A Relief

I sat under a painting
In a stranger's house in Omaha.
Other guests stared, some whispered,
Some were obvious-
Some, oblivious.
I faced forward, not knowing if I had
Made some mistake.
It wasn't until leaving, I saw that the painting
Over the chair
Could have been of me and some
Striking woman. I recall the feeling of love,
At this gift from my world, at the beautiful girl,
At that incredible convergence, yet
It has had some consequences.
I now look for us in old photographs,
And feel perverted, as I twist the memories of
Family and dear companions into what I
Stupidly hope may be some prophesy.
I look for her in
My life, in negative space, though I know
That by the irony of the universe, if she is
A living thing, she will only step into the frame
Once I have forgotten completely.
If I forget well, we may be happy.

I don't know why I am so fiery.

On no day of the week do I fail so cleverly
As in the natural world on my padded paws.
The conversation stops, I pulse and fingers pop,
A word swings from my hanging jaw. I am locked, all
Bone, knuckle and claw-
And my blood does turn to steam,
Comes a cloud up over me.
My roots are where I've stayed my feet.
I do pull my life back in
Until I boil it again, all
Ghostly, scarce and burning grin.

come together

The day we met, you were eating flowers from the garden where I slept. You told me that there was once a darkness here, but love rises and rises above the spinning world, and converges at the highest point, and burns bright, beautifully. I stood and shook out the sheet I wear. I told you that I was glad to be a part of such a lovely thing, and that I would love everything as much as I was capable so I could help grow flowers. You shared a laugh with your echo, with everything. How lovely it was to be a part of everything!

06:35

you were SPYING !

I lost my laundry at the river
Drew myself up when I saw your figure
At the water.
I was singing to the rocks
That the town's kids all had tossed
To the bottom.
I sang, you left me in the snow
I've seen you go and go and go
Go and go and go-

a young man and an old man are talking

a young man and an old man are talking. the young man asks the old man what he has learned. "almost nothing is true," is the old man's reply. The young man is upset by this. The young man prays that night, asks god to show him something true. For a full minute, nothing at all happens around him. He sees letters appear above him, one at a time, in solid black letters. Eventually, they spell the words: "let's talk about something else."

her tiny hand

(In the world, I stirred a little, I'm sure.)
I was hellbent. You were a god send.
I was rambling but you seemed
grateful like you were worried that
I'd be good for you.
(I'm sure.)

bound by sheets- tongue tied to the bedpost.

and it felt like stealing

only to catch me in the well of an eye
you were caught at the door,
you swept your hair to the side.
the morning pulled you in
before you could put on your gown
i was awake in a blanket
with my feet on the arm
of the couch

bryan's dictionary

polyamory: (n) - A highly efficient method of having the preferred sex disappoint you.

I built and the pieces fit.

But this is the house I built and the pieces fit.
If you were a collage,
You would be a button glued
On a piece of bright blue construction paper
People would love it, and feel for me, and I'd secretly think they were stupid.
I don't think they're stupid, right now.
I think they saw something I missed while I was
Arranging you. They saw how lovely you were
All on your own.
If I'm being honest,
I knew you,
Tip to tip
And I never grasped the span of you.

I am actively forgetting.

i get invited places and shake my head. I can't, i say, I have to forget for a few hours today. At first i needed help, for instance by learning things that make no sense to learn. The rate of acceleration due to gravity will not help me eat or reproduce. Well, it might help me reproduce. Some girls are into that. Then, I started getting paid to forget by learning how to do things that make no sense to do. Knowing how to fill a bag of popcorn promptly has a very slim chance of saving me from a bear attack. Bears are very effective predators but wildly ineffective maters. Forgetting comes naturally to them. Lucky us.

i try to remember what is poison and i can't. i try to remember what girls think is interesting, again i can't. i have forgotten it by heart.

collide us

When you feel it move
Inside of you
It isn't something righteous
It isn't beautiful
It isn't magic
Baby, it's colitis.

Eater II

Every morning, Gardener cuts the head off of one of his yellow flowers and throws it through the sky, into Eater's mouth. Eater spits back one stony, gray seed for Gardener to plant another. Often, Eater is greedy and devours too much, biting into the one seed he is indebted to send back. Sometimes he swallows it whole. Some days, to threaten Eater and remind him of their agreement, Gardener keeps his yellow flower in his window, making his home brilliant but the whole world gray.

anyone else notice that a wind-up key is the symbol for the astrological sign Aries

Bed Down

For Nelson

This Boat is Real

I am thinking of writing a self help book, and it isn't a joke. I see too many people who genuinely believe they are a piece of shit. PLEASE bounce other ideas off of me! We can cheer the world up.

I have always been fascinated by happy people. Obsessed, maybe. I have learned some tricks, I have learned their ways.

The first thing I have found! is to look at is how unhappy people view happiness. Like love, they seem to think it is something the very fortunate stumble across, while happy people view happiness as a decision. They decide to be happy with the spread before them even though it's a bagel they dumpster dived (or especially because, as the case may be). And there is a trick to it! To put it into words, you learn to remember, remember that whether the universe is a churning chemical accident and there's no deeper meaning or whether providence is the motor of our existence. Either way it is astonishing. And glorious. And ours.

The second trick I've picked up on takes some cultivation. Happy people learn to tell what they are compelled to want from what they really want. If you act on what you truly, genuinely want! not what you want out of spite or what you are tricked into wanting by media and all the people who buy into media, then you can unhesitatingly forgive yourself. Even if you feel differently later. At least I do. I can't speak for everyone.

Trick # 3 is one that I'm doing well with but slip on sometimes. I have found that the less I feel entitled to, the less I am hurt, and the more my self-worth grows. Every time I have been angry it has been a direct result of feeling like I was owed something and not having it come to pass. It isn't just about not being disappointed by circumstance. It should be about autonomy. Gambling, by relying on other people or the "system", brings you anger and confusion when you lose and an air of entitlement when you win. Autonomy brings you validation when you succeed and redoubled resolve when you don't.

The fourth is probably the simplest, particularly after you get comfortable with the former tricks. You learn to let yourself feel sad when things are sad, concerned when things are tenuous. Placation is the enemy of emotional health! If you believe a person when they tell you "it's not that bad," or you listen to them when they tell you to "get over it", then you can feel wrong for a reaction that you shouldn't ever even have to defend. You have a right to air the state you are in without being told you are wrong for feeling that way. Even though the other individual is just trying to help.

These tricks get to become a discipline.
for example, for #2, I always do silly things and lately I can't stop thinking about DJ names. There's no reason, no possible gain from thinking up the best dj name EVER, but I am happy that I lead the kind of life where I can take some time out and just think about dj names. Or how with the fourth trick, I have learned to stop coming to the people who would rather placate me than help me deal with real issues that are going on in my life. If you find your rhythm, you can be happy every day. Every. Day.

The Dynamic

Non-Painters Painting

I suppose the art is in the method. I painted something which I really like by spreading my colors out and then manipulating the paint into what I wanted it to be. Trying to take the photograph you see here to look like the painting itself proved incredibly difficult and I am glad that I have a camera and didn't have to use photobooth.

I do not think that the colors in the photograph are quite right. However! I did end up taking a photograph in the process that I like a little bit better than the painting. I love the depth and interaction and everything about this happenstancial little photograph.


The painting is called Eater

Girl With a Dark Complexion Kneeling In a Yellow Dress In a Wooden Frame (or: Maybe Actually La Virgin de Guadalupe)

For as long as I can remember, I have been able to go into a particular room where I lived and look at this painting, if I had the inclination. It is older than me. Prettier, too, and with bolder brush strokes. My mom and brother joke that it's eerie and call it my dad's Other Woman because he has kept it for so long. We all laughed about it. I knew it was beautiful.

Recently, I found out that my father used to paint. At the museum he told me about how he gave up modern art because he found it childish and replicable. This is a man who was formerly a drill sergeant in the United States Army, a former firefighter and paramedic; a man with some pretty good ideas on border control and the economy, and he was once in galleries for his paintings and sculptures. I was blown away. He never kept a record, though, and I have no idea what his paintings and sculptures could have looked like. I have a deep urge to see them. It would be like getting to know him when he was my age.

Lately, as the painting shown above was beginning to catch my eye again, I've wondered what artist was behind it. I looked all over the front but could not find any hint as to who was responsible. I turned it over, and my dad's initials were carved on the back of the frame. Thinking there was a chance, I called him and asked about it. A little disappointingly, he told me that this was because it was made for him, not because it was his painting. I took a look at it again and found in the bottom right of the painting itself there was, in fact, a signature that had paint smudged on it but was completely illegible anyway. It looks like Chris S, or Christa S, or Christa J. I don't know. I am frustrated.

expressive

:7]

['-']

,':-|

:-{.

._.

:I

Links That Rule

Rice Boy(webcomic)
A Lesson Is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible(webcomic) especially this comic
(page)
Dresden Codak(webcomic)
Pictures for Sad Children(webcomic)
Overcompensating(webcomic)
Be the Air We Breathe by Lewis and Clarke(song)
Canopies and Grapes by Emmy the Great(song)
Skinny Love by Bon Iver(song)
Oh, Comely by Neutral Milk Hotel(song)
Modern Romance by Yeah Yeah Yeahs covered by TV on the Radio (song)
Devil Town by Daniel Johnston covered by Bright Eyes(song)
Heart It Races by Architecture in Helsinki covered by Dr. Dog(song)
Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen covered by Jeff Buckley(song)
Wonderwall by Oasis covered by Ryan Adams(song)

Things That Rule

some things absolutely RULE, like:
curtains, pictures of raccoons, the word 'thief', vests, girls in vests, baseball shirts, girls in baseball shirts, my glasses, girls wearing my glasses, crayon pictures, a rare warm wind, sturdy fences, the passenger's seat at night, quiet friends, thick fog, woody allen movies, hearty blankets, tofutti, high fives, making up sports, katrina's house, dogs (all of them), when people don't eat animals, when girls i'm with don't freak out about spiders/bugs, when people keep my drawings, drum circles among people who can't really drum, collecting trinkets, meeting other people who collect trinkets, finding things on things or in places, thinking something all the way through, when i help people realize things, being physically close to someone, being naked, elephants, static electricity, small smiles, cold hands,irony, incidence, coincidence, happenstance, roundness, having an idea of the nature of things, that occasion when you realize all the trouble the universe went to that allows you to hear your friend laugh and then everything is vibrating with importance and vitality and divinity even if it's only for a little bit, bears.

If I'm feeling saucy you can expect a "Things That Are Awful" post

Long Hitter #1

I have no excuse for posting this without having a scanner. I just... I just couldn't stand not sharing it?

21009.2

I fully realize that I probably should not post anything creative until I get a scanner, but these have been lost or given away.

21009

It is possible to be happy, even in winter. Even at the beginning of winter. Especially at the end.