Lost Angels

what have I become?

2005-06-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

My sweetest friend, to say the least -- to steal a verse, to be becoming something else. I've been reading Hegel lately. At times, I totally understand where he's coming from. I understand that he wants to totalize the system of philosophy, that he thinks everything which has come before is a product of the system of philosophy. I understand that he wants to dialectically deconstruct reality to explain it, thereby concreating evidence that reality is indeed real, and that we as conscious beings have the knowledge base to define the perplexities of said reality. However, what I don't understand is how, through cyclical observation, one can define anything outside of definition. I believe Derrida described it best (and a few other metaphysical instructors have too) that anything outside of the infinite can be labeled JUSTICE, and we are not able to define it. We can only appreciate it for its omnipotence, its ever present essence, it's closure around the system in which we prescribe to, and its imminence. It is the now that we can not grasp. Thought itself is a past tense activity. Reaching for a ghost can only occur if you see the ghost, which is a product of thought, and therefore a product of experience that's trained us to reach out. Hegel makes me upset when I think about his teleological viewpoints. I guess, Marx does the same thing to me.

I want to yell into someone's chest. 6 inches away from my mouth. I need a body to absorb my screams right now.

My dreams have been fucked up lately. Last night, I was raped by two of Mindy's friends. Later in the dream, she told me the raping was a validated act which I deserved.

the stranger:

2005-05-31T22:58:00.000-07:00

The afterlife will be a place where we can look back onto our mortal lives. We are all guilty in the end. We are all condemed to death.

there is no new. there is no old. there is only is.

2005-05-24T20:40:00.000-07:00

Centripetal cycles spin us on a Mary-Go-Round -- though we never move at all. We twirl and whirl around until we're sick of it, then get sick from it. As we look up towards the sun, so many oscillations of fire engulf the eye's pupils, dilating the mind's consciousness -- though we never see the light. There was a moment in time when space was proof enough for our feeble minds-- that the new never was known, and the old was written in stone -- though this time has come and gone. And what is left for us to ponder? What more can we analyze? Where will our pensive thoughts lead us when we always come back to where we started? I'm sick of circles, sick of cycles. Let the instant be my guide and let my mind wonder into the depths of infinity. Let me slay the monster while becoming the monster. Let the abyss look into me as I swim deeper into its bottomless belly. It's time to move on without moving. It's time to let go of time, while continuing. It's time for the infinite. Let us see the light. Let us be the light. Let us travel faster than the speed of light. We shall pitch our giant tent to house the instant of love. We shall destroy the circus we've built around us, in the instant of anger. We shall create a graveyard to always remember that which we bore, that which we have murdered. Let me die. Let me live. The world is destructive, the mind is deconstructed. There is no truth without the lie. There is no lie without the truth; however, there is an is with only the is. And that is where our graveyard shall be planted: in grave yards of dead flowers and beautiful stars -- within the instant of the is.

question:

2005-05-20T00:51:00.000-07:00

Outside of yourself, does outside exist?

at home.

2005-05-15T02:22:00.000-07:00

I am sitting in my old bedroom. I am laying on Mindy's couch. It's 2:30 in the morning and I am waiting for my friend to pick me up so we can journey back to the land of the lost. It would be a lie if I said I felt apathetic to life right now. I feel quite the contrary actually. So much has happened in the last week, while at the same time, not much has changed.

When I wrote earlier about synchronizations (here), I was contextualizing what had happened to me last Tuesday. I met a new friend Tuesday night. However, on my way to the meeting, I saw Mindy and her friend Eli walking towards me as I got off the train. It was one of those 'what if i saw Mindy today' instances that actually happened to come true. We walked towards each other for approximately 20 feet, but she didn't see me. To me, it seemed as if we were looking directly at one another. However she must have been looking right through me. As we approached one another (honestly, we were 3 feet away from each other), I stopped and said hello, but Mindy and Eli kept walking by. I felt like a specter in her life. I felt like I had dreamed our entire encounter. I felt like a ghost haunting my old lover.

But I was on my way to meet my new friend, so I didn't let this instance of my old life deter this new beginning I was about to embark upon. The discourse shared was exciting. I felt like new horizons were waiting ahead of us. We shared thoughts and histories which flowed delightfully. My old neighborhood opened up new possibilities and attachments to thoughts and emotions. I was moving on, and I was happy to do so, or so I thought.

Alexia called around 12:30 AM, right after I said goodbye to my new friend. She informed me that our mutual friend had passed away that night. What a contrast to the happy emotions I was feeling. The news hit me like a punch in the stomach. It was hard to ingest. At first, all I could say was the word "fuck". All I could think was that there should have been someone out there looking out for her, someone to take care of her. That's what friends are for, right? Why wasn't I that person? Why wasn't someone there to save her? But in all reality, demons don't wait for friends to call. Our past haunts us like the specter in which I had felt like earlier when I saw Mindy. Our memories are tainted with human emotions the minute we establish them as thought. We can not escape our memories. At very best, we can cover them up with drugs and denial. But the past will always be there waiting for us in the shadows of our heart.

And so, why you may ask, am I here at my ex-lover's apartment (my old apartment)? I'm here because I had nowhere else to go. It's wet outside, and the ground smells like human stink. I can not escape my past nor could I resist embracing it. It's very hard to humble one's self. But a rich man knows no embarrassment. Mindy is asleep in the other room, and I am awake, contemplating who I am and what I am doing with my life. Why survive? Why not let life win this ever constant battle? Can the self be more powerful than nature? I think Nietzsche would argue that the self is nature, and nothing more, though nothing less. That with this great honor comes great power, if one can accept the responsibility of power. But are we not slaves to the divinity that created us? Won't we all end up dead like my beautiful friend, like my beautiful marriage, like the beauty that we love to destroy? I do not have any answers to these questions. All I know is that I am sitting in a dark room, waiting to be picked up, because I feel obligated, and rightfully so, to attend my friend's memorial service. She was an angel, lost like so many that came before her. It's almost serendipitous that she died is Los Angeles. I think, that is the hill I'd like to sit upon before I lay my head to rest. But until then, I have other demons to battle on many other hills. And for right now, I will lay my head back down on this couch, a couch which would be meaningless to anyone else besides me and my memories, and wonder what Mindy is dreaming about in the room next to me. Or maybe, I think I'll save myself the energy and not give that demon the pleasure of winning this battle. I will bow out to instead contemplate the more important things in life, things that actually might progress me further into my abysmal self. Yes, escape can be a healthy thing sometimes. So sometimes we all need to run away from our self by running into our self. For better or for worse, we have to wander into the our cerebral depths to understand just how vastly haunted our secret self can be.

life

2005-05-14T23:15:00.000-07:00

Life is the external mirror in which vanity abuses to examine the secret self. When the mirror is broken, we slice our selves with the shards of existence to watch the blood run red rivers.

A song.

2005-05-13T01:13:00.000-07:00

This was our happy ending
This was our tragic song
Together we were defeated
Grown together we were wrong

I continue on and dream
In the plight of our men
They scream to me in foreign tongues
In signs I never understand

We were children embracing
Swaying we surely danced
No wonder we were punished
Together in these forsaken lands

We've always been a tragedy
Becuase we think in terms of comedy
We dream in our own binary
We live our self fulfilled prophecies

And the world keeps on spinning
And the time's never change
And the days keep going by
The only difference is who we blame

A broken record repeating
And the needle's stuck in your arm
We try to sing the words we know
To choke on our bloated tongues

The devil's inside your pocket
Singing gentle desperate songs
Your wallet's inside your gaping mouth
And your heart's not where it belongs

Born defeated and we're dying
The floods will wipe us out
You're money can not save you now
You're love is full of doubt

So hang on to your loved ones
Hang on to your tears
You'll need them both again someday
To sing away your devil's fears

-sid

the correct response to life:

2005-05-12T22:42:00.000-07:00

Bring it on!

synchronization

2005-05-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

"In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order."
- Carl Jung

This presentation of the human mind is brought to you by the the letters "C" "H" "A" "O" and "S" as well as being brought to you by the numbers "1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34...".

What is it about our lives that drives us to fulfill the lack in which we innately desire? In other words, why survive? Why is it that there must be conflict within the power hierarchies of the self so that we can achieve the levels of intensity we so desperately desire for our own survival? Can we fulfill our void with anything other than conflict? Is not life always strategical, a computation of binary sets historically defined, continuing to be redefined, conflicting with one another, which outputs rhetorical dichotomous results? There can not be chaos in strategy. There can only be unpredicted variables of binary sets. Yet a variable is still a sign, and can be placed in an equation to predict trajectories of thought or action.

But what about spontaneous actions? I doubt spontaneity exists. Spontaneity is a construct of the mind, an excuse to believe in free will. Does not the moment a decision is made bring organization to the action? The length of time spent on decision making is irrelevant to the ultimate action of the decision. Naivety can no longer exist as well. We never begin; quite possibly, we are always beginning.

happy warm feelings

2005-05-10T18:24:00.000-07:00

hmm...the title says it all I guess.

She says move on. I say I love her.

2005-05-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

"There is nothing you can do or say that will change the way I feel as there is nothing I can say or do to change the way you feel." These words echo through the chasms of my soul. They haunt my dreams, causing me to suffer every day and night. Not even my naps are safe from her tongue which cuts through me like the knife she carries with her. Only, my soul is not an empty cavern of long lost thoughts and wishful thinking. Tears mixed with warm memories pool together and pour out of me and into a sea of unfamiliar faces. I do not hide my face when I cry. In public, I allow those who dare to stare into the the eyes of this hurting man the opportunity to cherish their own happiness. That is my gift to the unknown soldiers with whom I share this battle ground. That is their reward for being brave enough to share a moment of pain with me.

She said she has looked into the eyes of my kind before. She thinks I am the same as the others. She believes in the cycle of her own fears and doubts. But she is wrong. As I was wrong to believe in my fears on that dreadful night, she is wrong to believe she can no longer trust me. This is not self pity, this is self empowerment. It is not de-powering to examine your naked fears, to share in the nudity of the self. Love is a space where you can define your fears to another, where you can grow from the pain of understanding your self, your weaknesses, your history, and your fuck ups. Love is a space where you and your partner can work together to mollify your differences, where you can smooth out the blemished psyche, together as a unity. Love is more complicated than a stupid fearful drunken letter and its repercussion. Love is more complicated than battling your own doubts. Love is not giving up on happiness. Love is not giving up at all.

the dream world

2005-05-05T09:51:00.000-07:00

The common repsonse to lonliness and depression is sleep. We can kill the day by entering the dream world. But for me, sleep is much crueler than the time I spend awake. Every night, Mindy and I break up. Some nights, we get back together. Either way, I re-live my fears over and over. I wake up in the morning freaked out, trying to piece back together some sort of understanding as to what's real and what's not. The saddest mornings are when we get back together in my dreams becuase that's when I have to convince myself it didn't happen. "You lied to yourself again" I'd tell myself. "Go on, get out of bed. She still doesn't love you, and you're going to live with that". I try my hardest not to continue the dreams where we get back together, to wake myself up from those taunting thoughts. The longer and more believable they are, the harder it is for me to accept the fact that they were imagined. But I must accept them as not real. Otherwise, I'd be in real trouble.

Of the Friend

2005-05-04T14:21:00.000-07:00

"And often we attack and make an enemy in order to conceal that we are vulnerable to attack."
-F.N.

the X

2005-05-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

Is it possible to erase matter? Is it possible to totally eradicate a specific existing sign? When we write our thoughts, when we formulate thought into linguistics, when we write a word, draw a line, make a statement, can we metaphysically play god and erase that sign from existence? There can be no erasure. Yet it is possible to cross something out, or cover it up, to morph that sign into a different meaning. Since meaning is a fluid and subjective device, we are able to transcend signs so that they continue to exist yet intend to mean something different than what their original intention had been. To cross out a word, to cover up a line, to turn around and reconstruct meaning through the simple device, the X, we are able to transform signifiers into completely new signifiers. This, I believe, is called a contextual shift. Crossing out signifiers reestablishes form, thus reestablishing intentional meaning. This is not to say that there lies any truth to either meaning, uncrossed or crossed out, however, the intention of the sign is where we find ourselves asymptotically approaching what humans call truth.

I was considering what it means to be an ex-boyfriend, an ex-husband, an ex-lover. By using the X we are essentially crossing out the context of our relationships. We never forget the history of the actions; moreover, we never allow the words themselves to forget their own history. Our system of linguistics is built in a way which allows a historicity of language, an institution of hegemonic relationships between reestablishing signs. Lacan once wrote, "A human without language is considered clinically insane". Language controls our memories, or rather, the signs of language allow the human mind to develop a sense of history, of a past and present. Without language, the mind could not interpret signs and therefore could not differentiate the stimulus input. (Language here is not necessarily words, but rather a system of categorization for input and definition as output).

And so, with the X, we can continue to exist with our histories, never forgetting, but rather, re-contextualizing and re-categorizing our relationship with the signs we use to construct our reality.

Overwhelming sadness.

2005-05-02T11:48:00.000-07:00

The sun is shining brightly today. The clouds are big puff balls of cotton. The wind is gentle and the temperature is toothsome. If I were any other man, I'd say it's a perfect day. But alas, I get to be myself today, which means I won't be enjoying nature's delicious adjectives. I awoke this morning, saddened by my loss. It seems that's how the day shall shape itself. Sadness looms over my head, a foreboding cloud of despair. I'm not trying to be poetic, nor am I trying to feel sorry for myself. These words aren't being written so that I can understand and express myself. No, I'm writing this text to waste time and to kill this disturbingly contrasting day in which I have to exist within.

I tried watching a movie the other night. The film was about a family who's father was an alcoholic tuff guy. One of the sons was joining a gang, the other son was sent to social welfare, and the daughter wanted to be a writer. The family was poor and had no way of keeping itself together. Eventually, the writer-daughter killed herself after being raped by the father's best friend. The father beats the shit out of the mother, the gang-son gets initiated into his gang, and the social welfare kid becomes "a man" by leaving home. It was a terrible movie to be watching at three in the morning by myself.

Yesterday I took a trip to the Golden Gate Bridge to walk across it. It was a simple distraction at best. The weather has been wonderful here in the city, especially on top of a couple hundred foot tall bridge where you can see a panoramic shot of the city. But no matter how distracted I try to make myself, something always pulls me back into my depression. From the middle of the bridge you can see the cliffs where Mindy and I were married. I think about the wedding a lot. It's strange to think that we made promises to try to work through the hard times, to embrace each other with our love when our fears get in the way of life. I just wish we weren't walking away from this like it never happened. I feel like we can work through this, but Mindy seems to have already committed to it being over. Well, I guess it's sort of ironic. The one commitment she's not afraid of is the one which tears us apart. I'm not mad. I'm just overwhelmed with sadness. I love her so much. I guess love isn't enough these days.

p.s. - I need to find my sense of humor in all this. I'm turning into a very sad person.

tonight.

2005-04-30T23:16:00.000-07:00

Tonight, I hurt something wretched. Tonight, I am a loner. Tonight, I feel like I could lose myself in my thoughts. Tonight, I feel chained to my emotions. Tonight, I'm not good enough. Tonight, I am my worst enemy. Tonight, I married a quitter. Tonight I am a quitter. Tonight, I am loathsome. Tonight my body aches from stress. Tonight, I can't succeed. Tonight I'm hopeless. Tonight, my dreams are destroyed. Tonight, my heart is heavier than lead. Tonight my face is crooked. Tonight, my eyes are vengeful. Tonight, no one is good enough. Tonight, the world seems no larger than the monitor I stare into while typing these thoughts. Tonight, I feel pain. Tonight, I feel embarrassment. Tonight, I feel alone. Is there nothing else tonight?

just a phrase

2005-04-29T23:49:00.000-07:00

If your kisses won't hold the woman you love, then your tears won't bring her back.

Give a mile and they ask for the sea.

2005-04-29T17:15:00.000-07:00

I haven't been eating very well lately. There's just no appetite left in me. Today, at around 4:00, I realized I hadn't eaten anything in the last 20 hours. My stomach hated me. So I went where any good suburbanite would go to eat, SUBWAY. However, when I got there, there was a man at the counter mumbling to himself about how he couldn't get a sandwich because that particular subway didn't take EBT cards. He was getting real angry over this dilemma. The man behind the counter look pissed off because apparently the mumbler had been there for a while, cursing at the employee about how unfair his life was. So, fuck it, I thought. I'll just buy you your sandwich so you can eat, and so could I get my grub. I offered to pay for his meal thinking he'd be modest about his order and just get something small, something to tide him over. But of course, he orders the most expensive thing on the menu, and wanted to make sure it came with a drink. How fucking audacious can one be? When someone gives you a mile, you can't ask for the sea. That's just not cool. But, god damn I was hungry, so I went along with it. I don't feel used or taken advantage of. It was my decision to go through with the purchase, and whatever, let the man have his foot long roast beef gourmet meal. The only thing I was disappointed in was that when he was ordering his sandwich, he turned to me and said "these people don't understand english". They were fucking American employees who just happened to have asian ethnicity. What a fucker, I thought. You racist son of a bitch.

I left without accepting his thank you.

the last phase

2005-04-27T15:35:00.000-07:00

mindybuhl.com

Lads and Lassies:

2005-04-26T11:39:00.000-07:00

While lamenting over my current situation, I came to a very decisive and important decision. In the past year, I've done two very stupid things while under the influence of alcohol. First, I went to jail because I was driving drunk. I thought that chapter of my life was over. However, I came to realize, my marriage is dead because I was stupid enough to think alcohol would fix my problems. When Mindy left to see her friend at the hotel, I drank myself retarded. That was when I wrote a letter to my ex-girlfriend, stating that I never married out of love, and that Mindy was an emotional coward, etc. (Let me remind the jury that these were my fears expelled into words, nothing more. There was no truth to that letter except for the fact that I was drunk and afraid. I loved Mindy so very very much.) And so, Mindy feels she can no longer trust me, ever. Well, the conclusion I came to while driving home last night, was that alcohol has been behind the two fuck ups of my life. Therefore I am quitting drinking. Fuck that shit. The love of my life is gone because I drank a bottle of Rum. Was it worth it? Never. Do I regret it? Yes. Am I so very sorry? I am.

no title

2005-04-23T21:37:00.000-07:00

It's cold in the summer time. Home no longer feels warm enough to want to go home. The naked streets are burning, and I want to spoon them. The gardens have frozen over, and the trees are dead wood. Happiness has long left these lands, and the burden of despair weighs heavily on the chest of any man brave enough to step outside.

The curtain goes up. Let's set the stage.

A thin man walks in the park, waiting for the seasons to change. "I thought this was summer?" he asked bitterly. There is no answer. A breeze hits his cheek and his face melts into a pile a lonely thoughts. A raven calls from the distance as the moon tightens its grip on the sun. "Can we live forever?" a voice questions from what seems to be inside you. The lands burn bright red as all the toilets flush into sewage. A homeless stranger to this summer sits in the center of the universe, while man wanders loudly, drowning silently. "Where God, where are you?" yells a child not seen or heard. "Where is your lover tonight?" God replies to the invisible son. The sugar cane fields failed us, dear lord. And love lost its invitation to our hearts. But the parade continues to march along 4th street and the innocent questions rattle around inside our minds. "Can you feel it?" a girl quietly points to an untouchable star. "Can you feel the light?"

The curtain closes. The stage is set.

fruitcake

2005-04-22T17:43:00.000-07:00

Ah yes. Today. Well. Today has been a nice day. The day started early. The alarm clock went off at 5:50 AM, but we didn't get out of bed until 7. (I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I think everything's gonna be alright, that we're back together, that we're happy again. Well, not really. Mindy felt sorry for me last night for not knowing exactly how to get the Q's place on the bus at 2 in the morning, so she invited me back to the apartment. It was a plutonic nap. But damn it if it doesn't feel nice to lay next to someone you love. False hope? Maybe. Instant gratification? Damn striaght.)

I couldn't fall back asleep this morning. I didn't want to anyway. I jumped out of bed, fed the cat, and washed my face. You had to go to work, which you dreaded immensely. Some day you'll get that long nap you've always wanted, but for now, there are puppies and kitties to be saved. We walked to where the trains picked up and said our good byes for the day. It was sweet. I mossied my way to a coffee shop, picked up a mocha, and walked back to the apartment. I've been working on a design for an armband tattoo lately, which I may get tomorrow, so I continued my drawing while quasi-watching the movie "Snatch". God Damn Brad Pitt is sexy in that movie. Not sexy in the "hey I'm Brad Pitt; look at me" sexy, no, he's sexy in the "I'm a dirty Pikee who'll always be better than you" sexy. I couldn't help myself feeling insecure about my non-existent stomach muscles. So I did what any insecure man would do: sit-ups.

Around 10 o'clock I walked to Haight Street to ponder stuff. Very pensive I was. No shops open in that neighborhood until 11 AM, so I sat down with my book "Thus spoke Zarathustra" for an hour. I realized I'd been wearing the same pair of pants for a few days now and decided to go pants shopping when the stores opened. The only two stores I looked in were buffalo exchange and crossroads. I was very pessimistic about prospects for a new pair of shiny pants. I'm no good at shopping. However I did find a sweatshirt and leg warmers. God I love leg warmers. The leg warmers fit snug as a bug on my arms. Mmmm....Anyway, I was almost running late for lunch so I walked over to meet Lauren.

Walking over the Lauren's house was a bore. So I decided to do some cartwheels on the sidewalk. An innocent gesture of fun. However, while in mid cartwheel, a white van pulled next to me as 3 men shouted "FRUITCAKE!" I thought it was funny. They did not.

Lunch was yummy. It was vegetarian chicken tofuy stuff. Lauren is a nice girl. Her boyfriend was upset with her last week for being too attracted to him, but that blew over and now their relationship is burning brightly. (Ugh, I really use some shitty metaphors.) The restaurant was close by to your work, so I thought long and hard about bringing you Vegetarian Wan Ton soup. Oh how I wanted to give you this bowl of yumminess. But then I thought, maybe I shouldn't. Maybe she will be getting Gyros and French fries today. Maybe I would somehow embarrass her if I showed up at her work. So I didn't get the soup. I hate my mind sometimes. I think too long and hard about the unimportant things in life.

We took the train to the museum of modern art, which just happens to be right next to my work. The art was...at best...eh. I always enjoy the permanent collection in museums better than the contemporary crap that's being put out there. It seems, to me, that the gap between modern art and postmodern art is too expansive, that there is no way to connect the dots anymore. One artist, who I really enjoyed, was Marilyn Minter. Her paintings were, to say the least, amazing. The works were based on imperfections of visceral images concerning the figure, mainly focusing on ambiguous close up shots of the models. You should check out her work.

Then I came to work early and took a nap on the couch in the break room. I didn't sleep deeply, feeling awkward to be lying in a room by myself at work, where anyone could have walked in and drawn penis' on my forehead. But, lucky for me, no one did, and I made it through the day, so far, without a penis on my head.

-c

Thoughts on Problems

2005-04-21T18:44:00.000-07:00

“There’s no problem that can’t be solved. There’s only people who won’t work on problem solving.”
-My neighbor.

Everyone has problems. The whole world is full of problems. Wars, catastrophes, tragedies, disease of the mind and body, etc. are all problems waiting to be solved. Art school trained me to deconstruct the world in terms of Producers and Consumers. There were the people who materialized creative expression, and those who went to the store to buy creative expression. The position played in the role of Producer and Consumer was relative to who’s buying what, when and how, however when you think you’re on the producing side, you form a sort of elitist mentality which separates you from the other side of the dichotomy. But I am no longer in Art school. And the roles of Producer and Consumer no longer make sense in the context of my life. I no longer need to justify what I like to do by alienating those I’m creating for.

And so, today I have a better dichotomy to think in terms of: Those who solve problems, and those who do not desire to problem solve. Art is a problem. Life is a problem. Marriage is a problem. There are problems all around us all of the time. The conscious and unconscious decisions we make daily are problems the brain contemplates and solves.

All problems are solvable. Some can be solved quickly, in the blink of an eye even. In fact, the act of blinking is the body’s way of problem solving which helps nourish and protect the eye. Easy problems like, “should I cross the road?” or “where can I use the bathroom” are questions that don’t even seem like problems to us, but they are.But then there are some problems that require time and patience, hard work, caring, forgiveness, love and nurture. These are the problems that feel most rewarding when solved. To cure a disease like AIDS, to land a human on the moon, to paint “the last supper”, to grasp meaning and fulfillment out of life, are all ways to obtain a feeling of completion and success. Human brains are equipped with a reward system, which acts as chemical doggy treats for the mind. When we accomplish something, when we problem solve, when we fulfill the mind’s cravings and desires, dopamine is released inside our synapses and we continue to progress as a problem solver.

Problems are not human specific. They occur in every level of species, in every element on this Planet. (I can’t say for sure if problems exist outside of our world because maybe the universe has no problems. Maybe things are the way they are, and the way they should be outside of Earth.) But live beings, in fact, problem solve. A beaver makes a damn in a creek, a monkey uses a stick to help eat bugs, and human builds an elevator to travel hundreds of feet off the ground. Problem solving is a beautiful thing.
--------------------------------
I’m really bored with this stupid writing. Sorry. I’m going to stop burping this crap out of my brain. This was just a way to help me cope with the day. I packed a lot of things today at the apartment. I threw out my desk and a few other bits of furniture. I still shake from time to time. My neighbor saw me moving the desk so he decided to take it. He then asked where I was going. I told him that Mindy wanted to be alone, that I had to leave. He suggested I seek the help of a spiritual healer and I was immediately turned off by the conversation. He also suggested that there probably was another person behind her wanting to leave me. I wanted to punch him in the face for saying this. But I did appreciate his thoughts on problems and how people cannot solve problems if they aren’t interested in talking. Wars are fought, people hate each other for a bit of time, and if the politicians didn’t sit around a table to discuss a truce, the war would never end. I don’t know how this really relates to Mindy and I. I just wish she weren’t so convinced about us not working this out. Even though she says things like “I’ll find you later” and “we’ll still be friends”, I just have a self-loathing feeling that it’s over, done, never to be again. I feel so saddened by this feeling. My heart feels like mush; I guess that’s a good thing because it can’t break anymore. The shards of my broken heart are no longer sharp. My heart is a puss filled goo glob.

oh the irony of it all

2005-04-20T17:56:00.000-07:00

Emily's Response email which I forewarded to Mindy:

Mindy,
I think god hates me. Instances just keep happening that beat me up when I'm down. I want to share this with you, not because it'll will make a difference in how you see me, but because it's most likely lesson number five thousand and three in Bob's "why relationships suck" book.

Emily wrote back:

what the fuck?....what letter? what words? do you mean ages ago?.....I dont think I got any words recently. WHat happened? I'm confused. I know you love this woman. ah, I dont know what to say....what did you do? I have no idea what it was
that she read or what shes thinking. God, the LAST thing I want to do is be cause for damage in your relationship
with Mindy...and I dont really know if thats what has happened but it seems perhaps it has. I am a memory, I know that, and I think thats fine and beautiful...you're a memory to me too...a really fucken special one! I believe that you saved me and I will never forget that, my life has changed so much because I met you. And I'm not in love with you anymore, as I know your not in love with me, but I was in love with you...and I dont see that there is anything wrong with that. I have kept in touch with you because you hold such a dear place in my heart and in my history. I dont want to damage love. If you have to cut off contact with me to save your marriage then do it. You're not a bastard, and perhaps you fucked up but you have the ability to
mend things. Relationships are crazy, love is terrifying and its hard to be reasonable and clear headed. But we learn so much. Fix it Chris, I believe you can. I am in love with someone, and it's hard some of the time, I get a bit crazy, but I haven't been this happy for such a long time. This is good and healthy. So I think...from your Email that you have to say goodbye to me...? Please repair your love. I will resist the urge to say hellos to you...but you'll never leave my soul.
-------------------
And so, Mindy, the letter never reached Emily. It was lost into the ether.
HA HA god. That was a good one. You got me good.

-Have a wonderful night Mindy.

2005-04-20T13:07:00.000-07:00

Emily,

Those words I wrote you. I'm sorry, but they were not true. They were the culmination of my fears for my marriage with Mindy. Yet I still wrote them to you.We had such a terrible night that night. I thought she literally hated me. She left the house late that night to go to a hotel to hang out with an old guy friend of hers. I got drunk, jealous, bitter and mad, then wrote to you. Then I left the house. I did not tell her where I went. When I came back, I spilled my heart to her as much as I spilled my guts to the toilet. Mindy found that letter a few days later on my computer. She can not trust me. I understand. I made a mistake. I damned our marriage. I lied. We are broken up. I am moving out of the apartment and into my friend's parent's house. In a few months, if I have enough money, I will move back to Los Angeles. I have no friends here in San Francisco. Nothing to support me in this very dark time. I'm destitute. Emily, you have become a figment of my imagination. Someone I loved a long time ago. I used you as an outlet for my darkest fears. I'm sorry for that. I don't know why I didn't tell you sooner about Mindy and I. I was concerned about your feelings, I was concerned about Mindy's heart. I'm not used to discussing new loves with old lovers. It's really hard for me. I think you're a wonderful person Emily, an amazing artist, and have a beautiful soul. I hope you are happy and in love with someone. You deserve at least that. I'm trying to be friends with Mindy right now, I'm trying to make sure she knows that those were fears in that letter and were not true. But there's nothing I can do or say to strike them from her heart. As she is afraid of being happy and committed to me, I was afraid of my own feelings for her. I'm such a bastard. I fucked up Emily. I've made too many mistakes in too little a time. But I did marry out of love. Our marriage will never be one of those mistakes. I loved her so much. She's not a coward Emily. She's so strong. I'm so jealous of her ability to deal with this. To be decisive. She is so wonderful. I'm ashamed. I am a shame.

Thank you for everything Emily. I'm sorry it came to this.
-c

----2nd email to emily robinson.

the exchange enducing closure- part two

2005-04-20T11:11:00.000-07:00

"It's amazing how, even in a short amount of time, a plethora of items and feelings can be exchanged. From your favorite hooded sweatshirt to the proclamation of eternal love and telling each other your dark secrets."
- Gator

On August 23rd 2004, just before Mindy and I began talking online, I wrote a blog about the process of breaking up. It spoke about the merging between two people and how the artifacts of the relationship conflate together as well. Here's the link if you want to read the post.CLOSURE. But I never felt like the text was complete for some reason. Maybe it's because at the time, I was talking about something in which I had no experience. The context of that blog was relevant to Merci and I breaking up, but Merci and I didn't share too many personal possessions. We lived together for a month and then our relationship ended. The separation process only lasted a few days. We exchanged house keys, a few shirts, a couple of books, and a lot of sad glances.

However Mindy and I had lived together for the last 7 months, sharing our entire lives and possessions (that's what people do when they live together, they try to become this single entity). When we were in Los Angeles, our possessions still had a "mine" and "yours" feeling to them, which neither of us minded. When we moved to San Francisco to start a new life as a unified love, they became "our" possessions. Everything became our bed, our dresser, our toothbrush, our dishes, our bills, our pains, and our experiences. Using the word "my" inside the house became taboo. If I were in "my" chair, Mindy would half jokingly call me out on it. Or if she claimed I couldn't use "her" computer, I felt strangely about that separation.

In the past article I wrote that I thought these trinkets help build the framework of love two people share. I'd like to correct myself on that statement. The possessions have nothing to do with the love two people share. Love is not material. Memories can be stored away in the visual connections of material possessions, but nowhere inside a dresser does love exist. Nowhere inside a sweatshirt does one find true love. It's not the bed that's forcing you to miss your ex-lover's smell. Memories are triggered by the physical stimulus of objects. Emotionally charged memories bridge the connection between the object world and the ethereal world of thought.

Right now, I'm in the process of boxing my things from "her" apartment, to be placed in "my" new residence. I've tried throwing out most I could in terms of possessions. They make me sick with sadness. No, I make me sick with sadness. The material artifacts are excuses my brain uses to confabulate meaning of this situation. The keys I keep with me will soon be her keys. The shower I built in the bathroom will no longer be the place where I bathe. Our home will soon become her temple, as long as she can withstand the blood stains we left behind from the sacrifice of our love.

These are hard realizations for me. However, beyond the possesional aspect of our relationship, what becomes the most difficult, yet most important concept to grasp, is understanding that there were never any possessions from the beginning, ever. Mindy was never "my" wife. I was never "her" husband. The construct of possession is only a construct of the mind. We never own anything or anyone. I wonder even if we own our own thoughts. Maybe they own us. I digress.

eh

2005-04-19T11:01:00.000-07:00

I've been down before. I've been alone most of my life. If I'd not been physically alone, then at least I felt psychologically alone. Some would say I take for granted those around me who continue to bless me with their love, and that if I appreciated their company better, I'd understand how supported and surrounded I really was. However, I feel that life is an interaction, which reflects your thoughts into a public space, bouncing around from person to person, hug to hug, smile to smile, and then back into your private thoughts again. The bridge between public and private, secret and ubiquitous, is a void which concepts like love, friendship, family, and even words themselves must cross. In all matters dialectical, a response to an initial input must be obtained, and the process of communication can only occur if the translation of thoughts cocoon into said action then morphs back into thoughts. The statement suggested that if you're friends love you, you’re going to be “OK”, doesn't hold true without your interpretation of their love. Take Terri Schiavo for example. Her neurological inabilities could not allow her to interpret and respond to her friend and family's love. She became destined to lose herself in the abysmal depths that intersect public and private psychosis. In a way, she became timeless, disjointed from thought, action and response. To the public, she lived 15 years in a vegetative state, 15 years of being fed by a tube in her stomach, 15 years of neurological solitude. But to Terri, she lived only one instant, one moment, as a singular being because she couldn’t distinguish the difference between time and space. Was this a brain defect or was it a blessing?

There's a natural paradoxical order to which our world defines meaning to words like "meaning" and "truth". But there can be no singular meaning in the paradox of our existence because of one very key aspect to reality: Time. Time separates our moments. Time allows the void between instances to exist and grow into infinite proportions. Without time, we could not separate one from two, me from you. But I wonder whether or not there is any separation between moments at all? Does time separate itself from the moment in which it affects? After all, can there be end points to an infinite system? The age-old question, "what came first, the chicken or the egg?" is a perfect example of the separation between moments. The answer is irrelevant, but the process of thought that surrounds the question is what complicates our theory of time. We as humans want to believe that there is a past, present, and we hope for a future. Linear time allows our brains to process thought and action, to determine what comes first, to chroniclize our existence so that we can come closer to prescribing meaning to our lives. We live for Truth. We die for Truth. We want there to be a life and a death, a Heaven and a Hell, this and that, a beginning and an end. We support a teological system because the thought of infinity frightens us. The thought that you and I are actually the same person, that we exist in the same instant as the same entity, confuses our brains. We want to believe we are different, unique, individuals, awesome at what we can accomplish on our own. Can one have the “I” without the “other”? Is there a reason we’ve yet to figure out consciousness through science? Can thought come before action? When I tell my finger to move, parts of my frontal lobes light up to tell me to tell my motor functions to move my finger, then eventually those signals get passed down through my spinal chord, into my fingers, the finger moves, and a message is sent back to my brain saying “good job.” But was my initial frontal lobe action a product of free will? Or was it fate, a consequence of organized chaos. Can there be a wrong place at the wrong time?

Ouroboros, the symbol of completion, of wholeness, of infinity, is the graphical representation of the human plight for meaning. The snake, eating its own tail, is birthing itself in the same instant it destroys itself. There is no separation of moments, no interpretations of actions, and no responses to interpretation. It's not a cyclical representation of the nature of the universe, but an allusion towards a greater universal suggestion: There is no distinction between space and time. Everything that ever was will always be. Humans are not born and they do not die. However they are always beginning and they are always ending. Choice co-exists within the instant as it allows humans to determine which vantage point they want to see the snake from.

Anyway, I thought I was going to write about something having to do with my heartbreak, but this is all I could poop out. I have another 6 hours at work; maybe I’ll try again later.

A few days later

2005-04-16T17:42:00.000-07:00

The last three days have been bi-polar for me; I'm up for a few hours, then I fall hard on my face. But that's to be expected. The pain in my head is the consequence of the neurological process of breaking up. The cells in my brain are dying, which isn't anything new or different than what they do on a daily basis, but with heart break, it's like sending your cells in full reverse when they're charging foreword at a million computations a second. The pathways are re-routing, computing alternative processes that will help for the survival of myself. The brain is the most narcissistic of them all.

I woke up with Mindy this morning, shaking and doubtful. The mornings are conceptually difficult for me, but physically refreshing because the burning in my head goes away with sleep. That's not to say that it doesn't come back in the morning. We slept arm in arm but awoke on our separate sides of the bed. Sometimes I wish I weren’t such a restless sleeper. It'd be nice to wake up in the same position I go to sleep, especially when I’m holding the one I love. Before Mindy left, I had to press my lips to hers. It was the only cure for my shakes. We kissed as I pondered my own feelings and passions. Was this a goodbye kiss? Was it THE goodbye kiss? Was it a sympathy kiss? I had to feel her lips to mine. I won't be going home tonight. I will be sleeping at Mike's parents house for a while. I don't know the next time I'll be at that house. Mindy will have her space and I will have to find myself in this city of heartbreak.

San Francisco has been a difficult city for me. 5 years ago, my girlfriend Karen broke my heart here in this city. Not intentionally though. She was in love with two people, and I couldn't cope. It took a few months to recover, but I did. Now, Mindy and I are separating, and my heart has never been so smashed. I can't blame Mindy for this. Not anymore than she can blame me. I've listened to her words, even though she doesn't think I have. I've been just trying to deal with my emotions. It's hard to articulate logic when emotions run high. I hope she understands that.

After Mindy left, I went to Quicksilver's place and passed out on his table. He was sweet to me and let me sleep there. When I awoke, we went to get breakfast. It's still hard for me to force myself to eat. However my legs feel weak from the lack of nutrition so I had to stuff something in my mouth. The creape tasted dry and swollen in my throat. He dropped me off downtown where I tried selling some art for a while. I got kicked out of Union Square but I didn't let that get me down. I tried selling again but no one bought any works. I did get a page drawn in my sketchbook though. The line quality was shaky.

Work wasn't far away but I was too early to start. While walking to the Academy, I stopped into Walgreen’s and bought a pocket lint brush. My shirt was filthy from the cat wrestling on top of it last night. While brushing my shirt off, I saw a punk sitting in front of the Academy and decided to talk to her. Her name was Kat and was a fashion student in her third year. The conversation was awkward at first, but by the end, we shared a few laughs.

Its not like I want any sort of relationship with ANYONE, I just need a few friends to help cheer my spirits. This city has become the city of heartbreak for me, so I need to find a way to make it a city of friendships. I've been in contact with a few friends from Los Angeles to help me through this. They've all been compassionate and understanding. None of them think badly of Mindy. They know that these things happen. It’s a delicate situation, but to reassure me that I'm not alone in this. They've all had their hearts broken at one time or another.

It's strange, when you're in the midst of hardships, nothing can convince you that other people have been down like you before. You feel so isolated and alone in your pain. You contemplate terrible ideas, thoughts of death and suicide. But they're just thoughts controlled by the immense pain and agony of those brain reconfigurations. It gets better, then bad, then a little better, and then bad again. I just have to remember that I'm a good person. My intentions were always good. I never meant to hurt anyone, that this is life. These are the consequences of choice. It is amazing and beautiful as much as it is sad and ugly.

I hope we can figure this all out. I guess we'll have to. I love her.

the beauty of a blink

2005-04-12T17:34:00.000-07:00

Prologue:
Words just muddle our emotions. In fact, words have probably been the downfall of mankind. I heard once, that before words, before we started communication with a verbal language, there was no war, there was no poverty, there were lush lands, peace, freedom, love, everything we as a society have always strived for. But, on the other hand, without documenting those days with words, how can we be certain of this utopia? Well, the fact that you communicate better without words, with body language, with eye communication, with a hyper consciousness, helps confirm the belief that words are everything we've never wanted to be. What's in a name? What's in a word? Nothing. No truth, no god, nothing. Language is all subjective, arbitrary, and probably takes us further and further away from happiness. Like the word beautiful; how cliche' is that? No one can use that word without thinking, it's been said before, in film, in music, in art, in life. But a romantic kiss, a smile, a touch of the skin, now that's beautiful!
--The first email I sent to Mindy

Story

I feel like I just came down from an eight-month acid trip. These overwhelming sensations and symptoms of a prolonged abuse of my neurotransmitters dopamine and serotonin are: tingling in my extremities, blurry vision, sweating, head pounding, the inability to eat, tremlous convulsions, incurable stomach aches, sounds echoing around me, the lights burning my eyes, my jaw half way open half the time, then clenched tight the rest of the time. However these body aches are nothing compared to the mental anguish of my broken heart.

It's been 8 months since I last updated this journal. And where's the irony you ask? Where's the punch line? Well the last entry I wrote here was the beginning of what now seems to be the consequences of this broken heart. These are the symptoms of a depressed, sad, and lonely man. Here I sit, at a new job, in a new city, without any friends, and with my home life, in shambles. It was all I had to hold on to. The world seems so myopic and macabre when you're lover no longer loves you.

My wife, Mindy Ranee Buhl, married to me for 4 months, has decided she isn't in love with me anymore. It's a thought that's been festering and swelling inside her for quite some time now. She hadn't touched me in over a month. She had no interest in loving me. Her lack of self worth overpowered her ability to be in love. But why give away the whole story in the beginning of this entry? To whomever may read this, I'll try to tell our story tonight, in its entirety, and then be done with it.

Mindy and I began talking to one another in late August. Or rather, we started typing to one another; you see, we met over the internet, on Friendster actually. We chatted on IM for a few days before either of us had the nerve to call one another. I'm pretty sure it was I who called her first. I remember that she told me she couldn't talk very well, and in fact, if the reader of this memoir has read the prologue, like a good reader should do, I can assure you that words were our enemy from the beginning. I was afraid she was mute. I thought she couldn't even use her mouth to make sounds. But when I realized the silliness of those thoughts, I got the courage to call. And we talked. It was soft and sweet. It was from our first conversation that I knew we would be lovers, though I had yet to recognize that love.

After a week and a half of conversations, I couldn't stand not being next to her. It was driving me wild. Her life stories, her tender docile voice, her willingness to try and understand me was pressing my heart out of my Los Angeles box in and into her San Jose trailer park. You see, she lived with a friend's parents at the time, a half way place between her last fiancé' and her next stepping stone. Little did I know that I would be that stone. (Side note: my heart feels like stone typing this.) Driving on a suspended licensee with my friend TK in the car, we charged out of Los Angeles and made our way to San Jose. At 2 AM, I was finally there, with the girl I would months latter, be married to. She was more beautiful than I could have ever dreamed of. She was then and still is, my Angel. Words can't describe the aesthetic of the goddess that is Mindy Ranee Buhl. For those you who still can't picture what Mindy was to me, imagine her as air you breathe, the blood that courses through your body to keep you warm at night; picture her as the fondest memory you have of your mother. This is what she became to me.

To say the least, we hit if off. But I was still a bit skeptical of her intentions, a running theme throughout our relationship I guess. It wasn't until my second visit, one week later, did I know that we would be together for a long time, maybe forever. However now, in retrospect, I was foolish to think she'd love me forever. I was stupid to ever make any assumptions at all. (My head is spinning right now, excuse the break in story).

=============
Why doesn’t she love me? I've tried, so hard, with all that I had, to make us work. I gave her space when she needed space; I cuddled her when she wanted me pressed against her. I kissed her gently, and then hard, then however she wanted. We vowed to be committed, how could this have happened? She says she has issues, that her past haunts her, and that she can't love me if she doesn't love herself. She's been hiding her emotions behind the shrapnel of her explosive past. I won't go into detail of her past, to keep what's precious intact, but I wish I could help her cope, to deal with her history.
============

It was then that Mindy and I devised a plan to bring her to Los Angeles. Mindy was to live with me until I saved enough money for us to move to either San Francisco or Seattle. I remember the diagrams I drew up to prove to my roommates that Mindy and I wouldn't cause any commotion and would only be staying until late December. One was a picture of me holding a chart stating how much Mindy meant to me, (THIS MUCH by the way, as I wrap my hands behind me so that my fingers can encircle my body. Infinitely). The other was an enlarged photo I took of her the first day we were together in San Jose. I still have that photo in my studio. Mindy hates it, but it means the world to me. The roommates could see my conviction. Mindy and I were in Love and nothing was going to stop us from obtaining the love we so deserved.

Then she was there, in my house, in my bed. No, not my anything, it was ours. This was the beginning of us. The start of the single entity we'd vow to become. We worked our stupid jobs only to make ends meet and make the savings we needed to leave the city. I wanted to quit my job so badly. Mindy disliked her new vet job because of all the stupid idiots who'd come into her work and burp out the most remarkably asinine statements. I think one person even called her a cracker. But we didn't wake up in the morning because we liked our jobs, nor for friends, nor to hear the latest news update, but we arose for the love we shared. (I hope this presumption is correct, oh god do I hope this).

The proposal wasn't at all what one would consider your classical and traditional engagement. The suggestion of marriage became a pertinent issue vacillating from the back to the front of my thoughts. I loved her. I wanted to commit myself to her, to make this work, or at least to try. I wanted a relationship that lasted longer than 10 months. There was no doubt in my mind that I was completely madly in love with her. I wanted to be married to her. When I was out buying the ring for her beautiful finger, I got into a skateboard accident. I entered the diamond store all bloody and bruised. I thought it was funny when the sales person came to shake my bloody hand. I didn't know anything about diamonds, but was docile as ever. It was an honor to propose. I proposed to Mindy on the back porch of the house we were living. Subtle as it may have been, I was as sincere as one gets. (Again in retrospect, this amount of commitment is what would eventually assist in causing Mindy to back out of her love for me.) She even had a ring for me, which I wasn't expecting.

I was a list maker. There seemed to be so much I had to do before we moved out of Los Angeles. We had to sell my car, pack up our things, find a replacement roommate for the house, make more lists, and finally, plan a wedding. It wasn't going to be a big wedding, just a beautiful one. In fact, it was going to be the most beautiful wedding in the history of weddings. And it wasn't going to cost us anything. (Maybe it cost us our marriage? No, that can't be it.) The wedding was to be held in San Francisco at the Sutro Bathes inside a cave at sun down. Simple, no? Well, to save you time boring you with all the details of my planning, to say the very least, it WAS the most beautiful wedding ever.

Though, before I digress too far into the story, I must add that before we were married, we spent one full week away from each other. She was in the Bay Area and I was in LA working my last week at the racetracks. It was a terrible week. I missed her dearly and she missed me. I don't mean to romanticize this story too much, and after all, I am a miserable wreck while writing this, and everything seemed so much clearer before Mindy and I were fighting, but we truly missed one another for that week. However hitherto what is now the remains of a once happy marriage, I couldn't even begin to comprehend what missing her might feel like. The gut wrenching pains of mental agony are unbearable. They keep my awake at night and put me in a daze during the day. I want my lover back. I want my angel. I'll do anything for her.

Sorry. I'll try not to do that again.

The week away from one another passed and we were reunited once again. The wedding was in a few days but it didn't need much preparation. I was nervous and stressed. She could tell. She's always been able to tell if there's something wrong with me. It’s too bad I'm an emotional retard when it comes to the discourse of feelings. We were asked to write vows for one another, about one another. She couldn't do it. Mindy said she couldn't speak of her love for me in words. I understood, I thought. I sympathized. (I now question what her vows would have been if I hadn't helped write them for her.) The vows weren’t really all too important anyway. It was the placement of her ring on my finger and vice versa that signified our bond. I placed her ring around my heart; she placed her heart in my ring. It was touching. The sunset beautifully as we walked together, arm in arm, man and wife.

Exiting the cave was the most brilliant and amazing feeling of my life; to be unified with such a sweet bird was to be one with a goddess. We flew directly towards that sun set. (And maybe that's why we caught on fire and are dying now... god I want to hold her).

We never really had a honeymoon. I wish we went to Hawaii though, I wish I could have given her that. Soon after the wedding, we found a place to live in the Lower Haight district in San Francisco, CA. It was to be our new home, our first home, our only home. I liked our home. She did too. (However, today, April 12th was the day I realized my home was not at all in the walls of that Victorian apartment, but immured in the heart of the one I loved. Without her there, it isn't home at all.)

The intimacy between Mindy and I was phenomenal. We were lovers, and did what lovers do. I wanted to give her everything and anything she ever wanted; and I tried so hard to be there when she needed me. If she ever designed a perfect husband, I wish I were it. I wish I were Mindy's perfect lover. I remember Mindy once asking me, "If we ever break up, will you promise to come over and love me?" Two things about this frightened me. First, it was the first time the "if" theory surfaced. "If" can be a strong thing. "If" can ruin a marriage. "If" can ruin a life. And the second thing that scared me was that she actually enjoyed making love to me. It's hard for my feeble mind to understand such an anomaly, but I tried to believe she would want to touch me forever.

Then there was Lillith. Lilly Pie became the newest member of the Buhl-Donham family. She was 8 months old, tan and black colored, and had the smelliest gas that a kitty has ever had. She cleared rooms. But, beyond her gassy tendencies, she was a beautiful kitten that Mindy and I were to raise together. That was it. That was our family. It was nice.

We soon started working for Quicksilver on his metaphysical convention. Mindy and I worked together for the first time, ever. It wasn't easy for me. I'll tell the truth, it's hard for me to focus on work when my lover is in the room. Concentration issues I guess. The convention wasn't easy for either of us. We flew to Los Angeles to work at the Hilton Hotel. We had just set up our home in San Francisco, and had to leave the apartment and our cat in the hands of Mindy's friend Patricia. During the convention, I think Mindy felt for the first time, aggression and animosity towards me. She wasn't receiving the attention she deserved. I became a workaholic, and she had to pretend to care about this shitty convention. (I'm so stupid. I should have given her anything she ever wanted. I guess I'm paying for it now. It's so hard not to blame myself for this. It's so hard to think that I can't have her heart. I feel so fucking gross.)

===================
Maybe Mindy just isn't interested in me? Maybe I'm not that interesting of a guy? I thought I was at one point. This move has been hard on me. I uplifted my roots and replanted myself a new CRINDY being. I'm sure it's been hard on her too. But that was the commitment, I thought. To help each other in hard times. It hurts...but I know now that to help her, I have to let her break up with me. God fuck shit....fuckin hell. I won't cry at work. Not here.
===================

After the convention, we flew back home to begin our life...again. We both started looking for work, and were trying to understand what married life meant to us. We spent a lot of time together and things seemed to be getting a little awkward. Sex had become an issue because of birth control problems, dinners were spent in front of a TV watching movies, and the time we spent together wasn't as romantic as we both wanted it to be. I'm sure of it. It is very possible that I assumed that she would be there for me, always, and took advantage of our love. I'm not sure. This part of the story seems hazy. I can' t quite understand what happened to make her fall out of love with me. But that's not the point of this text. I digress.

An interesting night that seemed to be an intense emotional debacle for us, was a night when we went to an art opening. I didn't know anyone there, except for a pseudo friend, but wasn't feeling sociable enough to talk to anyone. Mindy and I were psychologically alone at a social event. Mindy disliked my attitude, and I felt depressed. This night was a foreboding symbol of how Mindy and I coped with each other's emotions; not well at all. (I want to change, I want to tell her everything, and I want her to know who I am, to have her stop prying my feelings from me.)

Mindy got a job at a Vet clinic, and I got a job working in a computer lab. Awesome, no? No, it's not. We work opposite hours. She works in the morning, and I work at night. We never see each other except for on her lunch breaks, sometimes. (I'll quit, I will if it'll help us.) But I wasn't going to work these hours forever. I was going to pay my dues to the job, then get the hours I wanted. That was the plan. I wanted to have my nights with my love, as I thought she did. But she doesn't. In fact, these work hours will assist her in what she wants. It's so sad for me, but I know it's what she wants.

Which brings me to two days ago. The tension in our relationship was building, crescendoing into the dynamics of what has now developed. We went out to dinner that night because neither of us wanted to eat at the house. The Thai food we got was terrible, but what was worse than the food was the look on Mindy's face while we sat there in silence. She hates me, I thought. She's bored of me. She doesn't love me. I can't make her laugh. We left without eating much because the food was too spicy. I have more digits on my extremities than words we spoke that night. Then, her friend, whom she hadn't seen in years, invited her for tea. Wonderful, I thought. But what started up as a gesture of my love, to let her fly freely, turned into one of my violent mood swings. It wasn't that she went out without me, I'm not that selfish, it's that before she left, she asked me if it bothered me. Again, to anyone else, this may have been a normal thing to say, but for me, it meant that it should bother you, I want it to bother you, why doesn't it bother you. There was so much unspoken meaning behind those simple words. And the worse part is, she most likely didn't mean it like that. So I went out, drinking, too much, and came back thinking I could talk rationally to her about our relationship. Fucking jackass I am. I did as much spilling of my heart as I did spilling of my insides. (I'm sorry for that). This got us nowhere except up to yesterday.

April 11th: I went to the Sutro baths, the place of our marriage, to watch the sun set over the Pacific Ocean. God I wanted her there with me. The sun set beautifully. I came home to speak to her. To crack open this tense void we'd developed. Today, was the day we started speaking to each other. She spoke of her loss of love for me and how she didn't want to hurt me. I spoke of my inability to see it coming and how it hurt real bad. We cried. It hurt. It still hurts. I want to kiss her now, I want to make love to her, I want to be interesting and funny and sensitive, and remarkable to her. I've learned so much about my feelings for her in the last two days. But I think it's too late. I want her to get better soon. I want her to still love me when this is all said and done. I won't hate her. I love her. She is my life, my wife, my everything. She thinks she is not my everything, but she is. Mindy Ranee Buhl, who became Mindy Ranee Donham for four months, no longer can bare the burden of loving me. And I have to deal with it.

Epilogue:

April 12th: I realized today that there's so much beauty in one blink of an eye. The healing power that a blink can deliver can soothe the most treacherous heartache. Held between two points of open, the closing motion of a blink cleanses the soul and allows time to pass. Time is sometimes all we can hold on to. And that is that.

a new connection disconnected with words

2004-09-03T19:05:00.000-07:00

Words just muddle our emotions. In fact, words have probably been the downfall of (wo)mankind (gotta be politically correct these days). I heard once, that before words, before we started communication with a verbal language, there was no war, there was no poverty, there were lush lands, peace, freedom, love, everything we as a society have always strived for. But, on the other hand, without documenting those days with words, how can we be certain of this utopia? Well, the fact that you communicate better without words, with body language, with eye communication, with a hyper consciousness, helps confirm the belief that words are everything we've never wanted to be. What's in a name? What's in a word? Nothing. No truth, no god, nothing. Language is all subjective, arbitrary, and probably takes us further and further away from happiness. Like the word beautiful; how cliche' is that? No one can use that word without thinking, it's been said before, in film, in music, in art, in life. But a romantic kiss, a smile, a touch of the skin, now that's beautiful!

turn turn turn

2004-08-30T23:44:00.000-07:00

Has the fish ever dreamed of water?
Has never the forest forgotten its roots?
Have the clouds never lived without the sky?
Does love ever stop for time?

In her eyes

A mother misplaces her swollen tears
A child abhors her for the loving years
And the earth will stop spinning centripetally
And we will find happiness
Eventually

Some things in life will never change
But lives are meant to go away

As long as

In the eye of a storm
A way is paved
Clear and warm
Away
From the our lovers we are torn
And born

Anew

Until the next torrential rain
Starts falling down
To meet again
And since we ride the winds of fate
I’ll think of you until that date

And ponder that which never was
That which was always
In your eyes

A culture of thieves

2004-08-30T19:35:00.000-07:00

A suburbanite: One who grew up in suburban America, usually white (though not necessarily), enjoys quoting movies, and above all else, feels cheated out of a culture.

I grew up in smoggy suburban Sacramento California, with white bread for my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, 2% white milk to wash down the white chocolate chip cookies I ate after dinner, and white picket fences to keep all good white children from playing in the not so good black cement streets. Yup, that's where I'm from. Middle class white-assed America, where the pay checks were just big enough to feed your fat ass family in front of a forty inch T.V., but never big enough to afford that trip to a different city (as if the family would actually venture off their big comfy couches in order to see that every city's got a suburb, and oh yes, a motel six). No, we were stuck to our jobs, stuck to ourselves, stuck to our obligations as middle class citizens, stuck to the sticky streets of sweltering heat that engulfed the city because everyone seemed to own just one too many SUV's. And we all know, the bigger the car, the smaller the cock; so those in my suburb must have had microscopic genitalia, flaunting fronting forgetting their humiliation to instead bling bling themselves around town, causing the most awful pollution. But I digress. My town was not a very very very fine town. No my town was a cesspool of appropriations, a city of thieves, and a mass of white suburbanites who stole that which they so desperately lacked: culture. The suburbs were the next phase of something grotesque, something with an embedded vicious historicity, something that stands between the authentic and the counterfeit. The apocryphal character of a suburbanite has it’s framework, it’s architecture founded by the will to power (Nietzsche); I will take that which is not my personal creation to increase my own social standing, to make me more powerful, to show my mastery of domination. I will steal your culture, your authenticity, and your ability to claim territory, your notion of truth, to proliferate my own culture of parasites. Hitherto modern times, the classical suburbanite had to physically force oneself into another territory by plundering, raping, and stealing another’s culture. Now, all one has to do is go to the movies and there it is. Every stimulus one desires to become the bandits their families once were, everything one needs in order to feel powerful and dominate, to fulfill one’s own will to power, is projected on a 30 foot scrim at 24 frames per second. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think Hollywood was created for the specific purpose of proliferating this type of thievery. And all it costs is ten dollars per visit and three hours of one’s time. It’s cheaper than a whore, and has more of a chance of birthing something brilliant and powerful. And speaking of whores, along with the dissemination of images, sound, and art from distribution conglomerates like MGM, Disney, Universal, Paramount, FOX, etc. came the ability to bleed culture to death, frame by frame, title by title, joke by joke, and drama by drama. And we suburbanites love it. Fuck, we go to three, sometimes four movies per week, just to keep up with the new suburban authority. If we didn’t, we’d be left behind to, god forbid, have to create a culture of our own. But it’s so easy in the theaters. We go into the dark curtain draped domes a blank slate, tabula rasa style, and come out somehow enlightened, informed, powerful. The narratives fit, they say that which we had always thought but could never formulate into words. We now have a better understanding of things that seemed so foreign at one point, we could never have dreamed of comprehending. We go back to our streetlights, our peers, our subordinates, with a feeling of authenticity, of righteousness and loquaciously verbalize our interpretations and critiques of these new and exciting cultural constructs. The re-contextualization of narratives, creating the Meta narratives of suburban culture, allows us suburbanites to materialize into real humans beings. Like Pinocchio once said, "I’m a real boy. I'm a real boy".
-Sid

This is an internet conversastion I had with my mom, long overdue...

2004-08-25T19:19:00.000-07:00

sacinmac: are you at your house or your girlfriends?
Mach Siddhartha: we broke up
sacinmac: oh Sorry to hear

sacinmac: well you keep me informed on how you are and keep out of trouble You have to much to live for for any more screw ups Things will work out and eventually you will look back and see how crazy your younger days were when you get older
Mach Siddhartha: they aren't crazy. it is a life worth lived

sacinmac: I will try to help you all I can but please be careful It takes a short time to get into trouble and a long time for it to go away Life is to short to get in and out of trouble
sacinmac: do you have a way to get food like dinner
Mach Siddhartha: life is too short not to live it to the fullest, a thousand times too short to be bored, and when I do get a chance to turn around and critique my life, I will smile and nod and be full of pride
Mach Siddhartha: yes
Mach Siddhartha: i can get dinner
sacinmac: I love you Just remember that when you hurt I hurt too Thats love I love you and worry about you a lot I love it when you are healthy and happy not in trouble

sacinmac: I love the fact that you are a survivor but you have too much to offer the world to mess your life up and you are too smart to make foolish choices
sacinmac: I trust most all of your choices and I know youare a very wise man
sacinmac: but you will alwways be my baby
Mach Siddhartha: My life is not in a mess, nor tangled, nor confused, nor painful. I am ecstatic to be alive, to make the decisions I've made, to be figuring out who I am, my past, my future. You shouldn't hurt, because I do not.

sacinmac: Everyone always said to me when you were little that you would be my challenging child in life and they were right You have a strong will and I love that in you It just scares me every once in a while now that you are older because I love you so much and always want the best for you Sometimes I have to remind myself that this is your life not mine and the decisions you make are yours not mine and that you have to live with them I just hope the good things that were taught to you when you were young sticked with you to help make the right choices so you take the right path in life
sacinmac: Im a jewish mom What do you expect

Mach Siddhartha: right and wrong are subjective constructs, and I understand your concern. I love you too. And I don't just mean that as a superficial "you're my mom, therefore I have to love you". No, what I really mean by that, is that I love everything you've taught me, every principle I hold dear to myself. That which has come from you and my upbringing has always been inside me. So if I want to love myself, which I do, I have to love that which constructed everything I've ever been. I love the pain, the tears, the anger, the happiness, the joy, the giving, the taking, everything that has made me who I am. I am confined by that love, trapped within it, engulfed in it's omnipotence. It is the warmth of your thoughts, the memories of your touch, the brilliance of your motherhood. True, I don't always have the energy to share this side with you because I spend so much of my time thinking how to formulate these thoughts into words, but they are there, always.

Mach Siddhartha: I'm not sure why you decided to have children, more importantly, why you wanted to have me, but beyond that uncertainty, I can only dream to be the parent to a child that will appreciate me as I do you. That is something you've taught me, to let me be me, and to always give that which can not be said, or even given completely, that which only a son or daughter can complete in full cirtcle.

sacinmac: i not only wanted to have you but ever since the day you were born Ive never loved a child so much and enjoyed the years watching you grow and cried so hard when you were off to college so far away Its so hard to let a child grow up even though I know you are Youve always been my baby and you always will be and as much as I love your brothers for some reason there has always been a stronger love for you I feel your pain stronger than I do with them when you are down or hurting and I cant explain why other than its that way I worry about you the most and want to help you the most and I cant explain why that is either but thats how it is

Mach Siddhartha: and that's how it will be. As for now, I am going to go get food.
sacinmac: its kinda like the song pooh corner where the adult goes back to visit pooh corner You will always be my christopher robin

sacinmac: Go eat . I love you Talk to you later Be careful
Mach Siddhartha: k
Mach Siddhartha: bye
sacinmac has gone offline.

the exchange enducing closure-

2004-08-23T01:43:00.000-07:00

When two people have been together for long enough, when they have shared their inner most fears and desires, not only do their lives merge as one, but so do their personal possessions. Healthy couples share their most routine articles, from sweatshirts to necklaces to toothbrushes, without ever considering what will happen if their relationship splits apart. Hitherto breaking up, it seems automatic that what's mine is yours, and what's yours is mine. Of course you can have the spare keys to my house, sure you can wear my pajama pants to bed, oh you need a pair of socks? take mine. Without a second thought those little trinkets of the relationship help build the framework for what we call love. However, when a break up does happen, the process of giving those possessions back to their rightful owner becomes an event all in itself full of unwanted emotions like pride, greed, and forgiveness. There's a whole economy built around the instance of returning artifacts of love. It's not like we keep receipts in our journals about who gave what, when and where, in fear of the "just in case" breakup; that would be supercilious. And so, what is this process of giving back, sometimes taking back, called? The process of resetting our love to zero, of exchanging the very building blocks that represent a deeper passion of our love's possessions, symbolizes the foundation of the breakup. Some people even keep these material metaphors as mementos of the lost love. They burry these treasures in their closets, under their beds, in their garage, to later be rediscovered, along with all the buried memories associated with that time of happiness, of a reinforced love. I've done this myself to preserve the memories I fear will disappear by the time I'm too old to be happy.

Talking Animal Festival...saturday night.

2004-08-21T20:42:00.000-07:00

In the busy bumper-to-bumper streets of Hollywood, there was only ONE place where one could find theater, music, art, and above all, Alexia Tsotsis. That place was the Stages Theater Company. From the exterior of the building, first impressions lead me to believe that I was about to walk into someone's personal house. However, with a closer inspection, I found that the Stages Theater Company just happened to be in a Residential neighborhood right off of the Sunset strip, and the actual building was hidden behind a bushel of vines. The cover charge was five dollars, which was non profit to reimburse the hard working curators of the show: Joe Napolitano, Alexia Tsotsis, and a few other brilliant individuals. Upon entrance, a bar was set up serving drinks for donations. The play had already started by the time we arrived, so instead of interrupting the show, we walked upstairs into the art gallery. The walls of the second story were jammed packed with art, outstanding art, art that surpassed my every expectation. Hanging a show salon style sometimes can be tricky if the curator doesn't understand that a work of art needs its own breathing room to give the spectator a chance to gaze at and away from the work itself. And, although there were twenty-three artists exhibiting in a space no bigger than 20 square feet, the show had a coherent complimentary vibe. Even the stairway walls became a resting place for the paintings to interact with the viewers. To sum up a night well spent, the show proved once again that with a little money, a lot of love, and some damn fine art, anyone can have a wonderful Saturday night in the city of Lost Angels.

Pocket Rockers rocked my socks

2004-08-20T00:46:00.000-07:00

This Thursday night I decided to take a trip into the heart of consumer culture and hype, Old Town Pasadena. Yes, good ol' old town, where the beer flows like a broken fire hydrant recently smashed to bits by a drunk driver and the entertainment roars louder than the fire truck sirens coming to survey the scene. You can have anything and everything in Old Town, for a price that is. (However, when I tried to purchase a beer from the bar, I was denied because all I had was my passport as I.D.) Besides the not so friendly service one usually finds in this elite Meta-culture, Old Town can actually have its moments of, dare I say, fun. Tonight the excitement happened to be taking place at Ye Old Towne Pub, a small joint hidden away right off of the strip of Downtown. When I first arrived at the pub, I saw the members of Pocket Rockers all sitting around, waiting for their turn to go on stage. The band was comprised of six members, three females and three males, however one of the singers couldn't make it to tonight's show, and therefore left the other five musicians to do their thing without her vocals. But this didn't stop anyone from having a dynamite performance. While watching Pocket Rockers do their thing on stage, what ever it is their thing happens to be, I was reminded of what it literally looks like to see a disjointed crowd of people in a total state of pandemonium. It was like a bomb had gone off on stage while all members scrambled to escape harm's way, but couldn't get off stage to find safety. Amongst the crawling, climbing, cussing, crazy jumping and falling over, Marianne, the lead singer, screeched the main vocals into the microphone in a strangely beautiful but punk rock fashion. Her back up, Jeff, tended to do more harm than good as he continued to tumble over the mic chords and dive directly into the keyboard setup; a true show of passion for punk if I say so myself, or maybe he was just too damn drunk to stand up straight. In any case, the show's main strength was that it kept going with a constant commotion of energetic vibrations. The members where well versed in multiple instruments and swapped gear in mid show, which I thought was quite amazing. The wall of sound exploding from stage complimented PR's amazingly disheveled yet coherent performance. The show sounded as great as it looked. And with the beautiful lead, Marianne Williams in front, take it from me, the performance looked like a sexy supper decked out version of the 2004 Olympics. Now, if I only could have bought that beer using my passport, the night would have been a perfect blend of fem rock my sock action and music. Maybe next time Pocket Rockers plays a venue in Old Town, they should make sure the place accepts ALL legal forms of identification to buy the booze that compliments the vocal and visual aesthetics of their kick ass performance.

It has been four days...

2004-08-19T20:48:00.000-07:00

Since we officially made the decision not to be together any longer. However, we spoke over the phone and so there was a disconnect between us which disjointed my emotions from my logic. If we were together, discussing which path our relationship should travel, I am sure that the outcome would have been different than the one we chose. That part of my heart feels cold and dark, wilted and all dried up. It happened suddenly, and I don't even know why. The unhappiness brought to our relationship from outside factors became too unbearable, for me. I love her, and I think she loves me, but we just met too early in our earthly lives. Our politics were too different, opposites even. We fueled each other very well, until our flames stopped communicating. This is all I can say for now. I hope she is happy, and does not hold our differences against me too harshly.

I am Chris' mean side

2004-08-15T20:31:00.000-07:00

From what I can gather, my mean side comes out to play when I feel frightened from the idea of permanent. Maybe this has to do with my need for not wanting to become comfortable in my life? Maybe it is the result of reading too many books about conflict and struggle? The friends I keep around me are chess pieces I manipulate for the better of myself. Chess has always been the main metaphor I consider when confiding in my most inner warriors. Wow. Chess? Shouldn't I be playing paintball with my partners? Shouldn't I be fighting wars, face to face with the enemy? Shouldn't I have at least picked a more pro-active game to exemplify the agons I create? Hitherto college, my life had been quite comfortable. It's no wonder I enjoy suffering as much as I do these days. My current pain must be retaliatory towards my past, a past in which I sat around playing video games, eating junk food, and reading. Currently, if I'm not sad, I'm not happy. What's with that? However, sadness in not necessarily a product of loosing. In fact, my problem is that I always win. I've not met a worthy opponent in this intellectual game we all call life. That's not to say that I haven't sweated a few beads of worry from time to time, but in all honesty, I can not say that I've met a challenger who can put me in my place, mentally that is. On the other hand, maybe I've been cheating this whole time at my own game! If it is I who makes the rules of my cerebral lands, then maybe it's not that I haven't found a extreme enough challenge, but maybe I've scared all my confused partners away.

in response...

2004-08-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

I always find it hard to describe things about myself without feeling like a pretentious and arrogant asshole. This is probably because I am very modest. But since you asked, then I will tell. I am an artist living in Los(t) Angeles. I consider myself a big geek, but no one else I know thinks of me like that. The world around me seems strange yet attractive. I kind of always pictured reality as a reflection of some other dimmension or an object of truth resting on the surface of a muddy pond. Like if I reached out to grab it, the image would ripple and fade away leaving me with my hand in cold murky water. I feel like the truth behind our world is immured somewhere between the image of water's glassy reflection and the surface of the liquid itself, in the infinite microscopic area that no one can grab a hold of without destroying it.

gamine: a girl of the streets, an urchin in society

2004-08-09T18:54:00.000-07:00

The air is strange today. It swirls with the stench of rotten flesh and melting mindless minds that are too doped up to care. The hills of Los Angeles are barely visible because of the opaque nature of people's emotions; they wear their thoughts like hats that are too big for their heads, blinding their vision as they slam into said mountains surrounding the valley of the lost. The men and women of the streets walk desultory as they bump into one another, causing sparks to ignite in the hearts of already angered individuals. Today is a day for dodging: bullets, racquet balls, dirty looks, unwanted stares, fallen gamines, reckless cars, smoggy clouds, bills, death, flies, the smell in the kitchen, the smell in the bathroom, library fees, friends, non friends, books about supernal epistemologies, etc. I hope my game is on par with what this city plans to dish out.

Ah yes, it's been a while

2004-08-06T23:28:00.000-07:00

I thought I could keep up this blog and write in it every night. But, as one can see, life has blocked my path of articulation and has hindered me from sharing my most deepest darkest dampest secrets...well, maybe those secrets aren’t that damp. I just got back from having the routine post-undergraduate dinner with seven associates from USC. All of us were art majors, some business minors. After a few hello's and how are you's, the number one topic of conversation tended to be "what job did you get?" and "how much money are you making?" What? And I played victim to this concern as well. No questions as to what art's been made, or what books one has been reading, or what future creative plans one has for oneself, were asked, but only monetary social status and vocational rhetoric. Some political views crept their way into the conversations, but mostly we all just sat around the dinner table talking about how much we either loved or hated our jobs. The first round of drinks was toasted towards something I could not associate with. I was ostracized from the joyous clinging of glasses for not being single. The two people at the table who had been in steady relationships while we were in school, which constituted three years of more, were now happily strong and single. A few of my associates wanted to know why I looked so normal that night. I had been wearing a plaid shirt and khaki pants, a unusual style compared to the skirt wearing, dyed hair having, ragged paint splattered shirts I use to sport all throughout my college career. My only answer was a truthful one: this is what I wore to work. Ah yes, work. That word seemed to steal the spotlight of conversation once again. As a precursor to tonight's dinner, I had an hour long conversation with Brandon about how I loathed my job, how lethargic it made me feel, and how my mind mashed around my head like a stew of rotten vegetables from sitting in a chair eight hours a day staring at forty television monitors. How, when I got home from work I am always too tired to produce anything important. I told Brandon that I wanted to quit my job and work on my art full time. There was no way I could get into grad school if I couldn't even remember how to paint, if I didn’t have the time to remember...ugh. Well, this is my rant for tonight. Work sucks. Post Undergraduate school sucks. Being tired sucks. And above all, pretending to enjoy your friends' company whilst bloviating about work, well that sucks most of all.

The Professional

2004-07-31T23:44:00.000-07:00

What is it that makes a man professional? Are the qualities of professionalism in our male dominated society, for a man, different than the standards women have to uphold in the workforce? Professionalism in the year 2004 is a socially constructed concept, better, an economy, which is shaped and molded by the hieratical systems of elitism, puritan traditions, and money. The history of the professional hitherto has been qualified by men in suits, by the higher ups in society, who look down from their long neck ties onto a middle class dominated by rich old white men. I am reminded of the scholars of the late 1700's, who would wear ridiculous wigs while working to appear educated, more scholarly, better than the next guy at their job. The aesthetics of appearance spoke louder than the words of the wearers. Let me explain. I am skeptical of persons who wear suits to work. Not because they are something to be feared, unless it's their stupidity which makes me quiver, but because I know that if someone is concerned with their appearance more than their intellect, if they truly believe that a nice blue suit bought from GQ will help them become a better person or help sell what ever it is they are selling, be it a set of encyclopedias or a political amendment, then I start to question their intentions of manipulation. Yes, glamour and glitz sells. It sells! But why must we sell our selves to institutions built by those who are only out to make money? It's the tradition of money making that proliferates these old institutionalized ideals of what professionalism is supposed to be. A nice sweater vest is only one, just one spec of the professional stain on our business aesthetics. To me a professional is someone who does one’s job well, someone who can, with confidence, speak about his or her vocation in a vernacular worth understanding. A professional is someone who can separate one's daily worries from their job, and come into work with a bright attitude, with a fresh smile, with high hopes of accomplishing a task. It does not matter the attire, weather it be a sexy low cut tank top, or a flesh covering shoulder padded suit, as long as the individual is able to: make the company money, work proficiently with the other members of their job, come to work energized, and not be a complete moron. Those are the main aspects of professionalism. Shorts and a tee shirt in the hot weather are not traits of fatuousness and laziness. If an employee of mine is uncomfortable in long pants in the summer, why not allow them to wear a fucking pair of shorts? As long as they do their job in a healthy manner, let them eat cake!

The herd mentality

2004-07-29T21:34:00.000-07:00

Man is an animal. Man will never succeed from its state of animality. As long as we die, we will always commit ourselves to the institutions of survival. Death is the only system we have not mastered, and thus seems more complex than the universe itself. We've left our planet, traveled to Mars, have taken photos of galaxies which lay billions of light years away, but still can not conquer the simple earthy common concern: death. I heard a poet once say "only believers in death will die". I wonder what that poet will say on his deathbed. However, if we as a species uncover the mysteries of death, locate the eternal fountain of youth, a system of forever, maybe we will transcend into the gods we so carefully worship. Maybe we can relinquish our inner animality by destroying morality, law, and society all together. A true state of singular individuality can exist within the context of infinity, though we've yet to discover what's beyond our finite lives.

Nietzsche was sexist

2004-07-28T17:15:00.000-07:00

From "Beyond Good and Evil", I can confirm that Nietzsche was misogynistic and belittled women's intelligence.

Examples:
1. "When a woman has scholarly inclinations there is usually something wrong with her sexuality."
2. "In revenge and in love woman is more barbarous than man."
3. Woman learns how to hate to the extent that she unlearns how -to charm."

Though, while looking deeper into the history of Nietzsche, I found that in 1876, he proposed marriage to a woman who thus declined his offer. This had to be heartbreaking, turning an already monstrous Dr. Jekyll into a self-loathing, sick, and deranged Mr. Hyde. Or, maybe it was the diphtheria, perhaps the syphilis?

"And when you gaze long into an abyss that abyss also gazes into you" .... wow.

back in town

2004-07-27T12:53:00.000-07:00

Merci arrived in LA yesterday and we started moving her into her new house, which is approximately five blocks from my house. At first I thought she would be lethargic to see me caused by the intense heat of our LA summer, but we had a fun time moving her shit back and forth, then got some mango smoothies to liven up the mood. God damn those smoothies were delicious. After we moved most of her belongings inside her place, I left to go retrieve my clothes from my current residence and move them into Merci's closet. Her closet has the kind of doors that voyeurs like best, the kind where you just feel dirty looking into the room of some unsuspecting naked girl. I like that closet. My room at Bonsallo has been converted into a studio where I can paint and work without the bothersome worries of getting paint and shit all over the floors. I've even got bright lights hanging from the ceiling so that I can see what I'm actually painting. Besides the walls being covered in plastic, which gives off a somewhat odious smell, this room seems to be a very nice place to work.

car poem

2004-07-25T20:12:00.000-07:00

I've laughed aloud at the cars passing by
All drivers driving in unison
Uselessly
Until
Their cars stand still from claustrophobic stares and hateful glares

Get away from my car suckka
Or I'll hit ya
With my car
And
Then their hearts crash and burn
Because a left turn
Becomes a crash site
Igniting
Explosions
Like fire works on your way to work

Oh no you didn't
You woke the kids mother fucker
There're babies on board
My sleeping kids in the back seat
Who were once at peace
Now
Fall to pieces
And seem to scream until their lungs turn green
Which compliments the blood stains on the front windscreen

Daddy
You might want to help us
We're helpless
And mommy's been away for years
She won't be here
To pick up the broken pieces of
You
So please daddy
Unbuckle your belt and pull your head from out of that glass
It's time to act fast
Quit playing Daddy
This is serious stuff
I'm hungry and sis needs her baby bottle
Plus
These flashing lights hurt my eyes
But to my child's surprise
Daddy didn't
Rise

Yeah I've laughed
At those silly cars that pass by
The death traps which smog the sky
Causing congestive buildup on our crowded streets
Where driver's tend to have lead in their
Feet
Foreshadowing fatal mishaps bound to happen
If you laugh too hard
While driving your car

Lethargic and sticky

2004-07-24T19:25:00.000-07:00

Today was an uncomfortable and irritable trial. I woke up to an intolerable itching on my right arm, accompanied by five mosquito bites. There were a couple that lined up perfectly with the large vein underneath my skin. Those blood suckers! My left ear seemed plugged for some reason, and twelve hours later, has yet to recover. Even the clothes I put on my body seemed not to fit. Work seemed excruciating long and annoying. When I got to work, Gator asked me to look up the definition of "Irony", because he feels that most people use the word incorrectly. The actual definition is quite vague, but can be summed up by this response: Irony is what happens when the opposite of what's expected occurs. An audio engineer who can't hear, that's ironic. And that is how I felt with my plugged ear. The only excitement that came from today was that I've started reading "Beyond Good and Evil", F. Nietzsche. Unlike the Protagonist in Dostoyevsky's "Notes from the Underground", Nietzsche's loathing for humankind comes from the assumption, in which Philosophers make, which separates them from nature. By trying to claim a metaphysical point of view to expand and critique human nature, the philosopher becomes one of our greatest liars, full of ostentatious pedantry. To Nietzsche, one can not escape interpretation and contextualization. The question as to why we search for truth is more interesting than the search itself, which to Nietzsche, is a fool's adventure.

Notes from the Underground:

2004-07-23T17:07:00.000-07:00

The protagonist (and sometimes antagonist) has been underground for forty years, and by underground I mean stuffed away inside the jacket of books rather than experiencing the joys of his world. Though more of a recluse than a mole, this man becomes the epitome of a diseased ego, heightened intelligence, self-loathing, and draconian animadversion towards himself. The character introduces himself as a sick man, a man who is diseased with intelligence, with pity for the proletariat, but having general disgust for all men and women in Russia. He writes to the reader in journal format, calling them "gentlemen", as if there were multiple persons listening to his story, as if he had something to say worth stating to a crowd. These notes become his soapbox. Going back and forth between his imagined supremacy to his self-pity and disgust, his actions contradict his thoughts as if they were two children fighting to tell the most amazing story ever told, a story filled with obscene odious lies, desires, hyperbolizations, and half-truths. Once certainly convinced that he will act upon his threats, they soon become idol and lethargic whims from his lack of confidence and weak personality traits. A sadist to say the least, this man feels glory in other's suffering. To make a woman cry is music to his ears. His fatuous ego inflates with every cynical criticism proclaimed to Liza, a whore who finds his bookish tone of voice comforting. Though, on the other hand, he is overly critical of himself, and his ego self-destructs like a masochistic suicide bomber, taking out anyone near and dear to him. At first, I tried to empathize with his elitism, with his love for hate, but soon realized that this was not the mental state of a man whom I understood, even if I did connect with his critical wit and cunningness. No, indeed this was the mentality of a fucking psycho. I never thought anyone could love to hate as much as the main character in Dostoyevsky's "Notes from the Underground", but now I do. The novel is written with intense detail and articulation regarding a mad man's mind. A man whom I do not hesitate to consider clinically insane caused by depression, loneliness, and intelligence.

Eructation: a belch

2004-07-23T01:20:00.000-07:00

Brandon is back from his Eurotrip. We picked him up from LAX and drove his hairy ass back to the ghetto. Whilst entering the airport, I noticed that the LAX sign, three massive block letters, could lighten people's psyches if they just added a "RE" in front of the LAX... it'll never happen. Brandon has many wonderful and colorful stories to tell, but for tomorrow night when we can get the whole house together to listen. It is very comforting to see his face again. Already, I can feel the energy surging through his Iranian veins. He's prepared to work hard, and to work fast...Long live the Neo Futurists!

Now that I've started...

2004-07-22T00:29:00.000-07:00

I just got back from a drawing session over at Mike and Susana's house. Every time I drive that stretch of freeway, I think about being pulled over and being arrested. I guess time will let those memories fade. We had dinner which was some sort of concoxtion that mike made, then got to drawing. Vada was there. She's actually a very talented artist, but I just don't think her mind is in a posistion to be able to focus long enough to even be interested in a career in art. All of them still believe in an apocalypse. They actually hope for it to happen. The soonner, the better. But, I hesitate to agree with them these days. If I were asked a few years ago, whether or not I'd rather live to 100, or see an apocalyspe, you can be damned sure I'd have picked the end of all humanity. But now, I just don't know. I feel like there are still things I must do on this planet before I see it's demise. Maybe I'm just being a pussy. With a salary paying job, a girlfriend, and a nice studio setup, maybe I am too comfortable. I hope not. That has been and will always be one of my biggest fears. Comfort is not for me. I don't want to slow down.

I don't know how to start, so I'll just put in my DUI story

2004-07-21T17:21:00.000-07:00

It was that last shot of Jack Daniels that did me in. Not the flashing red lights of the tail gaiting police car, nor the over weight “I’m just doin’ ma job” deputy clerk sitting on her ass watching court TV whilst finger printing me. No, it was good ol’ Jack who dragged me from the warmth of my heated Ford Mustang and into the chill of a frozen steel jail cell.
Jack must have known it was Karen’s birthday bash to have privileged me with such a sweet and giving gesture. Well, maybe not so much a bash, but it was her birthday for Christ’s sake, and god damn it, our group of associates felt like celebrating. Karen was my ex girlfriend who, for the longest time, I could not get over. She was the only cliché in my history of fucked up relationships, but only because she fucked me over by being in love with two people at the same time. You all know the type. The love triangle, slash romantic fuck, slash I’m in love with your best friend type bullshit. She was the one that got away, the one fish in the sea I could never love again. But I was over her by now, and was engaged in a beautiful relationship with someone who actually loved me in return. But that didn’t stop me from celebrating Karen’s birthday with dinner and drinks on this glorious occasion.
If we had gone to any other bar in the city, the night would have ended in sweet perfection. If I had driven the side streets instead of the freeways, I could have made it home safely, without interruption, and could have been asleep within a matter of minutes. However, contextualizing the events leading up to my arrest with a could have, would have, should have reflection, seems insignificant to what actually did occur.
And so there was dinner. Dinner was nice. We ate at May Tai, a hole-in-the-wall Thai restaurant located in the Echo Park/Silver Lake area. If you ever get a chance to go there, I recommend the Pad Tai. Oh, and of course two long necks of Sapporo to wash down the spicy curry sauce which seemed to explode all over my Tofu and noodles. Thus was the beginning of our night, our birthday bash extravaganza. After all, Karen was turning the ripe old age of twenty-two, which I hear is the magical age of…nothing. Actually, come to think of it, I’m twenty-two years old; I’m at the age of crap just like Karen. They’re right though, twenty-two is the magical age full of wonderful nothings. I can’t think of a single instance this year that has even come close to super-ceding my notion of mediocrity. Not even graduating from a four year college nor landing a fine salary-paying job, can make up for the lack of interest in my twenty two year old pathetic life. From now on, this year will forever be known as the nothing year.
But something happened last night. Yes, something special. I met my best friend, Mr. Daniels, at a bar last night, celebrating Karen’s nothing birthday.
The “Red Lion In” was a German bar, made out of German blood, and only served German beers. It was a bar in which a white person could really feel at home, which is partly the reason I felt so uncomfortable in there. Though white myself, I can’t stand to associate with supremacist Nazi pussies that feel their only saving grace in this world is their skin color. Fuck that and fuck them. But alas, no German beer could take the place of my good old made-in-the-USA friend, Mr. Jack Daniels. Down the hatch it went. Drink after drink, conversation after conversation, the evening turned out to be a social delight. At the end of our party, at around one thirty in the morning, it was time to go home. It was no longer Karen’s birthday, and I had to be at work in the morning. I never made it to work. I never made it home that night.
I decided to take the freeway home, since it was two o clock in the morning and I had to be at work the next day. After getting lost finding the 2 freeway, I finally was on my way home. I took the 2 to the 110 freeway, listening to Mirah on my Ipod. Mirah had a beautiful voice, I thought to myself. What a wonderful end to a wonderful evening. If I only knew then what I know now, I wouldn’t have congratulated myself on an evening well spent. Approximately two miles from where I live, I found myself being followed by two flashing red lights cleverly disguised as a highway patrol car. With lights a-glow, I signaled to exit the 110-freeway, where I was informed to step out of the car and into the disturbingly fresh nightly air. I was on the corner of Columbia and 8th in Korea Town. My pulse was racing faster than the speed I was driving, 85Mph to be exact. The speed limit was 55MPH, which I found out a few moments later from my new acquaintances dressed in midnight blue. But first things first, I suppose. Shaw, the name on the metallic badge worn on the breast of my knight in shinning bullet proof vest, seemed to radiate something beautiful as the glare of the cop car’s lights illuminated its goldish brown color. I was asked whether or not I had been drinking earlier that night. I recollected the birthday bash, but didn’t want to incriminate myself any more than I had to. I told Shaw and her counter part that I had only two drinks earlier in the evening and one drink right before I left the bar. This sounded reasonable to me but I guess Shaw didn’t have the same sense of responsibility I did. Take your hands out of your pockets, exclaimed Shaw. And so I did. I was then asked to count to thirty while holding my head back with my eyes closed. I asked whether or not she wanted me to use the one-one thousand rule, or to just count plainly. She told me that it didn’t make much of a difference, but let me tell you, it did. I used the one-one thousand rule, as well as I could. I believe I got to the number twenty before my nerves took over my body and I started messing up the order. I calmly stopped counting, only to be berated for not finishing this elementary task. Take your hands out of your pockets, Shaw asked again. The next test was whether or not I could stand on one foot, point my lifted toe towards Ms. Shaw, and hold that position for another thirty seconds. I couldn’t even do this even if I were sober let alone while intoxicated. I tried my best and reached about twenty-two nothing seconds, and then dropped my hoisted leg onto the ground. Pretty good I thought to myself. Test number three was even more humiliating. With my eyes closed and my head back, again, I had to point at my nose using the index finger of the lateral side in which the cop called out. Shaw admitingly suggested that she was going to try to trick me. That bitch, I thought. Why would she do that? Why not just arrest me on the spot instead of maliciously intending to watch me fuck up her imbecile tests. Well, I’ll show her, I thought to myself. And actually, I got my entire “left-right nose touchy’s” correct. Ha ha, I thought. But then, the fourth and final test was initiated. The Breathalyzer, the one test I knew I would fail. It was the one god damn machine that would ruin the next twelve months of my life. And so, I was asked to breathe heavily into a tube connected to a black box with a little LED read out. And there it was. There I was, handcuffed on the spot. I was arrested for driving under the influence in the state of California.
The proceeding events of mockery and humiliation echoed in my thoughts as Shaw and her generic cop of a partner forced me into the squad car. It seemed I didn’t pass the sobriety test. The Breathalyzer gave Shaw and her goon of a partner the right to dress me with a new bracelet made of metal and chains. The cuffs didn’t hurt as bad as I had imagined them. I watched my car get towed away from inside the back seat of a highway patrol car. The black anamorphic cage in front of me composed a picturesque portrait of my car being hoisted onto a tow truck. And then poof, my mustang disappeared from sight. As I looked around in the back seat of my escort’s car, I saw a styraphoam doggie bag that came from Chevy’s restaurant. Oh how I craved whatever it was that was in that bag. I imagined myself dining alone at the bar of Chevy’s, watching sports on a muted television set, drinking a beer and thinking about Merci, my beautiful girlfriend who had been out of town for the last few weeks. The front doors opened and the two Highway patrol officers hopped into the car. As the ignition ignited, my pulse revved and roared to the sound of a running motor. I couldn’t help but notice how tense I was, crunched into this mobile cell obviously made for those of us without long dancer’s legs. On the ride to the police station, I overheard my captors’ conversation about how it is all right to treat stop lights as stop signs, as if cops were privileged to break the same laws in which they are hired to enforce; a bit hypocritical I thought to myself. Not even episodes of The Twilight Zone caught on late night television seemed as awkward and absurd as I felt embedded in this joy ride of captivity.
My mind had been set ablaze within the matter of minutes it took us to drive from the point of my arrest to the jailhouse. What pieces of shit, I thought, as these fuckers were talking about breaking the law themselves, as well as debating where where to eat after they dropped me off at the station. What pigs they were! Jesus Christ, I thought. You just had Chevy’s; you have leftovers rotting away in your backseat, and are still fucking hungry? What, does ruining someone’s life just rouse up the hunger in police officers? Is that why we see cops at doughnut shops twenty-four hours a day? They’re lucky I had the shit scared out of me. Otherwise, I might have had to explode and tell them what I was really thinking…fuckers.
When we reached the station, located conveniently in the downtown metropolitan area, I was escorted out of the car and into the front booking room. I had worked up enough nerve to ask officer Shaw how long it took her to get to a point in her professional career not to sympathize with the persons she arrested. She gave me a confused stare. I remember specifically that I wasn’t slurring my words, so I asked again, this time with more confidence. How long, post police academy, did it take for you to hold a casual conversation with your partner while in front of the person you were arresting? Didn’t you at one point ever sympathize with the mistakes of individuals? Her response to me was quite direct and a bit defensive. I don’t sympathize with people who break the law, she said. Ouch, I thought. I was verbally shot down by the LAPD. Go figure. She gave the perfect metaphor for a perfect night. I couldn’t even fictionalize a better biography than the one that was being written for me by this fucking teetotaler.
After a few security codes were in place, the electronic gates of my new temporary housing project magically opened for us. Hell, I didn’t even want to struggle on entry. Not only would they have wiped my ass all over the jailhouse floor, but I felt a bit of pride in knowing what a fuss these CHP’s were making over my .1 percent Blood Alcohol Level. Shaw started to read my constitutional rights to me as she fiddled with a machine that looked like a living abortion from the industrial revolution. You have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney, if you can not afford an attorney, blah blah blah blah blah. As Shaw spoke, the sound of her voice transformed into a bad imitation of the teacher’s voice from the old Snoopy cartoons. Even though I saw her lips moving, Whah whah whah whah whah was all I heard. Her partner, whose name I never did overhear, interrupted Shaw’s monologue to inform me that I should expect to be in the jailhouse for approximately five hours. Great, I thought. I could make it to work in the morning. This jail thing was going to be a piece of cake with no sweat off my back. But no, my hopes of making it to Santa Anita, my place of occupation, dissipated as Mr. No Name reminded me that he was keeping my driver’s license until my suspension was over. God damn it, I mumbled under my breath just loud enough to grab Shaw’s attention. But, she obviously had better things to do with her time than to remind me to watch my mouth. Yeah, better things like preparing the doom machine she kept fiddling with, which was now making an obnoxious beeping sound. All right, Shaw said, while curiously looking at her dim-witted partner. We have to get another Breathalyzer to test your BAC level.
At this point, I really didn’t care what they had to do. I was accepting my fate, accepting the fact that for the next six months of my life, I would have to submit myself to whatever people like Shaw told me to do. Place your mouth on this little tube, and blow for ten full seconds, she said. Sure, I thought. Why not? I’m already your bitch. Why not make me give this machine a blowjob too? What? Oh, you want me to stand on one foot, dance a jig, and blow as well? How about I just bend over and let you ram me in the ass with your nightstick while I’m at it? Why not just make me your slave for the night? Oh, huh? Oh, you just want me to blow. Fuck you, but ok. I’ll do it. I’ll do it for you Shaw. After all the things we’ve been through, I owe it to you. Let me make your life just that much easier while at the same time making my life a living hell. Sure, you fat fucking pig. I’ll do whatever you say. So there I was, blowing my dear life away, admitting my guilt not only to a fucking machine, but also to the entire judicial world. The results stayed the same as my original BAC level. No surprise to me. No sweat off my back. Whatever. And thus began the booking process.
I was taken over to a frumpy African American lady who was sitting behind a concrete desk and had obviously been at the station for way too long. Take off all your articles of jewelry, your phone, your wallet, and whatever else you may be hiding under your clothes or up your butt hole. And, while you’re at it, go ahead and take off your shoelaces as well. This shocked me a bit. My shoelaces? What, was I going to lace someone to death in the dunk tank? Why don’t I just give you my dignity, my pride, and a bit of my self esteem in exchange for me keeping my laces? No? Ok then, here are my laces, Ms. Lace taker. All right buddy, she said. Go ahead and walk over here to get your fingers printed and have a nice smile-for-the-camera photo taken. I didn’t appreciate her facetious attitude, but I was still drunk so it didn’t matter too much. I let it slide, but just this once. They were using a digital scanner for finger identification. When they went to scan my left hand, the machine had a difficult time reading my prints. I laughed to myself, looking at the monitor displaying my thin slender fingers. The scars I had on all five fingertips from a performance art piece earlier that year threw the machine for a loop because of the unique scarring effect of fresh razor blades on flesh. But I wasn’t about to explain the nature of my sado-masichistic life style to these assholes. They didn’t deserve those stories.
After fingerprinting and having my personal impersonal mug shot taken, they placed me in the drunk-tank and locked the cell bars behind me. Wow, I thought. I had imagined the drunk-tank to be a little more, well, like a dunk tank I guess, a place where people threw baseballs at a target and dunked the drunk in cold water. But no, it was more like a holding cell with two benches and a couple of pay phones. How very original. The walls were painted in a flat sand latex finish, which contrasted with the greenish-brown cemented floors. This place was the epitome of an interior decorator’s nightmare. I laid there for about an hour with my head on the hard cemented bench, and then came to an epiphany. What if I used my unlaced shoe as a pillow? That’ll teach them to steal my laces. And, so I did. For the next three hours, my fellow drunks swam in and out of the one-gallon tank we shared. No one spoke to one another, hiding inside of our mental castles. The inside of our cell looked like a funeral gathering. But not one of those funerals where everyone was happy and excited about the passing of one’s life, but one of those “let’s all get drunk and contemplate the meaning of life while we glare at all the relatives we dislike” funerals; although it’s not like I’ve been to any funerals anyway, so what do I know? My only impression of funerals, and jail for that matter, has come from television. However, an affect television doesn’t have on its viewers is the adrenaline that pumps through your system while deconstructing the events leading to your arrest. If only there were a way to harvest adrenaline, I thought…hmm.
Anyway, I spent those three hours of solitude wondering about the repercussions of this mistermeaner offence. I wondered what my parents would think when I called them from inside county jail. I wondered what my girl friend would say when I told her I was arrested after attending my ex girlfriend’s birthday party. And I wondered if they were ever going to feed me, because I was fucking starving. To the right of my head were initials scratched into the latex paint. I had to tag these walls, I thought. This would be my space, my autobiography. Fuck, I would have painted a damn mural with my blood, urine, and fingernails if there weren’t cops running around outside the tank every five minutes. So, I did what any criminal would do. I claimed my territory. I laid the foundation of my life’s story. I scratched the pseudonym in which I sign my paintings, “SID”, into the wall using only my fingernails. The paint chipped easily, and before I knew it, I had drawn a little person sitting on a bench next to my name. Very well done, I congratulated my self. Very well done indeed. Another little chuckle exited my mouth. Doing what every artist does after the completion of a project, I laid my head down and closed my eyes. But I didn’t get much time for rest.
One of the LAPD officers, who had been running around outside my tank, opened the cell door and called for me and three other jail mates to follow him. Since my shoes were unlaced, it was difficult to keep them attached to my feet. Therefore, I had to scrape the bottoms of my shoes on the floor so I wouldn’t trip over myself. I recalled my adolescence when it was deemed cool not to pick up your feet while walking. Though times have changed since those younger days, I felt a bit nostalgic for that moment in my childhood when I would never have dreamt about going to jail. I remembered the scare tactics police officers would utilize towards refractory children, and how they would take kids to see what prison and jail was like, hoping the inmates would frighten youngsters into a better life. Then I imagined how my younger self would have reacted if he knew what his life would turn out like. If my younger self saw my present self, he would have shit his pants and cried home to momma. What a little pussy I was, I gingerly thought to myself.
The Neanderthal who had been directing us where to go and how to move informed us to follow the white line taped to the floor of the jail hallways. We went deeper into the urban dungeon, passing by the new comers who were still in the process of being booked. There was a sense of empathy and understanding between the newbies and I, as they were about to go through the same shit I was going through. There seemed to be a universal link between the slaves of our not-so-friendly overseers dressed in black and blue. We all connected on a cosmic level. But then again, that may have just been the alcohol influencing my thoughts. The further we walked, the more muggy and humid the building became. Man this place smells funny; television never promised me that pungent smell which wafted through these concrete corridors. Our family of frightened drunks and criminals finally reached our intended destination, which was a larger cell full of bunk beds, uncovered toilets, and payphones. We each got a blanket and a sheet to cover our bed with, incase we were afraid of catching cooties while resting in confinement. The cell was in the heart of the penitentiary, with thick metal bars all around the perimeter. Surrounding our barracks was an eight-foot concrete wall; surrounding the concrete wall were windows, which let in the light of the morning’s sunrise. Ah, what a beautiful sunrise it was going to be. From what the police officer told me, I would be out of here in about an hour or so, and be on my way. I began to imagine how I would explain this to my co-workers, how we’d laugh about the incident, and how I would perceive my day through a totally new context. I almost became giddy from this disillusionment. In all actuality, I would be spending the next seven hours confined to these jail walls, pondering the unimaginable, and questioning my own morale and responsibilities.
I walked over to the first unoccupied bed I found and threw my sheet and blanket on the top bunk. When I was a child, I shared a room with my older brother. He had always snatched the top bunk bed from me while claiming seniority as the reason behind his territorial assertion. Not this time, oh brother of mine. This time, I have seniority over you! I’m the one in jail. These were my experiences, not yours. I was here first. And so it was; I scored the top bunk bed in the middle of a crowded jail cell. Take that repressed childhood! After the bed was made, I jumped up onto the bed, took my shoes off, relaxed, and closed my eyes. I was actually beginning to feel comfortable in this concrete hell. Hell, I could get used to a place like this, I thought.
After about fifteen minutes of relaxation, I rolled over to my left side because the right side of my body was falling asleep. As I turned my head, I opened my eyes to see a man taking a shit on one of the public toilets. I’ve never seen anyone excrement in public before and became immediately too embarrassed to keep my eyes opened. They were shut immediately, and hopefully quick enough so that he didn’t catch me watching his communal bowel movement. The last thing I needed was to get in trouble for watching a man poop. I can only assume that if in a situation like jail or prison for long enough, a man has to lose his senses of embarrassment in order to function like a human being. There has to be a point of transcendence in which all sense of courtesy, empathy, and neighborliness converts into survival mode. Decency and good will become overpowered by nature’s need for endurance and the continuation of self. But I hadn’t reached that point yet. In fact, considering how much I had to drink that night, I was surprised that I didn’t even have to pee.
I rolled back onto my left side while again opening my closed eyes. This time, I saw a man standing next to a pay phone, looking curiously at it, as if wondering whom he could call this early in the morning. By the amount of ambient light shining into our family’s home from the sun on the rise, I could tell that it was around seven o’clock in the morning. Oh shit, I thought. I don’t think my overseers are going to let me out of here for a while. Then, the thought of missing a day of work over this stupid mistake overtook me and I began to despair. I wasn’t able to go into work that day. But I was not going to loose my job over my ex girlfriend’s nothing birthday bash; that was for certain. I had to call someone. But whom could I call? I got up from my bed and walked over to the first unused pay phone. My first instinct offered a piece of advice as I pondered as to whose phone number I could remember. Don’t call your mother. If you don’t have to, don’t even tell her about this whole incident. And so, I dialed the phone number of my boss, whom happened to also be my cousin living in Glendale, not twenty minutes away from the jail I was imprisoned in. The phone rang six times, but no answer. A bead of sweat ran down my cheek as the sun began to heat up the interior of our detention center. There was a gigantic fan outside the cell bars, but was turned off for some reason. If this were my home in Sacramento, I could have just yelled for my mom to turn on the air conditioner, I thought. But I was no longer in Kansas, and the Cowardly Lion had somehow managed to transform himself into a middle-aged drunk African American man who was missing his left arm. The phone began to look strange to me, just like it did to the man I saw before. I didn’t know whom to call. Those fucking cock sucking cops! They did this to me. They made me drink that jack Daniels. They made me speed along the freeway. They planted devices in my mouth to make me blow a .1 BAC. And last but not least, they made me forget all the phone numbers I had collected throughout my past. All this was their fault, not mine. That feeling of despair quickly became a feeling of nausea. I felt sick to my stomach and my mom wasn’t there to nourish me back to health. And then the realization hit me. The one phone number I could call, the one person I could tell my dirty secrets to, the one mother who could take care of all my problems, just so happened to be, my mom. I had to call my mom. She could call my cousin to tell him I wasn’t going to make it to work that day. Oh, the pain I’d cause her, the humiliation and torment I would bestow upon the Donham name. But, fuck it. I had to. I had to call her.
I dialed the one phone number I could never forget. Each digit became a concrete wall my finger had to push over. When I reached the final number, the number three, my hand began to shake. The fear of telling my mother I was in jail overpowered my senses and intensified my nausea. But somehow I overcame the hopelessness and pressed the fucking button. After all, it was just the number three. What harm could the number three cause? Three rings later, my mother’s voice, groggy and tired, answered the phone. Would you like to accept a collect call from Chris, the automated operator asked my mom. Yes, she said. Mom? Hello? Mother, I’m in jail. I got a DUI last night. I cannot make it to work. Can you call Phil and tell him that I am not coming in to work today? Pause for the deep breath my mother was about to take; then continue to explain my situation. Just call Phil and tell him I won’t be in, I exclaimed. That is all. I’ll call you when I am out of here. The words flowed from me in a clam and cool voice. After all, I didn’t want to get into an argument with my mother, of all people, while on the phone, surrounded by thugs just waiting to make this mamma’s boy their bitch.
I hung up the phone and returned to my top bunk. It had been about seven hours since I first entered this hellhole. Deputy Dew Dah lied to me, I thought, remembering earlier in the evening being told I was going to get out of here in about five hours. What a fucking low life. He should be locked up in here with all the rest of the criminals for not knowing how to approximate my release time. Who the fuck does he think he is anyway? And then I came to a realization. Mr. Dew Dah had bent me over, anally penetrated my sweet butt-hole without any lubrication, and after all that, he didn’t even have the common curtsey to give me a reach around, figuratively speaking that is. Ah, but the joke was on him, really. See, I’m not gay. And no matter how much mental butt sex is performed on me, my mind was made up. I desperately wanted Merci to be in the top bunk with me, so we could fuck like caged animals, giving the pigs on the outside a show they would never forget. But, forget it, I told myself. Just focus on getting the fuck out of this jail cell as soon as possible and maybe, if I’m lucky, I’ll get that chance to have wild sex with Merci in the privacy of my own bedroom. After all, I’m going to have a long day ahead of me once I am released.
I closed my eyes in hopes of some rest, but a thin Asian man about my age kept coughing something terrible. After about five minutes of him hacking and wheezing, he finally got out of his bunk and yelled for one of the guards to come to his rescue. Between sporadic intervals of coughs he shouted something that sounded like “I need my inhaler”. Sir, I need my inhaler. He sounded terrible, but the cops were suspicious of his intentions. Like any good, honest, and frightened individual, the guard called for backup just in case this dying Asian was about to unleash the Cracking and break out of the cell. Three other burley cops came from nowhere, opened the cell doors, and told the Asian to turn around. They hand cuffed him and took him away to wherever they keep extra inhalers. Who knows, maybe in the nurses’ office, maybe in a fridge with dead bodies.
Once again I closed my eyes in hopes of getting that rest I so desperately needed, and once more my peace was contested, this time from a Mexican man who had a tattoo that wrapped around his entire neck. The man was speaking loudly into the phone. But honey, he said, I’m in jail now. You put me in jail. Why did you have to do that? Look, I know we had our problems, but why did you call the cops for Christ’s sake? You know, today is our son’s graduation. I can’t make it now because of you. You did this to me. You took the one thing I cared about, our son, away from me. There was a long pause while she was assumingly rebutting his arguments. Listen, I don’t care, I don’t care. That was between you and I. We could have worked that out. You didn’t have to do this. His voice eventually trailed off. I could have sworn I heard the man crying. But I dared not look into his direction. He hung up the phone and walked back from whence he came. I could only feel sympathy for this man. To be incarcerated on the day of his son’s graduation because some bitch, the mother of his child for that matter, called the cops to arrest him.
But, in all actuality, I didn’t feel sorry for the father. No, it was his child that I felt sorry for. The look on the kid’s face when his name would be announced by his graduation speaker, knowing that his father wasn’t going to be there to cheer him on, to hug him afterwards, to celebrate this new beginning together. Now, I may not have known what it was like for my father not to show up at my graduation, but I did know what it was like to have my dad not only show up, but to arrive drunk, interrupting the precession, and stumbling to his seat while the other children mocked me and my family. Recollections of my sixth grade graduation crept into my mind like some silent cloud of muddled memories and emotions. My drunkard father was only a side note to this glorious occasion. I was the valedictorian of the sixth grade class at Thomas Jefferson elementary school. The speech I was about to deliver was at the time, my greatest work, the work of a ten year old genius whose sprits were as high as his I.Q. All my hard work and obedient efforts were to be summed up in a six-minute speech given to my peers and their parents. As my pre pubescent voice screeched and shrilled, penetrating the audience with the arrogance of this sixth grade looser, I looked up to see my family all together, dysfunctional as they were, but together none the less. Joy and appreciation of a coherent family ethos flooded my heart and warmed the insides of my eyelids. I was falling deeper into the warmth of this youthful and self-delusional memory, when I realized that I had been smiling for the last several minutes inside of jail. I was at peace for an instant. But as soon as my self-realization grabbed hold of these happy fuzzy memories, my conscience began to shake those fuzzies and turn them into jagged sharp shreds of a past long lost. This was jail for fuck’s sake, not some sixth grade graduation ceremony.
Oh to be that simple sixth grader once more. To unlearn the things I have learned post-pubescence, and to become, in the true sense of the word, naïve. What was I doing here? Where did I go wrong? Why can’t we go back to the time in our lives when we were the happiest? Like Adam and Eve, I had chosen a path of knowledge rather than wisdom. A wise man would have never eaten the temptation of a golden apple. He would have never disobeyed the laws of God in exchange for a question mark. A wise man would have rather stayed in the land of ignorance, knowing that knowledge is nothing, that knowledge is the twenty-second birthday bash of a meaningless ex girlfriend.
As I pondered these questions of self-awareness, a loud beep exploded in our jail cell. The names of the individuals ready to be released were called out loud on a bull horn, in a monotone voice, without compassion, without the decency to even try to pronounce the names correctly. And, yes, my name was announced, like the rest of the free men of that cell. We were ordered to collect our sheets and to line up in single file. But not until the police officer was satisfied with our behavior were we allowed to exit the chamber of sinners. He instructed us to follow him, and we did. We would have followed that man to the gates of hell and back, as long as he was promising our freedom. After a short walk down the corridor, the officer told us to throw our sheets into a bin, and to exit stage left into the release room. One by one we were reissued our possessions, including our shoelaces. My laces happened to be bright orange, which made me smile. I knew those laces would come in handy someday when I least expected. The discharge officer instructed me to sign some paperwork to reinstate my citizenship, granting me permission to hatch from a cocoon of barbed wire, metamorphosing from a criminal back into a human being.
At this point, it was only a matter of time before I was let loose into the streets of Downtown Los Angeles. With the swift words of the uncaring odious man at the exit, “Stay out of trouble”, I opened the door and took what felt like the first steps to a new beginning. The sun was shinning brilliantly and, if I didn’t know any better, I could have imagined that day as being my birthday. This was the birth of some new understanding, I just hadn’t figured out what it was that I was supposed to understand. I felt like darkness, in the land of the light. I was alone. I had always been alone. But I wasn’t empty. No, emptiness would have been ignorance. Emptiness would have been a Heaven, prior to eating the apple. I had gained knowledge in exchange for social standing. And then, I understood what it felt like to be Adam the moment he bit into nature’s sweetest of fruits. I now had an understanding of embarrassment; I knew shame. I was naked for the first time, with no leaf to cover my exposed genitals to a world which hath animadversion and blame.