"With half-damp eyes I stared to the room
where my friends and I spent many an afternoon
where we together weathered many a storm
laughing and singing 'till the early hours of the morn

With hungry hearts though the heat and cold
we never much thought we could get very old
we thought we could sit forever in fun
but our chances, really, was a million to one

As easy it was to tell black from white
it was all that easy to tell wrong from right
and our choices, they were few, so the thought never hit
that the one road we traveled would ever shatter or split

I wish, I wish, I wish in vain
that we could sit simply in that room again
ten thousand dollars at the drop of a hat
I'd give it all gladly if our lives could be like that"
-Bob Dylan

I said goodbye to a handful of my best-friends tonight, for the first time not knowing when we will see each other again. Although for the past few years we have all been in different places, experiencing different things, there has always been the knowledge that we would all see each other again; there was always the anchor of a soon-to-be-summer spent together on the streets where we all learned a bit about the world surrounding us, ourselves, and each-other - basements and bars where time seemed to cease, and the degrees of separation between us melted away, leaving us with that nostalgic feeling of congeniality... which was more than enough for the time being - stories and subsequent laughter, congratulations, or tears that was not-at-all unnatural even if our voices had not been heard in months. I have gathered from my experiences with people after high-school that this level of camaraderie is a very rare thing; people often drift apart, lose interest, or cease to relate, and that friendships formulated in high-school (or even earlier, as is the case here) are more-often-than-not paltry and superficial. I am forever grateful that our experience has been an exception.

Some of the best parts of myself were born in the simple atmosphere of friendship - youth and naivety colliding, without restraint, shattering preconceptions, and causing considerable fall-out, but never destroying that hope and beauty that moved our hands to pick up all the pieces.

But time has caught up with us, and our ventures homeward are diminishing. We are scattering throughout the country, this time without the regular visits home so conducive to collegiate life. I know that it is not goodbye. I know that my children will know many "uncles" and "aunts" that are not of their bloodline, but all the same... I will miss them in-between. I am constantly moving forward, embracing change, relishing in it even, but not without lasting sentimentality for what has come before.

It's been a while since a debaucherous evening singing and swaying to this one, but this goes out to you, my friends.

but we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies

I have a real blog now. Exciting stuff. The entire process of creating this thing was slightly overwhelming - too much going on, if you ask me, but on the bright side it allowed me to fully absorb a new album: Thao - We Brave Bee Stings and All. It's pretty darn good, too.

I only have two days left in New York, which is sad, I'm going to miss it, but I'm very excited about my sister's wedding in Portland, and I'm actually looking forward to getting back down to FL, believe it or not. It's my last semester of college. Yikes. Let's not talk about that.
I'm ready to jump back into academic mode, and ready to see how these next few months will transform my life (as it most certainly will); there are a lot of decisions to make, some of which I'm not quite ready for, but God is good, and I know everything will fall into place. He has been preparing me for some major changes; it's frustrating to not know what they are, and terrifying to guess, but I have felt His hand on my shoulder lately. I can't really ask for much more than that, although I do, I really do, I ask for a lot more than that, because sometimes I'm like Kerouac: "mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, and desirous of everything at the same time." We learn by very slow degrees, sometimes without even realizing it. I've been praying to become the person He wants me to be for years, and I'm feeling myself approaching that threshold - that is not to say I haven't been where I should have been along the way, or that this journey is coming to an end, but somehow things feel different. This might sound morbid, but my entire life I was convinced I was to die at an early age (it didn't depress me, and I never dwelled on it, it was simply something I held in the back of my mind). I don't have that feeling any more. That is the best way I can explain this. I can see the future somewhere off in the distance, intangible and without definition, but it's there. This is new. This is good.

picture in a frame

Last night I watched Pearl Jam: Imagine in Cornice. It was breathtaking. Go out and buy it, pronto.

this shirt is dry-clean only, which means it's dirty

It's been great being home. I'm sitting at Uncommon Grounds, drinking an irish cream italian soda and watching the sun break through the rain clouds outside the window facing Broadway, and although since the reconstruction last year this place is less hippie and more yuppie, I still love it. They always play good music, and I'm grateful for that since I forgot my headphones.

Tonight I will be heading to Binghamton, NY for a few days to support my father in something called the Empire State Games where he will be a pole-vaulting, javelin-throwing, shot-putting, long-jumping madman. Apparently marathons, triathlons, and 100-mile foot races through the hills of VT (yes, that's right 100 miles, on foot, through the woods - I don't really understand it either) became mundane to him. So I arrived home to find him practicing up on this track-and-field stuff, taking me out to the backyard to show me the long-jump pit he made, and showing me the correct way to hold a javelin. He's so excited it's hilarious. He's like a little kid. I love it. It's kind of sad that a sixty-six-year-old man could slaughter his twenty-four-year-old son in nearly every physical activity. I can barely run a mile without seriously considering calling for an ambulance. I did, however, beat him in the long-jump... but then again, I think afterwards I complained about getting sand in my shoes and went back to my book. Oh the shame he must feel.

purposely scholarly and pretentious

This evening, for whatever reason, I am reminiscent of my days of having a facebook account, particularly the required fields of "Gender" and "Looking For." I always found the latter to be ridiculous, especially in terms of the limited options of responses; those being only what was offered in the former. So although I waved goodbye to that silly social-networking site long ago (for reasons that were very much the same as the reason I deactivated my 'myspace' months prior, and for which I have absolutely no excuse for reactivating except for boredom), I will now present in a rather unorthodox (and completely stupid) manner what I believe to be an appropriate response to what facebook in all of its glorious simplicity asks of its users; that being the question "What Are You Looking For?"

My previous, and for lack of a better option, response to facebook's question was "Women." But this was, I understand, a paltry response, insofar as this term is such an asinine generality - and also, I should add, all of this might very well stem from the fact that I have recently been watching 'Mad Men': a show aired on AMC and recently released on DVD which has been a staple of the television set viewed by me and my prestigious colleagues Dave and George, whom the latter purchased from BestBuy, subsequently his workplace, and which depicts "The American Dream" through the dramatization of the 1950-1960's advertising agencies in NYC, the characters of which view women merely as objects; possessions, sex-toys, dinner-cooking-diaper-changing-sun-dress-wearing-"how-was-your-day-honey-and-I'll-be-waiting-in-the-bedroom-when-the-baseball-game-is-over"-mannequins, but which by no means perpetuates this ideal, but rather reveals the absolute grotesque nature of such a way of life, and which is also a fairly engaging drama that I highly recommend to all - and so I now feel the need to amend my previous response as to "What I am Looking For"

Lest my purpose here be clouded by reviews of television shows, I will get to the point.
Submitted for your approval is a series of videos of one of my favorite females who occupy the grand province of the popular media, and whose self-created record company's slogan is "FOLKing you up since 1990", which I love, but which is entirely besides the point, because what she truly sloganizes is something much greater: that individuality trumps gender, and that all the fools who misunderstand the book of Genesis can stick it.

I'm not looking for a label, I'm looking for something unique, but if we are categorizing, here's what I think of when I think of the term "woman."

[Disclaimer: This first one isn't great, but its a bootleg taken at one of the two shows that two of my beautiful sisters (Suzie and Danielle) and I attended in NYC, so I found it somewhat appropriate...she was eight months pregnant, and still kicked butt]

i fear you are walking the walks of dreams

I found this folded up in a journal that has sat on my bookshelf for over a year, collecting dust, empty and lonely, but not forgotten... certainly not forgotten.
In fact, since receiving it I have been haunted by feelings of insecurity, whispering words incessantly telling me that nothing I could ever put on its pages would ever be worthy of their placement. It was (is) a gift from a friend, both the journal and the bit of Whitman folded up into it.
My esteem for this particular person is so great that I foolishly believed the pages deserved writing that measured at least as great as that of her friendship. But I finally realized that nothing measures to this. On one end of a scale you can place a pile of poems by Neruda, compile the complete works of Poe, stack a Schiele painting or two, and even toss on a few Bob Dylan records for good measure, but it will be no use so long as love, in whatever capacity, rests on the other end. The scale will always be tipped, because nothing weighs so heavy as love.

And so I dusted off the journal, and cracked it open to find this, and my world got a little bit brighter. I broke the seal, wrote in something silly, knowing that true greatness rests entirely in the realm of love. But I did leave the first page blank, because try as I might, I couldn't transcribe my gratitude.

for life's not a paragraph

Amy, George, and I watched this wonderful film this evening. I've seen it several times, and it just keeps on getting better. I'm not sure why I love it so much. There is the obvious aesthetic reasonings; the way Gondry makes dream life come alive on screen, the unsynchronized sound and lip movements, the silent wind that blows, the confusions and transformations, the beautiful mixtures of reality and falsification. But something much deeper resonates within me while I watch the story unfold. I think I identify with Stephane in a way that hits much too close to home. It's almost embarrassing. The way he is in a state of constant doubt is almost too much. Dream vs reality has always been a problem for me, even before I started reading Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault, who have made my pathology grow at an exponential level, but whom I am forever grateful, because without them I might very well have settled into a comfortable position of ignorance, which as we all know may very well be the root of all evil (perhaps we don't all know this, but I think we should). Confusion begets questioning, which begets reasoning, if one is willing to go that far. And there may never be an end, since (I think) we can never (truly) have a corner on God's Truth, but (I think) the search - that is genuine searching; not conforming to what is easy, or comfortable, or spoken plainly from the pulpit, but what echoes beyond that plain message, and what stretches down to our own lives and therefore becomes somewhat tangible - is the point after all.

Eh. But I'm no theologian, so let me digress... I love the way that Gondry does not present love in a way that is easy, or comfortable; it is not sappy (though I am also a sucker for sappy endings, just come look at my movie collection and you will be easily convinced of this fact), and the walk-off-into-the-distance-together scene that appears in the end is only a dream, the reality of their love is not guaranteed in the viewer's mind, though they (we, to those who have seen it) all know it should be. This is because there is a disconnect in the character's perceptions, of one another and of themselves. And this may be the point: there will always be a disconnect, because as much as you think someone else can understand you, or is similar to you, you will never be that person, and they never you, so you will forever need to step outside of yourself and into their shoes, and I think that's where love really comes into play.

I do not have a problem stepping out of myself, into someone else, but I do fear that that step will not be understood, or perhaps taken for granted. I fear stepping for someone whose feet merely flirt with forward movement, but only want to retreat. Yep, I've seen that happen before, and... well... I guess my feet have become timid, but in my dreams they move endlessly forward... I'd move along one path forever if I believed it would be reciprocated

-------------

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis
-ee cummings