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Wednesday, October 28th, 2009
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There's something very real about this 34 watt bulb
Sometimes when I'm under its glow
It's like I was never real before this moment
Like I was just going through the motions
but I'm forced to reflect in times like these
take notes down on whatever I can
and leave them for you.
These moments validate existence
because nothing else is talking
and the world is silent but for her thoughts
It's what makes your skin come alive
Nothing can hide in this moment because
there's no one to hide behind
Details are illuminated, not obscured.
There is an ugly truth to this world.
It shines at 34 watts.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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I haven't updated here in over a year.
A poem woke me up.
And I woke to an echo.
Maybe this was something meant to be? I long to have an existence outside of step 5, step 6, step 7, repeat. But I'm too scared and trapped to make it for myself.
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Saturday, March 1st, 2008
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I went to a shopping plaza today. A brisk, spring afternoon. 72 degrees. A perfect Saturday. Not a mall of today with countless chain stores; or kiosks selling trinkets, knock-off designer sunglasses, or cell phone plans or accessories. A quiet place built on old money; a place that never quite caught up with the times. At it's mouth is a quaint bookstore. The kind with tall wooden shelves and ladders on tracks to reach the highest shelves. No corporate name tags, no signs advertising the latest best seller. I walked among the shelves, looking at books that I wouldn't have before. Books that would normally have no character, getting lost among the fluorescent lights of Barnes and Noble.
I sat down at the cafe and ordered a gelato. The young man behind the counter, no older than high school or college, offered me samples. "If you try a car before you buy it, why shouldn't you with ice cream?" The Dark Venezuelan Chocolate, despite it's name, was flat and lacking distinction. It was piled high in the bin. I picked it's more colorful counterpart, Blueberry Butter Cookie. A group of people sitting next to me discussed politics.
Another girl, of a similar age, seemed quietly distressed as she was talking with her much older co-workers before going to lunch. "Do you want me to get you something?"
"Where are you going?" the older female employee replied.
"I don't know." They walked to the circular counter together.
I left a tip of half of the price of the dessert without blinking an eye.
Before leaving, I noticed a young man purchased a copy of The Fountainhead along with two other titles as I stood in front of a table strewn with stacked and displayed Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama titles.
The store was fairly busy. A group of college kids were in travel section, surely planning their summer programs. Or maybe dreaming of the trips that they will take, someday.
A single columned list detailed all of the stores in the plaza. Next to the store was a location number. However, listed on the individual suites on the map were the names of the stores. "I Love Sushi" was nestled on the third floor between two tech school offices. Between the ground floor and the restaurant were many empty shop windows with "For Leasing Information Call:. . ." signs. But it never felt unsafe.
A solitary woman sat outside of the sushi restaurant, eating. I couldn't tell if she noticed me. I looked through the windows into the enclosed desolate counter, noticing the prices on the menu. I stepped inside and read more, while looking at the tools of chefs sitting on the counter. Three empty place settings were in front of the counter, complete with plates and chopsticks. I stepped to the register. I studied the canned and bottled sodas in the cooler while peering around to the back for an employee. After a moment, I stepped away and stepped out of the eatery. I turned to look back at the shop and the woman finishing her food.
An employee in a worn, white apron was now behind the counter and we made eye contact, and his face made a suggestion. A raised my hand to him, and continued past some struggling businessmen and playing teenagers down the escalator.
I stopped at one of the art galleries downstairs. It was mostly the same average art work that you see at art festivals and state fairs. Pieces here and there caught my eye: winding paths, mysterious women, and hand carved sculptures and vases. I very much wanted to look at one piece, but a woman was sitting a away in front of it, looking at the booth. She said hello, and continued to write in her notebook. I later saw that she was writing the price tags of the items, hanging them.
A sadness washed over me as I looked at the works in the gallery. These pieces go for no less a few hundred dollars each. I imagined the artists, working at home in their studios, bedrooms, offices, or garages. Do they believe that someday they can "make it?" Or do they submit these pieces, put on a price tag, and forget about it until a phone call comes? If the phone call ever comes. In the meantime, do they work behind counters, sit behind desks, drive company vehicles, or have one more argument with those that take care of them? I was reminded of a section in the bookstore dedicated to writing and how to get published.
A few pieces were like things I rarely see. Beautifully hand carved tables, faces where they don't belong, figures looking at something the viewer cannot, wood-burnt nymphs on a hand-carved vase. Who were these nude women? Staring at the viewer, at the artist, or looking away. Were they even real, to begin with? What kind of stories are behind these canvases, these paints, these frames?
If I had the expendable hundreds, I would want to purchase one of these works. Maybe I could meet the creator. I wonder how things would change. Eventually, it'd sit and just become something else that I pass everyday. The special moments would come when it catches my eye one day and I spent thirty minutes marveling at how beautiful it is and why I am glad that I had purchased it. That item that I "had to have", however, was not in that store on that day.
Each store was riddled with no less than two out of the way alcoves or secluded rooms. However, the stores continued on, filling these rooms, hungry for every square foot that was afforded to them. Random sinks and counters were also in these places. Not a single other soul were in these alcoves. There was barely even more than three people in each gallery at a time. In the second gallery, each item was red-tagged, 75% off.
Also in the second gallery was a girl with whom you couldn't tell was a little rounded or completely normal sized. She was sitting at a table in the middle of the gallery, studying a PowerPoint on her silver laptop. She wore a short green wrap, showing her long, tan legs. Her face was the kind that looks like someone else's. She looked up from her studies all of one time that I was in the gallery.
Hidden in the front of the gallery, with it's back to the window, among other pieces and without a price tag was a printed copy of "Desiderata" by Max Ehrmann. Printed on the framed, faded yellow sheet was a statement that it was hung in Old Saint Luke's Church.
I walked through the bookstore one last time before leaving. The still distressed employee had returned from lunch and was talking to a tall boy with curly red hair. As I passed them, he looked at me before the weather enveloped me again.
The weather was beautiful and my mind wandered. How does a place like that stay in business? Who pays for the lease and how can they afford it? On a peak shopping day, the plaza was amazingly empty. Many people walked around by themselves. A couple was found here and there; very, very few families. It made me wonder if someone with benevolence watched over this plaza, and enjoyed its retreat as much as I had.
It was a place that belonged to another place and another time. Before life was too complicated. Before things happened so quickly and there was so much to catch up with. With every year that escapes us, there is another year to remember. People can only remember so much, and world will always push something new onto your soul. Except for the people that loved it, everyone, including the troublemakers, had forgotten about the plaza.
I unlocked the door to my car and looked around. There was not a free parking spot to be found. A shopping mall across the street had embraced the future, with a proud LED marquee advertising its stores. An Olive Garden sat within a stone's throw. Before getting into my car, I looking to the sky, to see the plaza impaled by a high rise building. Quite literally, the modern era had stabbed at the heart of the plaza.
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There was once a road-side cafe across the street. It had been demolished before I got to visit it. In its place will be a designer clothing store. I went to the cafe's new location and it was a modern building haunted with the ghost of the old cafe. The employees were obviously human and less than completely attentive. But, the pancakes were real. Robust, almost as good as homemade. I'll never go to IHOP again.
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Friday, January 4th, 2008
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There were so many thoughts that slipped through the cracks, today. I began to get upset at myself; just as soon as I thought of something, before I got to act on it, it disappeared from my thoughts. They were nothing important. . .just trivial thoughts. Pieces of information, actions that wouldn't build up to anything substantial in the future.
But, life balances itself in the funniest ways. (Doesn't it?) There is one thing that echoed in my head, today. It sounded, and I reflected. Just one of those thoughts you think walking from point A to point B. I thought of it again, just now, and researched it. And then I found it.
I just found a forgotten memory. A piece, a reflection of my own past that had disappeared. An archive such as this one. But it was greater. It had an audience, it had a purpose. It had scholarship, even. How important. . .how could I forget something so important? I want to scream it from the rooftops, I want to put it in faces and say, "This is what I mean." But that would compromise it's holiness. So, I can't leave any hints. A document so hidden, that even its creator had forsaken it. I cannot allow.
I have to find that piece of myself, again. Hearts that bleed in silence, cannot be reflected upon and remembered later. Death without a witness.
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Sunday, November 25th, 2007
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Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
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Today truly feels like fall. Or, more like, a winter that you don't need a coat for. It feels as cold without a coat, as winter does with one. The weather makes me think of you. Is this because we are having a fight, or is it because of the countless fond memories in cold weather we have? It makes me think of memories of you in the ice, around my graduation. (Cute snowmen. Go figure.) It makes me think of huddling together on Christmas morning. (Waiting for Santa. Again, go figure.) Happy memories all the same, though. And not because I'm a dork. There's plenty of memories for that. These memories are special because of you. Not for anything or anyone else. And these are among the kinds of things, the kinds of times that I would miss. Our love for this time of year binds us. The holidays would just seem that much more empty with out you. What would become of all of our things? What would become of us?
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Age brings me here, today. Current events make the passing of time more acute than normal.
This is the best metaphor that I could produce for it. Let's say this is an MMO. You get all of the new, cool, exciting shit at Level 21. You can cast new spells, get into new dungeons, wear new armor, all that rot. Level 23, well, you're stronger than 21s, but, you're just thinking about the cool things you get at 25 or 30. You're just mindlessly leveling. Or trying to distribute skill points to make your character worth a damn in the mean time. I'm a level 23 right now, and it kind of sucks. I'm watching friends go into level 21, and I'm so excited for them to be gaining that level. But. . .I miss that excitement. I'm watching some go into Level 25 with fucked up attribute points, and can't wait 'till I can do it better.
But I got id.
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Just a jumble of thoughts. Thoughts wrapped up in memories. The archives remind me of who I was, where I've been, and how far I've become. As always, the past is that for a reason.
Memory lane is always a difficult one to walk down. Short, acute, bursts of memory.
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Comments: Read 4 or Add Your Own.
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Do I have things to pay for? I don't know who "all I can be" is. There are no clear cut, well defined answers.
If who I was can be, well, certainly a little embarrassing, my vintage isn't certainly better at all. The heaviest of hand, the sloppiest of fervent emotion, the lack of social grace.
I've come to realize more, and with, came greater maturity, and greater insight. Perhaps, greater distance.
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Just looking at the user icons of this journal, and it seems like it was designed to be emo. A concept that didn't even exist, as we know it today, when I established this journal. If it did exist, it certainly did not have the prevalence that it does today. Talking about changing times.
Reading back, it does seem like a long time ago. A lot of things that I've said (here and elsewhere) have been very. . .self-indulgent. I didn't even realize it at the time. I guess three years ago is three years ago for a reason. A peculiar evolution that's going. Going where, I'm not sure. From day to day, the more things change, the more things stay the same.
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We grow up and life seems so far along. We'll never get "those days" back because times have changed, and along with it, people have. There's a message from The Boss wrapped up in this, somewhere. We can only take steps forward.
And now for something totally different.
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This is where I am. G leads to H leads to I. You turn around and look behind you, and wonder how you got this far. The opportunities you were given, the greater ideas in your head tell you that they happened for a reason. It's kind of hard to believe otherwise. It's just too quaint. "An undying shadow in a world of lights." I am in a position that none of my compatriots have had the courage to organize, the will to execute, or the skill to succeed. This is the future. So do tell, where is it? But, you know what? As arrogant as it may seem, as blind as it may seem, my Premier won't allow me to make a mistake.
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"Luck is preparation locking hands with opportunity."
I've done such a poor job of documentation. When the project is going along so fast, you can't help but fall behind in that aspect. You struggle everyday just to keep your head above water. And then when the time is too late and documentation is a priority you have nothing but memories and how fast your own feeble hands can type. Where will the pretty words be in five years? Where will the pretty pictures be? Let me tell you where they will be. They will be nowhere. They will be in the same place where dropped data is. Nowhere. Deleted out of RAM because they were not written to a solid medium. And this is the first time in a long time where I have just put my head down (literally) and wrote and wrote and wrote because my hands cannot type past enough. Limitations of the medium. Limitations of the soul.
Wait, I wanted to write about something else and now I'm writing about writing. Fancy that.
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I have, returned. Alas, this journal remains the public side to the private side of me. It's been almost a year since I've last updated here, and I think that it would be a shame for such a legacy to rot. I really love this icon, though. Thinking about icons, and friends, and reactions, and time, I realize that Rock is such a persona. I'm left to wonder sometimes, who he really is, sometimes. The textual realization of my most frustrated moments? Well, probably my most passionate, actually. The chronicles of a natural born something.
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Saturday, April 8th, 2006
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I'm not that person anymore. But you know what they say about fights and dogs and other things. You can hole yourself up in Alaska as much as you want, Snake, but you will always have that ability to make the impossible possible. And thus. I can make these keys flow just like you can those bullets. Thank you, God, for not failing me now. To prove to myself that I still have it.
The best chance you have if you want to rise to the top is to give yourself up to loneliness. Fear nothing and work hard. One thing that you'll discover is that life is based less than you think on what you've learned and much more than you think on what you have inside in you right from the beginning.
This isn't really a wangst, or a rebuke, or a hudge. More like an exercise. Even if you aren't particularly impressed or moved, dear reader (Who really is that anymore? It came to my attention and memory last night that I met two people that I love very very much through this journal.), I feel good about it and that's about all that matters.
See you on the other side, or here again in like six months, or when that lovely lady strikes me.
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I haven't clicked with a Nine Inch Nails song in years. I'm not sure if that makes me happy or not. I know that I always liked this song, but it seems exceptionally relevant, now. I'm sad that I didn't know each word when I heard him live. But yes, back to our regularly scheduled program.
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I don't feel like the person that used to live here, anymore. I was this big ball of misdirected energy (I'm just a boy) who believed in so much. Who felt so much. Who had this earnest zeal. I lived and died for these moments. I still do, because they still make me cry, to this day. But I've ceased writing about them. I crippled myself. Why? Because it became too much. That big ball of misdirected energy (playing the suicide king) was threatening to consume me. No. It was consuming me. I was consumed, and like the phoenix, I had to rise again. But like those little bastards in Devil May Cry 3 (ooooh the video game references of my golden years), I just turned to stone.
You call out the thunder and you reap the whirlwind.
Does it make me a better person? I don't think that we can really use (are you sure what side of the glass you are on?) the quantifiers, "better" or "worse". Just different. There is no better or worse when it comes to people. Just different.
Fine. Back in the hole.
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Tuesday, January 10th, 2006
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Thursday, December 1st, 2005
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"In practical terms, then, the stakes in the battle over intention are extremely low--in fact, they don't exist. Hence it doesn't matter who wins. In theoretical terms, however, the stakes are extremely high, and it still doesn't matter who wins. The stakes are high because the existence of theory itself; it doesn't matter who wins because as long as one thinks that a position on intention (either for or against) makes a difference in achieving valid interpretation, the ideal of theory is saved."
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I'm too old to feel my hair swaying against my face as I lip synch along with Nine Inch Nails's Pretty Hate Machine.
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rockhoward's journal