house of burke. get off vehicle and there are strange vibes all around. native tribespeople are cooking food; i think they’re chinese. i begin to think that they’re cooking human flesh and try to warn the others, who seem eager to eat it. i try to speak in languages i think the tribespeople won’t understand. i don’t think the others catch on. eventually my parents come. my dad’s nose is bleeding out of the right nostril. the natives burn some things and have him inhale; perhaps it is a cure? eventually the meat is ready and people are excited. i am not, because i know the truth. i think the others have unwittingly paid to eat human flesh. i tell dad in a language (i think chinese) that it is “ren rou”. he repeats that in a language that the tribespeople DO understand. all i can think when he does that is, why the hell?! i see a giant hunk of human meat one of the natives is carrying. it’s a big jointed piece, like a knee.

what up with it.

man, i haven’t written for a few days though a lot has happened. this is what happens when i don’t have internet freezing is also what happens when the godamn coffee shop you’re at doesn’t close their front door ARGHHHH DEATHHHH.

anyway, last night we watched the turin horse, which, after reading george’s review, i had really wanted to watch and even dragged along two other poor sops (gina and troy). it was, in fact, the most boring film on the planet — so boring and slow, really, that it became of the utmost hilarity, in that it seems impossible that anyone would direct such film intentionally, and yet, there it is, proof of intentionality, and proof that life is OMG SO ABSURD. it was beyond bad. and then was the polica show, which was also so, so, so incredibly mediocre that the entire evening — save for troy and i’s eating at swagat — was basically just a waste, which i could have spent instead watching bollywood movies and iranian action films that i have, or editing swahili videos for tuesday’s grimes show… but nOoOoOooo.

two days ago there was an excursion into the world of the mush, and it came in some kind of a flash that i should make movies… yes, movies. the kind where i would direct a human around, rather than just editing. it was a strange thought, an arresting thought, an aldous-huxley-looks-at-lawn-chair-in-doors-of-perception thought, of paralyzing brilliance — the floorboards were glowing — of all-encompassing beauty? it’s funny and ridiculous. but i never would have been in that position had it not been for my arms going absolutely numb for, i think, ten minutes or something. a quick online search yielded a result of a woman who had such symptoms and then got a catscan that was clean, got one three years later, and discovered that she had a brain tumor. it reminds me of the time that i had intense eye problems, and i didn’t know whether they were real or psychosomatic, but they seemed real, yet catscans had revealed nothing. and it is true that those problems came to pass after the 222222222222222ci. i remember feeling so, so, so lonely then, so frustrated that i went to get a catscan that day, by myself, and came back to my apartment at 716 n 41st st. and no one cared at how miserable of a time i had had. lenny, alex, and andy were hanging out, and i didn’t want to bring up how horrible and how terrifying of a time i had had in the catscan (recap of the event here). anyway. my eye has never felt normal since then — but it did subside a slight bit, and i just kind of ignored it, supposing it wasn’t a huge deal if the catscan didn’t result in anything. and i just felt generally idiotic for making such a big fuss, BECAUSE nothing came to be seen. but that doesn’t mean there is no problem, and such intense arm numbness scared the fucking shit out of me, and i need to go get a catscan stat, i think. but it is the case with insurance and such that… i just feel like i don’t even know where to go, and i’m scared also that parents will see the insurance, or i mean, how much does insurance even cover for this shit? can i actually afford this crap? so many questions.

i have been having nightmares lately. i never have nightmares, and don’t really know what the cause is. they are especially prevalent when i stay at troy’s house. the worst was two nights ago, when i spit out half my teeth and was desperately trying to hold in the rest. i have had these kinds of dreams many times — dreams interpretation guides say teeth-related dreams have to do with financial worries, though i know in my case that can’t be true — and i will say that they are, hands down, the worst godamn dreams ever to have… they feel so horrible, each tooth feeling like it is wiggling, hanging on by a thin thread, me never certain whether i’ll lose them all or not… are these dreams telling me i should take care of my teeth better? but i just got a teeth cleaning last year and it was okay… that dream was followed up by a strange escapade where lenny and i were wandering an abandoned mall or something, and we were looking for places to, i think, do the nasty. we went into the elevator and that seemed like the best place but there was something amiss about it; i don’t remember what. the dream pretty much just consisted of much wandering, inside and outside the mall.

this morning’s dream had to do theft. i was in the woods with some people and went outside, and there was really light grey layer of light penetrating the sky in dotted cross-type shapes. they got brighter and brighter. someone asked what they were. i think i said they were lasers. they got brighter, and closer, and began to descend, and when they descended closer, a blue kite-like strip became apparent and it looked like the drupal logo but had the words, very clearly, “laser druid.” it was some company or some brand. got inside and discovered that all of the computers and things we had had been hacked, and that the laser lights were information-stealing lasers, or something. it was strange; our computers were locked from normal use but also were completely dismantled. i think i went into the next room and began crying or being really upset, saying that my computer was essentially my life… it’s weird, its weird, it’s weird.

anyway, when looking at people on the mush, they are essentially a huge ball of hair and eyes to me, and it is hard to focus and mostly unattractive. it’s relatively such a hard thing, weird temperatures and body functions, weird reactions to perception. we began by taking a walk through mt. tabor which was beautiful on that day, drenched in fog, pure misting on the face. so good, so good. the greens and red-browns came to light, along with the realization that i mimick patterns in my mind that aren’t usually there. as far as learning, all i came to be left with was that i need a haircut and to tighten up my style a little bit. and to watch what i eat a bit more and take care of this body thing. and that i need to make films — perhaps not now, but that i can and am capable of making films. it has always been a bit of a thing where my favorite photographers are those who stage elaborate sets, but i have never felt comfortable with doing anything of the sort, never felt comfortable with directing people to do anything. i guess more than anything the experience was a reminder that perhaps i can do those things, and should, just because they’re difficult? i am not sure. but i am excited for this suite of swahili-related videos i am editing, and it will be fascinating to see if these result to something more, whether they will ultimately be used for their videos, etc. it’s unclear, all is unclear.

i think what troy learned was that anything can be done. which is cool. evidently up until now such experiences for him have been ways to work on the self — and this time, it was manageable, a sense that the self is doing fine and that the self just needs to learn to do things rather than talk about doing things. we had an idea the other night when out with abe about reviving all-day concert series ala jam bands of yore, and i think the mushy cemented in troy’s mind that it was possible to actually do these things, and that should be a partner and help me do those things, rather than waiting around and waiting for them to happen. undoubtedly, these were cool things to hear. i guess he also thinks that it’s time for him to get a real job rather than continuing to serve food to kids… :L

relatedly, troy and i had a really hilarious conversation the other night where we logic-holed our brain into ridiculousness. it had been quite a while (since blake was around) that i had had such high-logic brain-numbing discussion that it took way shorter of a while for me to be fatigued by it, but it was interesting, and a memory of times. blah, blah, blah. it’s 3:00pm. i am going back to editing videos. i have been reading a literate passion, a collection of letters between henry miller and anais nin. it’s interesting, it’s love, and i never knew that henry miller was really the one who was more in love with her, that he waited for years to marry her, but that she never wanted to divorce her real husband for fear of hurting him, even though she had stopped loving him years before and thought of him only as a good friend. interesting people.

my dreams have been intense lately.

i just had to wake up at like 7am to write down one about micah bleeding out and possibly dying. crazy.

i’ve started posting all of my dreams here again.

i need to stop sitting in bad positions too, as i am doing right this second. i’ve been having some circulation problems lately. i should get a physical soon. i should take better care of myself…

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).

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!!!!

i am listening to oldies. i am thinking about death.

not in any suicidal way, mind you. i just woke up with death on the mind (dream excerpt from facebook, below), and it can’t help but have colored my day in a rainy shade of grey.

Dreamt I went thru the death sequence of my Caucasian male equivalent. It began like a movie intro, w/ highly-stylized credits alongside images of “me.” Dream-time shifted to real-time during this sequence, so striking it roused me from sleep to lucidity. I began to will the sequence’s continuation, but an awareness of pressure on the left side of my skull forced me to wake.

>>> responses to my asking people to share their death experience dreams:

rachel:

Since I was little I would have dreams where a mob of people were being chased by some force or creature that we knew was coming, where we just knew we were doomed, and rather than running I would just give in and decide that I’d rather die than keep running in fear. Two of these I remember well. One where I was helping an entire classroom of little girls in nightgowns escape through a broken window out into the snow, waiting to be shot and just went out in the hallway to take a bullet in the face. Another was a grocery store and everyone was running and screaming and looking for places to hide. The whole dream was from the monster’s point of view. I decided to walk out into the center checkstand and end it all.

john:

Here’s one that I’ll paraphrase briefly. Me and this other person are running from a spectral figure who appears to us as Hurley from Lost. We keep running from him, and he’s one step ahead of us all the way. Eventually, we think we’ve gotten away from him and decide to go hide out in a restaurant, just to find him there, apparently just finishing his meal and bullshitting with the owner. The message is clear, we can’t get away. I start to walk out of the restaurant, then get kind of annoyed and decide to confront him. I roll into the restaurant and say, “hey, what the fuck, why don’t you just kill me?” To which he stands up, looks at me kind of joke menacingly and puts his hand on my neck. He then projects a future scenario to me (which I’m not really comfortable talking about). I see this thing from multiple perspectives and after the vision is done, he just kind of laughs and tells me: “Dude, I can’t, becuase of that.” He then proceeds to laugh and tell me: “that’s going to be awesome.”

max:

well, i haven’t had any crazy dreams in a while, but a couple weeks ago i was meditating for about an hour a day everyday and it started getting kind of crazy. during one session i imagined i was a fish. at first i was imagining the basic feeling of swimming in that kind of body, almost like i was a mermaid. but suddenly i just became a fish. i had trained myself not to react to negative emotions, to just feel them. and it was really scary! i was actually a fish! and suddenly i was in a school of fish and there was this instantaneous connectedness to them. i was sort of in the middle left of the school. i could zoom in and out to see myself but felt the movement of ‘myself’ only. one movement by one fish was every movement by every fish — but each fish had their own will. we just all felt eachothers’ will. there was a kind of electric telepathy. then suddenly we were frantic and it took a minute to realize why: we were being chased by a shark! and then the school broke up and i was alone, swimming by myself having no one, and i tried to hold on to the feeling but then i became myself, and i cried a little because it was really realy really fucking sad. yeah. it was sad because i lost all my friends and family. that’s exactly how it felt.

careen:

I dreamed that I saw a ritual dismemberment in process- there was the body without four limbs or head, upright. I understood that the body was mine just as the medicine man was hacking off the breast with a sharpened stone. there was not a feeling of pain. I remember ‘ascending’- that I understood I was leaving the vessel, and there was a strong sound of acknowledgment of the spirit leaving the body. not a keening per se, but a cry- aiaiaiaiai

i rather like to explore the concept of death in an open way. we are so frightened of it as a society. i am not unfrightened of death, but i think i live life pretty well with it in mind. actually, aaron and i recently had a conversation about whether we’d want to pass away in sleep or to have an interesting death. he had an uncle pass away in his sleep… painless, i guess. guess the dude was sleeping and then his wife came to lay next to him to take a nap, and they slept together, and when she awoke, he was gone. our mutual thoughts on the matter were that perhaps a more interesting death would afford one waking moments of reflection… for maybe you don’t get those in sleep? or maybe you do. it’s a mystery…

in any case.
so many of these old ’50s songs and such center around themes of youthful death, and dying… or if not that, just general overwhelming sadness. why are they so very sad? and then… why is the music, by contrast, so cheerful???????????? music is so much a ‘mood’ thing… how did they perform and dance these songs, singing these absolutely devastating lyrics, without considering the very apparent duality????????

randomly picked a video to watch last night because i couldn’t get “the machinist” to work (see below)… and came across this ted talk with patricia burchat, a physicist. she talks about dark matter and dark energy, and how they are two different, contrasting partners working together to expand the universe while bringing it together at the same time… essentially. or so my sleep brain thought. perhaps you should watch.

there’s this trailer for terrence malick’s “the tree of life” which will be coming out sometime in the near future.

the trailer is fucking -beautiful- and the film seems to cover heftily the concept of duality within oneself, which is ever, ever present. fuck, is it ever present! i don’t know how it plans to cover such a lofty topic — not that i am proposing that this is the exact topic of the entire movie but it certainly seems a notable portion — in such a short time period.

other than all this, though, i am crazy into this song right now: bobby blue’s “sincere replies”.

granted, i am listening to the damien jurado and richard swift cover, from this remarkable free album of covers that the two came out last month or something. it was an instant like, but now it is like a… FUUUUUUUCK. so good. listen below.

i will be embarking on a series of papercuts. soon. very soon. hefty.

ever-stream!!!!

it’s quite strange to have words constantly streaming through your head all the time. it’s like you’re talking to yourself constantly, though you’re doing it in a way that makes it “feel” like you’re writing a book. is that some sort of self-protective mechanism to keep yourself from actually admitting that you’re really just talking to yourself, all the time?

i’ve tagged this post “deep thoughts” but it’s kind of in a jack handey kind of way.

i…………………………………………………
haven’t been able to really process that deep of thoughts in the past couple of days.
mind keeps wandering.
been trying to read “pale fire” a lot and read about like 20 pages yesterday but it probably didn’t soak in as much as i would like.
the brain can create — kind of — just because i >> have << to, to survive,
but i've already taken rather a hiatus on that front
and am way behind in work,
in play,
ugh.
hopefully i don't get derailed much further.
mind is swimming.
sickness does not help.
but it is kind of cool in that it's been so fucking long since i've had a fever or a proper sickness that i seriously forgot what it felt like to have a fever. in that sense, there was something to be found in "new" experience, i suppose.
but the novelty of frying your brain grows tiresome rather quickly,
particularly when you don't even have any good fever dreams.
only fever dream i kind of remember had to do with chan, my old boss at the bubble tea shop,
opening up a new sushi restaurant.
only it was weird.
it was supposed to be a conveyor belt place,
but you went in and it was just "dishes" and "dishes" of paper plates,
only they were like the kind of paper plates you get from shortbread cookies,
from tins.
the place was packed.
each person had their own unique set of dishes,
which weren't what they ordered,
but rather determined by where they sat…
some were rather complex and full of diversity,
some were mostly one thing,
like a little fried brown thing that looked like a little piece of fried clam,
and that was the first thing dish arrangement i saw…
most unappetizing…
how was the place packed? it was strange.

last night i had another series of pre-bed deliriums.
these were of the sonic hallucination variety…
which i have been having a lot more of lately.
i've never particularly thought in sonic terms –
visual hallucinations, always.
textual and verbal hallucinations, sure.
but sound-based hallucinations are something new to me…
this might be a first.
increasingly i've been awaking with song ideas in my head, even.
it's only happened a couple of times, but more times than ever before, considering the quantity in which they've been occurring. three or four sound-related hallucinations in the course of this year?

it's strange.
am i developing a brain tumor?
serious question…
hopefully not.

this > is > merely > a > MOTHAFUCKIN’ MIND-BLOWING & UNBELIEVABLY SHITTY > test

it’ll blow over and who knows and yeah right cause who are we anyway I CAN HACK IT.

“and nothing sounds appealing.”

i’m listening to… menomena’s “tithe”.

gaaaah.

made ice cream cake last night with gina, corey, and maddy. it was pretty amazing, and it took us six! hours!! or something. corey made caramel ice cream at home, we added a hazelnut meringue (amazing), burnt waffle cones that had like, caramelized and were crispy, and chocolate shavings. it was. so. good. but sugar overload. today has been like, mostly me sleeping a shit ton. woke up early for work phone calls and then just got decimated by my body. ick. and i can handle a lot of sugar but man this is weird. missed the free yoga class at corepower with amira, too. bummer.

my dreams have been bad, and increasingly so. they are all about frustrations of communication and filled with anxieties. three in the past month have involved cell phone usage, which is fucking bizarre. i am super useless right now. i think i might go to a coffee shop in a little bit and do some work because a bunch of afternoon naps has me feeling -slightly- better.

other than this.