Sunday, August 31, 2003

the people in my family make me angry. a universal truth i know but that doesn't make it any more or less true. they treat me like an incompetent fool, and i am, i just don't like acknowledging it. i am worthless.

question of the day: am i alone? i wonder if anyone else exists, if the world started when i did and plans to end when i end. because if that is true, then it wouldn't matter either way. i would be the only person in the world something more than a simple consequence of fate, and yet i would never know it. still, it is incredibly arrogant of me to hold myself to such importance. the funny thing is that it would be similarly arrogant to think the converse: that i am the only person meant for absolutely nothing. "...in his arrogance more anxious for the fate of the world than for himself" (to paraphrase anyway). i don't know what to think, i suppose just like everyone else i have a fear of being stuck in the middle, perfectly average, neither a failure or success. i'm afraid that in the end, when i die, that the world will stay the same. but it's not a fear at all unfounded, in fact when i die the world will stay the same, the best i can hope for is to be a tragedy, who's impact last for a few months, nothing more than a blip on the screens of history. and the fact is that nothing i could do could ever make me really truly matter, i can tell i was not designed to be a great man. *ponders and explodes*

now here is a story (not by me):

"So one day I began collecting: I urinated into a large jar. I masturbated and scooped my ejaculate into a second jar. I took a knife from the drawer and made an incision on the end of my finger and squeezed the blood in thin trickles and fat drops into a third jar. I sat down with a fourth jar on my lap, and thought of sad things. Then I wept into the jar. I repeated these actions every evening, each fluid into its appointed jar. After a month, I emptied the contents of the jars into small saucepans, which I heated carefully until I had evaporated the liquid. When the pans had cooled, I scraped the residue, with the aid of a funnel, into separate salt cellars. I then tasted each of my personal salts, judging which would go best with what food.
My experiment was a resounding success. The salts seemed to impart a subtle intensity to spicy dishes, and a freshness and zest to even the most homely soup. And so my restaurant began to attract many more patrons as increasing numbers of adulatory reviews appeared in some of the Sunday supplements.
Obviously, I had to continue to produce the salts that had made my culinary creations such overnight successes. My establishment was now being patronised by celebrities as well as politicians and the merely rich.
My difficulty lay chiefly with eliciting sadness on demand. On some nights I would sit in my chair, the fourth jar on my lap, and start laughing with joy at the success of my restaurant. I would have to force myself to envisage a starving child or departing lover. I knew that there was boundless, ceaseless suffering on this Earth, but I found it more and more difficult to identify with it myself, while the prestige of my restaurant grew higher, and with it my bank balance. I found that the most efficacious manner of forcing tears from my eyes was to think of love; loves lost, love's tragedies, and love's hopelessness.
And so it was that I began to have trouble with the second jar. Latterly, my attempts at masturbation were rather more difficult, as my erotic thoughts staggered and tumbled into the despair I needed for the fourth jar. Not infrequently, I found it impossible to distinguish between sorrow and love.
After five months, I caught myself ejaculating into my lap, upon which rested the jar meant for tears. I began to find sorrow arousing, and could not cry without getting an erection. Conversely, I could not find a woman attractive without starting to weep. I worried about my salts, for my supplies were running low. Moreover, the quality of the salt from the first jar was beginning to decline, as I attempted to find solace in alcoholic abandon. I would drink deeply; and laugh, and cry. But my urine suffered. It became thin and pale, copius but worthless. The salt I extracted was tasteless.
The reputation of my restaurant would keep its fortunes bouyant for a while, but I knew that sooner, rather than later, the decline in the quality of the seasonings would be noted. I sank lower into despair. I could not run the terrible risk of sharing my secret with anyone else. I had only one reliable source of salt - that which filled the third jar. The third jar never ran out. The menu had to reflect this, and there was a preponderance of rich, red, meaty dishes, lavishly enhanced with the salt of my blood, trickled - or sometimes drunkenly spurted, gushed - from my fingers, thumbs, wrists or arms every evening.
But I was weakening. My drinking was becoming uncontrollable, I would involuntarily orgasm during the news, and burst into tears at the most inopportune moments. The constant bloodletting was making me anaemic. I resolved to return to the formula that had won my eaterie so many plaudits. Determinedly, I researched the most emotionally draining novels, the most haunting poems. I ejaculated again and again into the second jar. I drank pure fruit juice and mineral water and produced once again the golden, viscous urine that filled the first jar. I wept uncontrollably, for three-quarters of a hour, with a pornographic magazine propped in front of me. And I took the sharpest knife and drew one widening red line across my wrist.
The banquet was a success."
- Stanley Donwood

if i could write like that i would die happy.

Saturday, August 30, 2003

i just found eighty dollars that i thought i had lost. i am happy. *smile*
physical labor, t'is a bitch. i don't like my step dad, but i guess that kinda goes without saying. yesterday was an interesting day. a very normal day can turn very melodramatic very quickly without anything happening. i have way too many internal conversations. i've also just realized how much the poem from yesterday sucks. i need to work on my rhythm, no, i need to get out of this gosh dern slump first.

i need a life.

if i win
then everything's lost,
the sun turns bitter,
the lights frosty,
and the windows soft.
i melt, i burn
it's a sad day

nope i don't have it back quite yet. anyone who happens upon this blog should listen to the band Interpol. i'm going to go suckily play some guitar. i need lessons, i'm not talented enough to teach myself. a tell tale sign really. i'm not going anywhere.

Friday, August 29, 2003

this is new, and kinda stupid. i'll probably stop in a little under than a week, but that's ok.

to start us off

everything is seeming more and more like a big joke, but i'm not happy. i'm not happy like i should be anyway. life doesn't suck..consistently, and that's normally quite good for me. not to say that i've had so many hardshits or whatever that i have developed low expectations for life (no that's just the cynicism), or that i have a high tolerance for pain or (even worse)mundanity, because i have no such thing. i simply don't need things to be wonderful to be happy, you know, i'm lucky like that.

anyway, maybe i should just ride whatever this is out, but i've gotten to the point where i can't even get it out by writing. i love to write more than anything else, and i'm getting kinda good at it. the fact that i can't do it successfully anymore worries me, i want this to stop. school is driving me insane, which may be part of the problem. it makes me feel inadequate, i need to stop taking the god damn smart classes. i know what i am, i'm just trying to fool myself. too many people to be so much better than me in so many ways, i don't deserve my friends, they're all so frickin' smart, among other things. i hang out with people who are witty, intellegent, pretty attractive for the most part, and incredibly charming when they want to be. they just happen to all be too fucked up to know it, or too arrogant/too much of an asshole to use it for good.

then there's -----------censures are nice people, really, i'm one of them-----------the guy whose life is like most others, a living, breathing, walking, and talking cliche. i like being black just fine, but i'm starting to think i shoulda been born a skinny white kid. maybe this is the problem, that self esteem shizzle sneaking up on me again. maybe i think i should go somewhere, running is ok if you plan on coming back.

oh, here's some crap from my pre writing slump.

things are humming
i can feel the sea
the war of it
black and dotted with bones and teeth

people
submachine
i need time to build up to you
time will not run for me

time will not run for me
forget that it burns for me
time will not run for me
sucker n' punchin me

the streets are sunny
that keeps bringing me back
when time will not run for me
riding high.