brought to you by the letter eth

Surrounded by death, anxiety and indecision, what i know is it won't be me and there's little i can do as none of it can really matter.
What next. Who's it gonna be.
At least i'll be getting something for my birthday.
i wonder.

even grave, maybe tittle

Early in the month you were cropping up in my thoughts for no reason and i heard almost as soon as it hit the wire.
Now all i can think is how the people writing about you showcase how badly people write, an even more dramatic backdrop for you.
You're Heath Ledger in a completely different movie from the rest of the players on the set, formally receded into roles that made him vibrate on a slightly different wavelength than the scenery, skip, hop, slide and dance while other people stood. A splash of moving color on a grayed out landscape.

If it was finally giving in, not wanting to do it any more, i can't even considered not understanding.
i would never ask anyone to bear it any longer, and even if i never read another word you wrote, i couldn't be more grateful to have intersected in our existence that one moment that let me find that book that led me to know you existed.
That's all i needed.
To take that breath after the knowing that tingles the front of your brain as the back end opens up with a lighted breeze. Recognition. Someone created this thing, a testament in my hands that people, uniquely peculiar people exist, succeed, and bear a striking familiarity to that thing and place i must believe to be mythical: that home i miss with all my irrational longing that i never had but felt existed, somewhere, if only i could find it.

This is a strange time for a life. A strange in between time. Everything changes so quickly, shuffling elements spread out in bad patterns waiting for play. It's a waiting time, and the wait can be worse than any end of a line.

The next life. i have wished so many people off as so many of us have gotten spilled out in mismatched fragments of coordinating space and time.
A solid meeting of eyes, maybe with a slight nod or near smile. Next time. i will remember part of this and next time i will remember, some part of this endures.

Part of you will always be the Prettiest Girl of All Time, and i hope it tumbles out in a stuttered moment that we laugh away, as you relax into a zen state prone to easy smiles of a body alive and aware of it, invigorated by the fact of it. How time passes in stone blocks of sunlight trapping dust like amber and a still warmth filling in the spaces, so there is no time lost or wasted, but spread out like honey, preserved forever against harm, crystallized and safe.
When you choose to break that spell, rising from restoration, the next moment will hold all manner of possibilities for your next best adventure.

Voices can never drown you out. When the clarion rings, heads tilts, ears perk--

We Await Silent

Come On, Eileen was popular when i was 11? 12? at a time when the word tween never existed but Judy Bloom was prevalent. This joke made me adverse to the song for the same reason i didn't like Sexual Healing, but then that song i later loved and still do. Come on, Eileen is more steeped in nostalgia with their stupid inside out clothes and videos and video games with an arcade across the street from school.
Nineties nostalgia still creeps me out because so many people didn't let go of it.
It's not nostalgia if it's your everyday life.

This whole time when Bees has been hanging out by the front door, i didn't know she was listening to the baby across the hall.
i didn't know there was a baby across the hall.
There was one next door for a while we also never saw, and so dubbed Robot Baby, because for all we knew, it was a robot baby. At one point he made bloopy beep bloop sounds and i drew a little picture of him that is lying around in the clutter somewhere.
For about six months she's been hanging out there for no reason i could figure out. i wonder if the baby knows she's there, too.

i gleefully indulge in a kicky crunchy fall, a bright spring, even the occasional torching green summer, but winter holds my heart and mind in a way that i don't fully understand.
There are reasons that might explain bits of why, but it's something clean and cold that tests the mettle and lets snow fall, something i miss when it's away.
Signal clarity is up and voices carry. Something peaks in being challenged on such a basic level.
There is nothing wrong with being alone in your burrow.
Holing up with limited company is expected.
Weather is an event.
Single snowflakes shimmer with fleeting beauty, together they stop human traffic.
Making most things still is a feat and an art reserved for a privileged few.
Being still an art available to all, yet easier then, and motion always in reach for a reward.
It can bite and burn and slap, but even when it has overstayed its welcome, i know how much i will wait for it to come back.
It is enduring.
And that is love.

Get ready to take down the lights.
The Christmasness will be being sucked from the playlist in a few hours, at which point you should turn off the Christmas special repeats and apparently do like the advertisers want and get ready for fall as you have your last barbeques.
Not sure what it will sound like yet.

Video hasn't been working properly for a bit now, where it does this oh so frustrating thing of not playing the last part of whatever i'm trying to watch (ironically right now, the trailer for Watchmen), but that's only a part of the wide array of dysfunction i've been witnessing. It's sporadic, as consistency would make it far too easy to figure out or deal with in any fashion, but today has run the gamut of glitchy misbehaviors.
Stepping back from any practical annoyance, i've come to appreciate one completely unintended effect: the Truffautesque freeze frame, usually on the most unflattering transitional expression a person could make, or some midpoint moment that would otherwise be overlooked if it wasn't frozen on my screen, fraught with anticipation of action.
A world of wait and wonder opens up in that still image of crystallized plasma fire (or Slut Machine's rictus response to some truly questionable question) drawing out the possibilities of what might happen next while undermining its necessity.
A lock of hair floats midmotion. Smoke burns itself into actual form. A flickering expression is made to bear the full brunt of scrutiny, crinkled noses and all, subtle glances not so subtle, and an arm that might hurl forward or pull back is caught curling just enough to cradle the background in an accidental embrace. That light fixture has never been so loved. No, really. It wasn't meant to be. It didn't happen that way, wasn't suppose to be like that at all, to anyone, for anyone, and at any other moment, no one would ever have noticed, even when the stop
start stop
starting started to make the flow into bleating ticker tape, that particular morse code of images being tapped out most probably will never occur again.

Hitting pause to find the right images isn't the same, but the variables of some low resolution players can give you a wide variable of results, even the perfect shot, the one you want that says it all.

Sometimes it makes getting a video to play feel like an achievement, for all the angst and effort going into wanting it to work, and sometimes it's about what you see along the way.

Sometimes a well placed, if spontaneous, pause is a good place to stop, or start.

from the unseen ice cream truck nearly fooled me.
Could it be that all this time that gothic sound plucking out like metal teeth on an old comb was just a crippled rendition of "Pop Goes The Weasel," slow and tired, barely grinding out the notes that hung, having wound their way to me?
No.
Shame on you. Trying to fool me will do no good as you Polly Wolly Doodle all the day.
Maybe today in the bright cool air your batteries are charged and your wires fixed.
Maybe yesterday someone gave you the swift kick and fine tuning necessary for your new fangled music box to play whatever preprogrammed selections you were born with, already lost to the distance of a block around one too many corners to hear.
i will find your maker.
i will find your songs.
i will know what slowed and icy tune you could barely warble out your gadgetry in the chill spring and i will know of you all i need of you.
i will then leave you like every careless wrapper in your wake.
Unless.
Maybe they ripped out your old throat and forced in the new.
Maybe you were usurped by this plucky interloper and its canned ditties.

i may never know what or why that music was
but that it was
is all that matters now.

It's lucky to not be able to hold a thing too fixed in hand.
It keeps one from being tied to tightly to lines
that ape the shape of right and wrong
with unnecessary exactitude
and none of the spirit.

without a jet--
encapsulated travel...
temporal exemption?

There should be a perfect exact word for it, with proper latin -fixes and everything.

Coming to grips with strange present realities

"What's 200? Is it like 300?
"It's not 200. It's Zoo."
Pause.
"So, is Zoo like 300?"
"I'm pretty sure they have almost nothing in common."
"Almost?"
"I'd have to see 300 to be absolutely sure."

note to self
Finish that bit on the continuum of arts and varying stages of outside attention.

Of course this is all most basically a note to myself.
Watchoo lookin' at?
*waves*

Your screeching child might have more value according to the law, but it's still upsetting my cat.
Me, too, and everyone else with ears, but the cat's quite disconcerted at you both fighting so very audibly, the same way you have before, apparently about the same thing.
See, i'm almost positive she's not going to aid in the cure for cancer, but i feel safe saying that about your kid, too.
But, i'm absolutely sure she's never going to be blowing some guy in the hallway for crank
SO I WIN.

Psychosis is "a loss of contact with reality," and more and more it seems some people are allowed to be psychotic as long as it conforms to certain familiar, "harmless" clichés: the clueless drunk, the neurotic housewife, the obsessive hobbyist, etc.
There is a certain special tremor that goes through me now when i hear that phrase, "You're such a good listener," or "I had such a good time," so very ripe with genuine feeling, knowing full well it had nothing to do with me.
[To be continued when she stops making that sound]

Again?
Again.
It's only been a week.

Wanna know what it's like trying to set up a "date" for "the little woman"?

First, you gotta find someone with a neutered cat.
Then, you gotta find someone with a neutered cat who would be awake and coherent on a Saturday morning, as it's Saturday morning when, as Popeye says, i "can't takes no more."
Next, you have to broach the topic in a plausible manner.

After hearing me on the phone in some ultimately loud, weird conversations, she come up to me, puts out both paws in my lap and rests her head on my leg, giving me the big eyes, and then a big sigh.

She is so much easier to deal with than people who would normally be up on a Saturday morning.
Especially ones who think heat is something i made up.

Imagine your three year old has suddenly got crazy PMS; that's kind of what it's like.
Something's wrong and she doesn't understand and she needs a hug.
She's also crampy and wants to eat a lot, maybe scream a little, maybe throw stuff.
i think she's been very good about it but i'm still not sure what that odorless disappearing stain was after her tummy rub.
Poor kid. We go to the doctor in two weeks. You'll never have to go through this again.

Still, it's like we're bonding over her period.
Which is much nicer than having your mom totally forgetting to ever explain that bit to you and then being all hellaciously annoyed it happened all of a sudden (even though the exact same thing happened with the first kid, which you might think would teach her, but no--)

You know the one? Where everything looks like the normal everyday chores of existence but feels like the creeping horror of a discomfort not unlike an expanding balloon of vinegar in your chest until the tears won't stop and there is no escape?

Luckily, a computer came to our rescue and we escaped somewhat in tact.

Jesus Christ, your birthday sucks.

God, i love this monkey.
i want a pigeon to love.
Still.
*weeps*

Why can't you do it? Wht can't you set my monkey free?

I'd just made the comment that i found Mad Men so well done it offended me, when some college kid out of nowhere decided to interject that nothing offended him ever, that it was impossible to offend him. Well, for some reason, i have to think at least part of that comes from being a privileged white male who hasn't experienced much of anything, not even mentioning racism, sexism, the downside of misogyny-- i just stopped talking altogether and didn't even bother to finish my thought, about how i was struck by how well this show was done because i was responding to the actors as if this is how they were, that this misogynistic comment was so purely given that i felt the raw offense of it, that the racist statements made so easily and off hand bother me because i feel like they really mean it, or more precisely, that they think it's all okay. Maybe it's all a misty period piece to some people but it's just not all that long ago to me, these words and ideas, and i'm not that goddamn old.
While it was all more frankly open when i was a child, it's not missing in my adulthood, and i find it endlessly odd that people can think racism and misogyny are relics of some bygone era, but invariably these are sheltered white kids.
And no one is more boring that sheltered white kids. Really. They are a goddamn menace and something needs to be done about them. It's not just the white kids but privileged kids in general. They're a hazard to any half decent conversation and the death of all things interesting, with their gawking, gawping insistences on having every aspect of a thing explained to them, so freakishly entitled that they expect one to not only explain the entire background and history of a thing to them so they can understand, it but to have it told to them in their own specific dialect and dialectic or else they have some apparent right to throw their hands up in the air in preprogrammed frustration. The most "willing to learn" are the most taxing and incessantly annoying in their need to pester, the world just waiting to answer them.
Goddamn menace, i say. Sad thing is, a good blow to the head and stretch of deprivation might just do them in all together. Maybe that isn't such a bad thing. The amount of flailing and floundering without the most obsessive compulsive level of detailed instruction--
--which segueways quite naturally into talking about Flipping Out. This show disturbs me in a wholely different way.
The nostalgic period setting of Mad Men is a large part of its appeal for me, the glamour and style of the time and its naivete. Playing against those things gives it the ability to repeatedly slap me in the face with the factual aspects that go unmentioned in its rosy mythology, how deathly those stigmas stung then when closets and closed doors were a form of protection from actual ramifications of the sins of being different.
Flipping Out makes me squirm for so many reasons, but when it makes me laugh i know i have entered Jeff's weird world view and come out the other side. Unlike Mad Men, i never go out of my way to catch it, it just happens to happen, and once it happens i become eerily entranced. i not only know people like him, i know people who would desperately love to be him had they the means. That's what freaks me out while simultaneously giving me a sense of narrow escape relief. The fake world desperately trying to be both constructed and maintained and both a little more tangible and psychotic on this show: the creations are attainable and attained in what is made and bought and sold but the ideals are completely illogical, inconsistent and frankly insane. If the surface could be maintained, if the most superficial aspects of life could be made to consistently conform to this man's demands, he would move on to the next level of extremes to nitpick upon, anything, anything to keep from having to dip below the surface and deal with the uneven motions beneath. Here a man is in endless construction of a veneer while in the other men are either trying to patch one and in discovery that it is just an outside to a whole worth within its maintenance.
His eyes brim with fear or are dead with his own idiot logic, and when he lashes out i want him cuffed with a filthy nail studded cudgel.
To me there is a gut twisting horror in watching someone with OCD twist, and twist words and the world with a need to control for the sake of control itself. It is disturbing in far too familiar an extreme, having known so many people in so many positions in so many degrees of affliction. There is something balder in Jeff, where one sees how he is somewhat aware of how he is and how it might be wrong, except of course he is always right. He has to be, or he'd live as a balled up fist for the rest of his life. If it wasn't something familiar to me i would avoid it like the plague, because it is, it just makes me glad i am at a great distance from this actual person, but part of me wonders what the people i know who are like him think of the show. And part of me knows and is similarly horrified and disgusted.
In my personal experience, only one out of seven OCD people are actually clean. They are usually so obsessed with things looking clean, things are not actually clean, and/or they are so grossed out by things not being clean they don't clean or are too overwhelmed by the lack of cleanliness. What they really want are people to clean things for them and to be able to point things out and boss people around to do things they don't want or would never do themselves. Jeff illustrates this beautifully.

It's not just television that's made me all flinchy, but it certainly is not helping. Whether good or bad television, i don't think this is the kind of muscle movement that's good for me.
All these entitled white boys are getting on my nerves.
Oh, yeah, that was the point, the inexperienced yet privileged interrupting my life with their worthless commentary. There's no outrage like fresh outrage, first time out of the box. Someone wake me once they've lost that new rage smell and had some sense knocked around the block for a while. If it doesn't happen, we'll go over for cocktails and cut a few deals. They'll never know what hit 'em. i hope i get a few licks in before they get all the fight beaten out of their tiny sails. They're been aground, aren't meant for sea, and don't have anywhere to go, not that they have to, anyway.