I had the craziest dream about me last night.
I didn’t fly, or see through walls
I (still) couldn’t even dance.
The crazy thing was that
all of a sudden, with total clarity,
I really knew who I was.
I saw all my hopes, my fears
and my goals in full focus
for the first time.
All that uncertainty, gone.
The crippling torment of doubt
that kept me from moving in any direction
was lifted, and I suddenly realized
the best ways to travel in all directions.
And so i set off at once, the direction unimportant
because I knew just what lay ahead.
The euphoria that comes with complete confidence
in your actions is an unrivaled sensation.
On I walked, knowing – knowing – I was
on the right course.
So I walked closer to my destination, to the
reward I had refused to let myself see I had always wanted
And then–

Today I was driving
and I was looking at the yellowing leaves
and the oranging leaves
and the reddening leaves
and it made me think about autumn
which made me think about pumpkins
which made me think about pie
which made me think about Thanksgiving
which made me think about the parade
which made me think about Santa Claus.
And I got to thinking,
about that time in your life,
when every adult you know
would lie to you, right to your face
for years and years and years.
Just so that it seemed like there was a little magic in the world.

They laid there together, without
saying a word, letting the sound
of the falling rain fill the silent room.
He wondered how something that sounds
so much like the tapping of a thousand
impatient fingers could be so soothing.
She wondered why he never wanted to
play in the rain anymore.

The real world is no place for a writer to thrive.

this is not a suicide note, by the way.

I haven’t read nearly enough books.

Since the summer I’ve amassed this whole pile of “shit i should have read by now” but all I’ve managed to scrape off the top so far are Brave New World, 1984, and A Clockwork Orange, and I finished each of those by the end of september. I’m right now trying to read Cat’s Cradle by Vonnegut, but it’s been relegated to that humbled position of “bathroom reading” that must be making Kurt spin in his grave. Instead I’ve spent most of my time with graphic novels, catching up on essentials of the Batman canon, or rereading Watchmen for the third time. I love them, don’t get me wrong; i completely wave the flag for the graphic novel as a legitimate literary art form. I just… feel like I should be reading Vonnegut instead. Or Kerouac. Or Rushdie. Or Joyce. Anything but another Palahniuk novel.

It’s probably because all these books i should be reading were my dad’s. I found them in a trunk full of his stuff and made it my mission to read them. Maybe I thought that if i read what he read i could get into his mind and maybe be able to more accurately simulate what he would say, a concept whose flimsiness is matched only by how inarticulately i conveyed it. But i’d probably try much stupider things at this point. He would have been 52 this month. I don’t know, I don’t want to write out something as obvious as “i miss him,” but…

Obligations have forced me to make another severely important anniversary something other than my number one priority, and the guilt i feel for that is substantial. But it’s not just guilt, and it’s not my inability to work around the obstacles and scheduling conflicts and bad-timings that arise in my life, it’s frustration at the frequency with which i have to work around obstacles and scheduling conflicts and bad-timings. It really is all the confirming proof I need of the existence a higher universal authority. But look, i’m making it all about me.

Maybe april is just a hard month for me. Of course, historically, May hasn’t exactly been a carnival, either.

Thanks to Lani, whose blog inspired this frank extrospection tonight.

Through all windows, I see only infinity.
You’re wrong, you know; raise yourself and the curtain
At least believe in a tangible divinity.

Isn’t it easy to see pessimistically?
Despite your best effort, I can say for certain
Through all windows, I see only infinity.

I don’t care about One, let alone a Trinity
I admit I do like trying to pervert an
Ideal such as intangible divinity.

These zealots will bury you neck deep in it, see,
Then they’ll tear you apart and leave you deserted.
Through all windows, you’ll see a lonely infinity.

So let’s escape; we can hide safely in a tree
Should it really be so wrong or absurd if
We placed ourselves on a mantel of divinity?

We’ll never worry about our ’sins’ in our tree
Rest now; I promise to never see you hurting
I believe in a tangible divinity
Because through all windows I see only you, infinitely.

“I’d like to know,” he began,
turning the defrost up to an audible 3,
“just what is so endearing about melancholy
that compels me to desire it stick around for so long?”
Silence followed, save the white noise of the heater.
The snow in the headlights reminded him of stars,
flying past some interstellar spacecraft.
The road crunched and slipped under the buick
and only then would he wonder how old these tires are.
He turned to look at the passenger seat
as clarity slowly crept up the windshield.
He waited for her to say something cute,
something with her effortless profundity
that he made sure she thought he hated.
and if she were there, she might have.

It would figure that the first thing i post in 2009 isn’t even written by me.

But it is an article written about a Tom Waits album.

As you read, ask yourself: does this remind you of someone you know?

i would say names were changed to protect the innocent,

but you and i both know theres no such thing.

Once the snow’s melted
I like to walk on the grass
as much as I can.
The way the ground feels
soft again, cushioning footsteps
like walking on layer cake
is such a hopelessly optimistic feeling.
The grass is still wet and weighed down
by phantom snow,

I almost wish
I was still pining for you.
Writing, at the very least,
would be easier.

It recently occurred to me that almost everyone i know under the age of 34 has a Facebook account. This didn’t strike me as that outrageous, but what did was that I recently started receiving friend requests from relatives who are in their 40’s and 50’s. It felt like having a party in your basement back in high school, and one of your uncles showed up and tried hanging out with you and your friends. The party that had been my life on the web had been crashed, or so it felt. What rose up in me was this feeling of nationalistic pride for the in-society that we, the internet generation, seemed to have developed, and a desire to keep it “pure,” in a sense.

I’m almost positive this is how racism started.