JiVE

Digital

2011-10-23T00:46:00.001-07:00

Captain Bryce Duncan wakes up at 5:14 a.m., approximately one minute before the alarm clock on his left-side nightstand is programmed to jolt him from his sleep. Taking advantage of the opportunity to spare his wife Julie the annoyance of having her own sleep interrupted more than two hours earlier than her own programmed alarm clock, Bryce disengages the alarm function and carefully extracts himself from his comfortable queen-size bed. Sneaking stealthily away from the bedroom, down the hallway to the tan-carpeted living room, Bryce performs fifty rapid but fully extended pushups in his underwear before going into the bathroom and grooming himself for work. After a light breakfast of Cheerios and milk, Bryce returns to the bedroom, puts on his uniform and kisses his wife on the cheek—who has been in and out of sleep ever since her husband moved out of bed. Bryce prays a silent prayer for his wife before kissing her once more and making his way to the garage, where he gets into the car that he will directly pilot forty-three miles across the desert to the Air Force base, where he will sit at an advanced computer station to indirectly pilot an armed aircraft over the desert skies of Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Pakistan, or Yemen, or—

Kevin Lintman wakes up at 6:50 a.m. to the sound of his mother’s stern voice and rapping knuckles on the other side of his bedroom door. He tries to ignore the disturbance and falls asleep for a further two-and-a-half minutes before his mother opens the door and commands him in an even sterner voice to remove his person from his comfortable twin bed. Kevin slowly extracts himself from the bed, his mind depressed with thinking of the monotony and social awkwardness he most assuredly will experience for the next six-and-a-half hours spent primarily at Grover Cleveland Middle School, located five blocks to the west of his home. With his mind processing remembered interactions from the previous day, meanwhile processing imagined interactions for the quickly approaching future, Kevin shuffles in his cotton pajamas down the hallway to the bathroom and perceives—amidst his simultaneously processing memories and imaginings—a physical dizziness more substantial than his typical morning drowsiness. Relaying this perception aloud to his mother, Mrs. Lintman hurries into the bathroom and proceeds to gauge her son’s temperature via thermometer. Having registered a body temperature of ninety-nine degrees Fahrenheit, Mrs. Lintman makes the executive decision to excuse Kevin from attending classes, in the hopes that a day of physical rest will cure the boy of his ailment. Mrs. Lintman prays a quick spoken prayer before kissing her son goodbye and leaving the house for a day of work while Kevin boots up his Xbox 360 and begins to play a military simulation game that has him pretending to shoot terrorist insurgents and bomb pixilated enemy targets over Afghanistan, and Russia, and Brazil, and—

Amir Mohamed wakes up at 11:13 p.m. to the sound of a MIDI ringtone blaring from the Motorola cell phone he shoved under his pillow before laying down to sleep a little less than an hour ago. Agitated and annoyed, he nevertheless scrambles to answer the call and talks briefly to his uncle Rahim who has been giving him some easy work on the side delivering packages to his business associates around and about the city. Heeding the urgent and near incomprehensible tone of his uncle’s voice through the receiver, Amir scrambles from his comfortable white-sheeted mattress and tiptoes down the hall past the opened bedroom of his father—a bricklayer by trade who employs his son and disapproves of his brother’s dealings with the boy. Stepping into the warm night air, Amir jogs around to the alley behind the house, where he jumps onto the motorcycle that he pilots about two miles to his uncle’s mansion on the outskirts of the city. Along the way, as he darts among the thoroughfares and side streets, past scores of shuttered storefronts and silent residences, his mind replays a scolding received from his father, ponders the mysterious brazenness of his uncle’s recent behavior and his increasingly erratic schedule. When Amir greets his uncle with an enthusiastic apology for his delayed arrival, his kind words are met with curses and sarcasm. Rahim supplies his nephew with a large envelope, an address and a stern warning not to entrust the package to anyone other than a man bearing a certain appearance that Rahim describes and reiterates three times before sending Amir on his way. About three blocks from his uncle’s house, Amir looks again at the address and remembers delivering a package to the same location weeks earlier. It was a farmhouse about three miles outside the city proper, where the man of the house had two gorgeous daughters who both laughed at Amir when he nervously jumped aside as a large, friendly goat ran up to inspect him. Amir drives and imagines marrying the elder daughter and learning from his wife how to raise goats and teaching his wife how to drive a motorcyle. He thinks about all of the things he has failed to understand and experience by living all of his life within a city instead of on a farm. As he leaves the city streets for the country road, Amir begins to worry about finding his way. He looks for landmarks on the sides of the road but sees only an expanse of darkness under a moonless night sky. He turns down a road, still uncertain of his bearings and turns down yet another road he thinks is the one that leads to the farmhouse. When he gets to the end of the road he smells smoke. A plume appears to be rising from the spot where a house should be. Amir looks around and moves closer. He can feels the ground sloping in front of him and realizes he is descending into a crater. He touches the ground, which feels neither hot nor cold. Amir, frightened, runs back to his bike, which he pilots back in the direction of the city. All along the way Amir tries to reach his uncle, who is not answering his phone. Amir finds his way back to the city and his father’s house, where he sleeps for the remainder of the night. In the morning he wakes up early and hurries outside to his motorcycle. Amir realizes, for the first time, he has lost his uncle’s package. It being a weekend, Amir gets on his motorcyle and drives to an Internet café ten blocks away. In the hazy sub-basement building he sits at the computer station in the farthest corner of the room and scours the news for anything that might relate to his confusing experience. Mouse in hand, Amir follows link after link. He reads about current events in India, in Israel, in the United States. He gets distracted and searches for threads of information that lead to nowhere.

House of Discovery

2008-11-28T16:31:00.000-08:00

When I build a house, it will have many secret passageways that only a few people will know how to find. Doors hidden behind bookcases and narrow tunnels between bedrooms. There would be tiny compartments underneath the floorboards — covered by Venetian rugs — and in them I would keep exotic trinkets and artifacts from long forgotten civilizations.

I'd also incorporate dumbwaiters and various chutes where visiting children could whisk their toys into various other realms and dimensions.

Fires would burn in each of the parlors and living rooms. Warm-stoned mantles and a fluffy cat to sprawl in front of it — such would be a common sight in my house, never failing to influence a smile on the faces of all who peak inside the various upstairs rooms.

You could find me very often in my study, working diligently at my mahogany desk and always eager for the interruption of a long-missed visitor. You would come in and peruse the hard-bound folios of my personal library and ask me about my latest projects, the exploits of ongoing expeditions around the globe. I would invite you to the terrace where we would enjoy a cup of tea, all while admiring the peacocks traversing the lawn below — or the changing shades of yellow and green foliage on the distant mountains.

Before building the house, I would bless the ground, doing my best to calm the spirits of those who had settled and wandered there before me. I would welcome them to haunt the stairwells, to make funny faces at people as they gazed on the looking glass in the washing rooms.

And once I had journeyed on from this earthly station, I would hope to have my remains carried down to the glen below the ridge, left to bask in the open meadow where the sun hits at morning, resting in the matronly evening shadow of my former home.

The grandchildren would tell stories to their grandchildren of the benevolent lord who once took them on candlelit adventures through the network of hidden portals, an entire labyrinth — a second residence — within the walls of the hillside manor. Visitors and subsequent residents would be discovering new treasures and secrets for generations to come.

My little sun chip

2008-10-02T22:13:00.000-07:00

Hey, I've noticed you around. But, no, wait! Not in that creepy-vibe manner of speaking. Let me start over.

I like you.

You've got a real style about you that always makes me feel like a charmed, sly observer, admiring how you move about the different spaces you inhabit — rugged, urban, domestic or otherwise. I don't suppose you've ever really watched yourself in the third person. Has anyone ever described to you your sprightly gait (as I shall like to call it)?

There's a real bounce to your step, but very light. Mmmhhmmm (that means "yes?")? It's as if each step you take is an exuberant leap (in miniature, of course), followed by a gentle parachute landing (your cute little skirts come in handy). Repeat that several times in fast forward and you have an idea — maybe — of what I'm talking about.

Just visiting

2008-08-02T14:37:00.000-07:00

This place has ambiance you can't deny. There are little details in the spacing and placement of things. To be honest, they don't all make a lot of sense when you think about it.

And when I think about it, these chairs are uncomfortable. And that pizza isn't really settling well.

Another Veemas miracle!

2008-06-25T23:12:00.000-07:00

I have seen the light. And it's iridescent.

I was nearing sleep, just last night, my thoughts a stone's throw from a wide chasm of nothingness. Numb. Defeated.

Turning in my bed, my closed eyes sensed the faintest of glowing, slowly intensifying like the nearing sunrise through a glass darkly. A pulsing energy emerged from within my hands and feet. But I dared not move, frozen suddenly and completely in a moment of suspicious fear.

My mind's eye drew the outline of a snowman, an image that soon grew in clarity and seemed to burn like a cattle brand on the inside of my eyelids.

The image, a mere outline in red, morphed a pair of red outlined eyes. And from the eyes there drew a nose, and from the nose a smiling mouth. And then the picture on my brain began to melt as if in sunlight, until all that remained was a smiling effigy. I chuckled.

I opened my eyes and saw a glowing from the crack between the closet doors at the other end of my room. My orbs widened like a child's as I watched a fantastic orgy of red, orange, yellow and green light that crept like swirling tendrils from behind the narrow opening. These tendrils stretched to the floor in front of my cluttered dresser, digging into the carpet like roots in soil. From there, almost immediately, an unshapely blueness began to sprout. It became like a translucent indigo pod. All the colors of the rainbow surged and boiled like water within this pod.

And then it spoke, addressing me in a new name (one I'm sure I had never heard but understood with a sense of recognition that I can only liken to instinct).

"Hello, (my name)," it said. "Happy Veemas."

The pod burst in a brilliant display of color from which I had to turn away. And there he was, Mr. Sneezlebums, legendary patron of Veemas, in all his purple glory.

Note: Veemas, or V-mas, occurs every year on June 25, half of X-mas, or Christmas, which (as you know) is recognized each year on December 25. Public schools discontinued teaching and celebrating the pagan holiday of Veemas mostly during the late 1960s. For more information, research the landmark 1966 Supreme Court case, Bailey v. the State of Indiana.

I tried to respond but found I could not speak. It was also then that I realized my arms were spread wide like wings, hands still surging with a foreign energy. My legs stretched out stiff, and my feet likewise pulsed.

For what seemed like a small eternity, Mr. Sneezlebums spoke to me in a language I do not recall. He was imparting to me three gifts:

1. Insight: We are more than our eyes can see, part of an existence more expansive than the seeming confines of space and time. The things we do ripple infinitely in a manner that disrupts and affects every living and non-living thing.

2. Purpose: Mr. Sneezlebums breathed on the tip of his cane and touched it gently, first to my feet, then to my two hands. Then he took his cane and traced a circle in the air, a portal. Within the portal was a destination I do not remember. The journey to that place was not a straight path in the physical sense but nevertheless represented a definitive culmination of actions and interactions that would ripple in such a way as to arrive at the image before me. He charged me to follow that path, and I said, "I will." It was the only thing I was able to speak.

3. Glory: But it was not my own.

I experienced rapture, and then blackness...

My alarm rang this morning, but I must have slept through it. I'd overslept by about a half hour. It had been a pleasant visitation, but my thoughts already were reverting to anxiety of the pressing labors before me. I approached my dresser to get ready for work and stepped on something cold and hard.

I looked down and saw a small lump of coal. The bottom of my left foot was smeared black. Mr. Sneezlebums, I thought, what happened?

The symbol puzzled me. Actually, it still does. A coal, after all, is like deadness, expended carbon.

But I thought more along the same train of thought. I thought of the coal as once burning. I thought of the fire that once consumed the black object. I thought of the transformation. That fire, that life, did not fizzle and die but emerged and transcended the object into an intangible but real energy that will ripple to infinite. I also thought that after a million or billion years of incredible pressure and time, what now is a lump of coal could become a diamond. I'm still not sure.

All I know for certain (and I think it's good enough) is that we are special. Happy Veemas to all and to all a good night.

Lost Dogs

2007-05-29T15:15:00.000-07:00

I woke up to a sharp feeling on the back of my bare shoulder the other morning. It was the sting from a senile old bee. I probably flicked him away in the immediate daze of my interrupted dream, but I saw him again later in the day.

I think he was making the same witless journey across my bed that my slumbering presence had obstructed earlier that morning. He was a fat orange specimen, and ancient I assume (much my distinguished elder in bee years), creeping awkwardly across the undulating folds of my comforter.

I prefer to call him senile because of another puzzling encounter with a bee I had had in that room while visiting home weeks earlier. I was sitting in my room when I began to hear a frantic buzzing sound, the recognizable noise of insect wings slamming into walls, of a bee attempting flight in confined quarters. It went on for several minutes above my head, probably inside some crack in the walls of my parents' log cabin. Eventually the creature emerged, its enormous (even larger than the old guy that stung me I think) body appearing to be weighed down by hanging dustballs, as if it has just sprung from bee prison. I flicked the lights on and off to trick the bee over to my bedroom windows, which I opened for the bee's release.

Maybe an hour later, however, I heard the same chainsaw-like buzzing from the same corner. And the same Jacob Marley bee began to careen around the room in its hindered phantom flight. I released it again, hoping it would finally learn its lesson.

I'm tempted to want to believe that the bastard that stung me was the same confused bee from before. When I was much younger I was playing with my older sister behind the old horse stable shed, an area of our property that we didn't often visit. I was underneath a mysterious tree. During the spring its bushy top blooms full in brilliant white flowers. But it's a gnarly skeleton of a tree, with these wicked dead vines hanging vertically from its own canopy like witch's hair.

I remember being under this tree when the scariest looking spider I have ever seen descended a branch. I remember it was the color of fossilized bone with pointy crab-like legs, probably as big in diameter as my young palm. I fled terrified. Years later I was near the same spot with our mutt of a dog. He was rustling like a good mutt in the tall grass. I remember seeing him squirm his head, his dog face in a grimace as if from an uncomfortable itch. I watched him scratch his ear, and would you believe it? Suddenly what had to be the same legendary white spider from years earlier was crawling across my poor dog's snout. I fled again, afraid for a few moments that the spider might sicken or kill the dog with a venomous bite.

I can't explain to you the strange respect I had for that curmudgeon of a bee. Something about watching it make its wearied rounds across its lifelong territory.

Later that night I went to a concert in an old theater building in Tacoma, Wash. The headlining band was an old Christian folk/country/alternative group, comprising three musicians who had begun their careers in separate musical groups long before this already ragtag trio. They are called The Lost Dogs, and what a fitting name. There were these three haggard men on stage, two of whom rested their old eyes behind sunglasses, singing their songs - none of which I recognized - telling old-fashioned stories of abandoned dreams and God knows what else. I'd noticed on their Web site the day before that they had just toured from some shows on the East Coast days earlier. They were an odd respectable presence, making the same rounds across the American landscape as they had probably been doing for decades.

We mourn the memory of lost dogs, but what does that mean to a dog? Have you ever noticed how even the tamest, most loyal of canines can wander away from home. The slightest whim or distraction - maybe a scent, perhaps the triggered dog thought of an old buried bone - and a dog wanders off. If you're lucky you or someone else finds the stinker strolling contentedly across a field on the other side of town, oblivious to the notion that it's actually "lost."

Who was anyone to tell these humble three gentlemen that their era had come and gone? That their legacy was a old tapestry, rapidly fading?

That bee was definitely senile, an ornery bumpkin with no reason or reasoning capacity to bother with the thought that it shouldn't sting me on its stubborn northern journey.

My parents began burning the wood of the old rotted tree house yesterday before I left, a cute little playhouse where my sister and I used to slide down from, where we played with plastic food toys. It was once a real tree house, with wallpaper, a flowerbed windowsill and fake domestic furnishing. What it was isn't really important anymore. It hasn't been an important place to me in probably close to 20 years. It's gone now. It collapsed this past winter during a windstorm, fell to the ground from between the two massive cedar trunks where it was once proudly perched.

I roasted two hot-dogs over the coals of the fire. Nothing ceremonial. I was too much in an frantic hurry to be on my way and get working on a piece of writing that was due this morning.

I suppose the memory of that little house will come back to me decades from now, maybe as some unrecognizable picture in my mind of a red mailbox in the middle of the woods, or a fraying tire swing. Perhaps I'll be wandering the trail of a park or going about my own rounds as a wizened old hermit. I'll come to those two cedar trees (which will outlast me no matter how long I live) and insist in some loony babble to my grandchildren or whoever is nearby about an old tree house that's missing from the spot or the picture in my mind.

Senility, I believe, may be the reward of old age. A transaction of our old ways for the new. Anxiety for blissful ignorance. Hurried commutes for meaningless wanderings. Repose. Long-deserved peace as a witless fool.

I wonder what became of that old spider. I'd like to interview him and write his life's story. That tree behind the old shed will always be its kingdom in my memory. A dark place of terrible knowledge for which I may have been the wiser to have experienced, had I been a brave little boy instead of a coward. Were I to venture there once more, would I find him again? Would he invite me to his lair for tea and crumpets? Or would he just spout some nonsense, bare his fangs and terrify me one last time?

Eyelashes

2007-04-17T08:57:00.000-07:00

I have long eyelashes. The better to bat you with. It’s something I don’t get to appreciate as much as other people who can view my profile without the aide of mirrors. I think it’s supposed to make my eyes soft.

Close up, my eyelashes seem grotesquely insectoid, like centipede legs (or like the fraying of an 18th century English whore’s hairbrush). In the morning they split open like two crusty cocoons, my left eye slightly faster than my right. But every day my left eye squanders its birthright for a good rub. Thus it’s cursed with astigmatism. At least that’s the story passed around by the scholars.

During the summer the fleas slide down my eyelashes and plunge into my cereal. In the dead of winter my eyelashes form icicles that scratch the surface of my eyeballs when I sleep so that I wake up red-eyed and passersby think I’m strung out and homeless. I just let them wonder. Long eyelashes conceal my eyes as well as my mysterious intentions.

Green eyeballs and long eyelashes. They would have branded me a wizard were I born in medieval times.

David Bowie. Jack the Ripper. Merlin. The prophet Jonah. They all had long eyelashes and green eyes (so did Rip Van Winkle and possibly Rip Torn, but don’t quote me on that).

We see the world through a darker filter. The stars glow fainter. Fire appears to burn less dangerously. We share more traits with the feline than the ape and curl up when we sleep. And we’re selfish as hell (something only we would brag about).

Do you want to touch them? Did you know that touching my eyelashes grants you three wishes? Did you know that the Nazis destroyed long eyelashes in great organized bonfires?

The eyes are the windows to the soul, and my eyelashes are the blinds. Or the prison bars.

Or are they the tuft of wild brush at the edge of the watering hole? Peer through the tall grass. Gaze into the pool and ponder your own reflection. What do you see?

Puff

2007-04-09T16:27:00.000-07:00

slow burn cancer stick
smoke blown cigarette
nicotine infected smile
yellow pearly marble wall

time dishonored sacred stone
feeble addict sitting home
lighted fuse in stoic mouth
dripping ashes all around

beautiful diffusing gas
incense rising past the trees
gray muzzled hoarsy throat
glossy aged eyes

front porch romantic night
moonbeams filtered light
moping full with sorrow songs
red orange burning spite

respite coming sleep or wake
pack of problems near
hold it in two fingers
and release the lungs

75th Post Tostitos Fiesta

2007-04-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

We're living la vida loca here at JiVE, celebrating the wildest literary feat since the invention of MAD LIBS. It's the 75th Post TOSTITOS Fiesta. Why not join us with a big bag of Flour TOSTITOS Tortilla Chips and Creamy Southwestern Ranch Dip, perfect for any occasion?

Sorry, we legally had to say that.

My oh my! I do believe it's been even longer between the 50 and 75 than the fisrt prolific 25 posts, but this has become a serious artistic (and commercial) endeavor. F'er can remember when he was a mere "newbie" blogger, the digital world at his fingertips. He had a lot of big crazy ideas, his mind pregnant with what he thought were revolutionary notions that the world actually gave a hoot about his daily manifestos.

Hopefully, what you are reading today is the reflection of a more mature rhetorician. Doubtful. So what have we learned since Post #50 anyway? We must ask ourselves, "What does it all mean?"

Perhaps the end of the post on November 22, 2006, F'er's review of Fast Food Nation, sums it up best:

"But as with cattle, it sometimes takes some uncomfortable prodding to move us from our complacency."

Heck, does F'er really want to be sitting here doing this right now? Maybe not, but he knows that when all is said and done, he and his readers will understand more of this crazy mixed up world than they did before.

But enough sulking, it's time to party! Let's divy out the awards.

1. Best Tearjerker Post:

Where Have All the Birthday Balloons Gone? (June 28, 2006)

F'er's essay on the injustices of the corporate mechanism takes the cake here. A boy forced to work on his birthday! O the humanity!

2. F'er's Biggest Breakthrough Performance:

Amateur Backyard Wildlife Photography (April 23, 2006)

This amateru endeavor was a near breakthrough on the national scene. Please you to notice that the bona fide author of Digital Art Photography for Dummies gave me props for my work.

3. Best Titled Post

hE:ll, SE:ll, BE:ll (Dec. 11, 2005)

Well this shows how lazy F'er has been for the last 25 posts, all the way back to '05. Geez. Anyway, this is the best title. I'll have you know that hell, sell and bell correspond to three different upside-down times on a digital clock. Time passing. Let's appreciate that for a moment.

OK.

Let's continue. This next one's for all the cherries.

4. Best Post

Cops and Dogs (April 2, 2006)

I like it. What can I say? A nice work of short non-fiction if I do say so myself. It will be compiled in the 2007 Compendium of Human Thought, published by TOSTIDOS Printing Group, New York. Look for it, kids.

Well that's all she wrote. I don't know about you but my mouth is really watering for some chips and salsa after all that chips and salsa I just ate. I'm gonna go make another snack run. BRB.

Another Gray Day

2007-02-27T17:17:00.000-08:00

The birds are out in numbers today, another gray morning. They scamper about as if at feeding, but what they are eating I cannot tell.

They seem to flee at my approach, constantly at a 10-foot radius from my gentle presence. Am I or they so unholy? What do they fear in me? What minds did God give these creatures that they fear me?

Somewhere above I begin to hear the wailing cries of an exodus of geese. I halt my steps and scan the featureless sky.

I spot the movement of the birds through the haze, and I wonder if anyone else has the sense to perceive them as well. A ‘V’ of unshapely phantoms crosses over the place where I stand. Another blurry cluster, and another, each of different number and organization. Swift black movements submerged in the fog above my head, barely visible. Gone.

Their departure reminds me of the sometimes desolation in my mind since you left, of the white blank that was once your photograph next to my bed.

The red brick road on which I walk is wide, lonely and I know where it goes. What I would pay to get back on that tour bus that travels through a foreign countryside, to watch the trees go by. To rest in other people’s homes. To be welcomed and to bring gifts. To make a new home in homelessness with whomever you are by my side.

Living in Gray

2007-02-06T18:45:00.000-08:00

When I walk down to the bus stop on a winter morning, I hope that the gray sky won’t suddenly stick to the gray earth, like a cruddy eye in sickness.

Though our eyelids shut, our eyes still see. So does the sun shine beyond the haze.

In dreams we live for pleasure’s sake, but in waking we cannot.

Alcohol is agitation. Sexual sin? Merely violence in pretty colors.

When the bar closes, I hope I’ll have had my fill. I hope that sleep will come swiftly, that my mind will not notice the body’s reconfiguration. I hope that when our sin is taken and it drops from the body to the hardwood floor, there will be a hollow resonance to satisfy our ears.

But that is complacence. If we could examine our sin like the earwax at the end of a Q-tip, would we mind the ugliness? Would it compel us more?

The joy that fills my cup is pure. It does not come from within but from above, like rain, like energy. If only I could put a bucket outside my door to collect what has fallen overnight, and shower in it. That would sustain me for a few days.

If I could attune myself to the goodness in the air, would I feel it or just have to believe? I notice that when I hold the TV antennae the reception becomes clearer, but I feel no different.

This joy, this energy penetrates the vast expanse of space, the winter cloud cover, the bedroom walls and the layer of skin that conceals mine eyes. It’s there. It finds me. Like a flower that opens to the light, in my better moments, sitting exhausted on a sofa, I let go of control and receive the joy of Heaven. My lips form a smile that nobody sees.

Here's looking at you, looking at me, kid (on MySpace)

2007-01-21T21:00:00.000-08:00

I’ve been sitting on a fairly vacant MySpace.com page for the past few weeks, unable to decide how I want to present myself to the Web-surfing masses. As of now my page has a picture of me — that deliberately obscures my face, mind you — and some information that gives away my age and geographical location. The rest is a big blank virtual canvas that I am hesitant to decorate. Should I even bother?

I look at the “about me” category on my profile, struggling to come up with something unique, honest and interesting to say. Maybe I should describe myself as an “over-analytical semi-conformist skeptic.” But then I would have to delete it. That’s pretty much how this Web site makes me feel.

If you find yourself scratching your head at this strange technological reference, then you probably don’t spend too much time around anyone who is currently enrolled in or dropped out of college or high school, or who works part time at the local mall or Dairy Queen. As far as I can tell, MySpace.com is the latest in a long series of controversial, cultural phenomena, such as rock ’n’ roll and violent video games, which has descended upon our youth much to the “naysaying” of politicians and concerned parents.

The premise of MySpace.com is this: you sign up with an e-mail login and password that gives you access to your very own digital space, where you basically use a template to create a personal profile page, complete with options to upload pictures, video and music.

What do you do with it? For many people, you spend lots and lots of time looking at it, updating it (most profiles will show that the user logged in sometime that day), and clicking thousands of underlined pictures and words to look at other people’s profiles, be they friend or total stranger. MySpace becomes your gateway to a new global community, through which you can chat with friends and make new ones. And sometimes sex predators use it to stalk people. But that’s enough information for the MySpace illiterate. Go online and see it for yourself.

The rest of you know that that’s the nice explanation. What actually results might be better described as something similar to MTV’s “Spring Break.” The fact of the matter is that I’m embarrassed to be looking at this Web site in public. Even now, I have to justify to myself that I am doing journalistic research.

I click to a random girl’s profile. She looks nice enough; I see that she’s a 27-year-old who lives in Berlin. So I click into her photo album and immediately see a picture of her showing off the polka dot panties underneath her skirt. Is that “hello” in German? I quickly backtrack and click to another link before somebody sees what I’m seeing. I’m now looking at some spiky-haired teenager giving me the middle finger. How wonderful.

This does not necessitate that every MySpace member is trying to direct my attention to their private parts, nor am I trying to argue in favor of my moral superiority. There are, in fact, plenty of profiles that don’t contain hard evidence of excessive (and/or underage) drinking. Nevertheless, what MySpace reveals to me is that, in one fashion or another, we are all voyeurs and exhibitionists. We all look at others, wanting a certain kind of attention for ourselves. Maybe I desire to be seen as one on the fringe, who watches and comments from the sidelines.

Certain trends and fads indicate that we are a rather self-absorbed generation, obsessed with our MySpaces, confined to our iPods (fitting product names). But we are also reaching out, obviously interested in connecting with other human beings, as this Web site demonstrates. While I worry that people are trying to forge their individuality from lists of their favorite music and movies, I must remember that I too take pride in my personal interests, as they are a reflection of my personality.

Perhaps the best thing that we can do is withhold judgment. So you like to watch “Stargate SG1,” huh? That’s um … cool.

I’m still not sure I want to join this bandwagon.

Jimmy's World

2007-01-09T16:28:00.000-08:00

Jimmy sat constructing his virtual world. Day after day and long into the night, he moved his pale, bony hand this way and that across the red mouse pad, shaping a new creation of colorful polygons.

He was building a city on an island, and the island sat like a dinner plate balanced precariously on the pinnacle of a tall conical mountain, and underwater volcano.

The city was immense, a sprawling layout of streets and buildings, with an elevated train way that spiraled from the outskirts to the center. There were the slums, visible by the sections of gray, derelict buildings. There were the wealthy commercial districts as well, digitally painted in vibrant golden colors. All finished areas had been decorated in meticulous detail, but none so much as the grand palace, the nexus of the city.

There were antique rugs in each of the seventy-five bedrooms that were patterned individually. Every architectural decoration was smoothed to amazing virtual roundness, all thanks to the countless hours of Jimmy's laboring at the mouse and keyboard.

As he shaped new shops, new sewer passages, new train stations, his mind simmered with ideas pertaining to the history of his city, the struggles and triumphs of its generations of peoples. He flirted with notions of other islands beyond the one, of natural wonders beneath the surface of the virtual sea. Given time, perhaps he would expand his vision even more.

Meanwhile, Jimmy's mother stood unseen in the doorway behind him. Her vision scanned the material reality of a much neglected domestic space. She was alarmed at the number of empty pop cans that littered the desk, shelves and windowsills. How many gallons of soda had passed through his body in that room? She covered her mouth and cheek, her mind struggling to begin the process of solving the problem of such a mess. The stench in the room was unbearable. She walked away.

Jimmy awaited the day that he would finally populate his world with moving creatures. He longed to crawl through the rectangular portal of his computer screen and experience his handiwork without the hindrance of so many peripheral distractions.

He got up to go relieve himself. His mom stood outside the door and told him to remember to take out the garbage in the kitchen. Unresponsive, he left the bathroom, walked in the kitchen, opened the refrigerator and retrieved a can of pop. He then returned to his bedroom and shut door behind him.

watching her

2007-01-02T23:46:00.000-08:00

I have watched her many times, from many perspectives, with many reactionary feelings.

I once saw her enter a room where I was praying as she silently took a seat in the corner. I must have noticed her long brown hair, falling straight to each side of her face, the face to which I could not have been able to place a name, and which I would not have bothered to examine closely. I recognized her, but she was a stranger, there to pray in silent support.

I once watched her as I forcefully withdrew my company from an all-night party of three (a party to which I was more of an intrusion than I would have cared to know at the time). Her smile melted my fragile, yearning heart. I meditated on that smile as I prayed by a duck pond in the deserted, early-morning daylight, and later as I wrote to my journal about the night’s adventures.

I once watched her as she sat close between me and another boy on a crowded train rushing speedily through the Chinese countryside. Emotionally and physically exhausted, I sat in hopeful discomfort. With pressing tears I watched as she rested her tired head upon the shoulder of the other boy. It was the worst thing she could have done to me.

I once looked rapturously into her bright, brown eyes that were looking back upon me, as we lay parallel on my bed, our outstretched hands touching in a moment of simple, breathtaking intimacy. And the only thing that stole my joy in that moment was the conscious understanding that my desire to remain inert and alone with her until time immemorial tinged with the slightest sensation of danger, the recognition of a temptation likened to sin. Perhaps her beaming smile was eclipsing my view of God.

I sat a row behind her in a small auditorium and looked at the back of her head. I thought it profound to consider that that young woman was my girlfriend. I had waited so long before she came along. It was a pleasant thought that she was mine. That was all.

I have seen her cry. I have seen her turn away from me in hurt anger. From slanted angles I have seen her eyes search for my own when I was too ashamed to make direct contact. I have watched her turn a strange cold shoulder while cuddling together and pondered her intentions. Hurting and needy, I too have cried and watched her through my own watery, clouded orbs. How many times have I watched her, obsessed to know what she was thinking, or what was causing me to feel so certain that something was amiss? I have watched her as we approached each other, she moving toward me on the sidewalk or waiting at the doorway with that same lovely smile that I had come to take for granted. I have watched her watch me when I would leave her for the night. Sometimes she waited till I was nearly out of sight, while other times she did not linger.

I sat behind her in a very large stadium and watched her worship God, thinking that she was probably not nearly as distracted by our breakup as I was. For days straight I would sit in that same auditorium, meeting with little success to purge my mind of this distraction. I sat and stood in a room of 22,000 peers, not caring what any of them thought of me, all except for that same one. I have looked somewhat assertively at her face in an attempt to snare her back into loving me again. She looked back only to meet my devotion with sympathy, hardly what I wanted. She looked past me, through me. Am I so transparent? Is my aching heart so abandoned, so forgotten? I have wept for her, for me.

She was a stranger that became an intrigue, an intrigue that became a mystery. Somewhere early on she became a friend, a friend who became a romantic companion. But I think she will always be a mystery, one who, for a time, received my love. No longer. God bless her and keep her.

word made flesh

2006-12-24T18:09:00.000-08:00

word made flesh, the intangible promise
held in flimsy, slippery flesh
fetched by human fleshy hands

like (yet not) an author's unshapable story
pressed, bound and sewn together,
decaying vessel for an infinite artifact

many metaphors to describe the gift,
fashioned by the author and finisher Himself,
divinely spoken to the saints, for us

word that is seed, tiny vessel of hope
grown, scattered and sown forever
though it fall on thorny soil

light that shines through sight unseen,
now opened and shown altogether,
obscured, as it were, but ailve

contained in plain truth of a backalley birth
(swift moment of transformation)
delivered for our deliverence

Here's looking at you, kid

2006-12-07T17:07:00.000-08:00

I was looking at myself in the bathroom mirror (recounting this as if a voyeur unto myself), gazing and searching intently. It occurred to me that I could make myself uncomfortable. Close, very close to the mirror, I held my face and examined, realizing that I could not truly see inside myself (or rather into that strange figure looking back). I could only focus on individual spots. In other words, I was unable to look upon the whole, unable to find that nonexistent, godlike point of access that brought everything before and everything to be into view, into understanding. As in film, I used my vision like cinematography, cutting quickly here and there at random locations on the reflection of my face. Bam! Bam! Bam! I could see a silent eye at different grotesque angles. It was mere seconds, then a jarring moment of pure fear. I don’t recall if I had looked straight on or not, but I backed away and invoked the Holy Spirit to comfort me.

I have kept it dim and silent in here. I keep looking over and noticing that my kitchen cupboards are open. It is the aspect of their exposure that I must find sickly compelling, like someone has intentionally left them wide open for my notice (it was that man behind the mirror).

This was written 9/18/06.

"Fast Food Nation," a hard meal to swallow

2006-11-22T09:26:00.000-08:00

Richard Linklater’s Fast Food Nation is an ugly, ugly film that you should probably see. Based on the non-fiction book of the same name by Eric Schlosser, the film follows a handful of interwoven storylines that revolve around Mickey’s, a made-up fast food chain.

When corporate executive Don Anderson (Greg Kinnear) is sent to investigate the disturbing findings that cow manure is turning up in the company’s hamburger patties, the spotlight turns onto the small town of Cody, Colorado.

Located near Cody is the giant meat-processing plant where all of Mickey’s “Big One” burger patties are created. Anderson rolls into town alongside a vanload of illegal immigrants, fresh from a nearly botched border crossing. They will soon become employees of the meat plant.

The scenes of the meat-packing plant are easily the most disturbing; a sense of dread accompanies each return to this gruesome setting. Linklater cuts quickly through shots of white-clad employees at their various stations within the facility, all of whom are working with dangerous tools and machines. We realize how easily the combination of knives, saws, slippery floors and other factors could lead to horrific on-the-job injuries.

This is only made worse by the portrayal of a somewhat tyrannical supervisor who uses his authority to sexually exploit certain female workers. And I haven’t even mentioned the poor cows.

The film, however, is not an exposé. It is a fictional adaptation, and the choice is an interesting one. Most of the film’s message comes through in the dialogue, including a memorable cameo scene with Bruce Willis, whose character tries to rationalize that the dirty secrets of the meat-packing industry are not really a problem. The meat has a little bit of cow sh--? Well you’re supposed to cook the meat, he says.

Fast Food Nation takes the form of such recent films as Traffic, Crash and Syriana, each of which uses the branching narrative structure to examine a complex social problem.

Unlike with some of those films, however, Linklater and Schlosser’s screenplay avoids the route of becoming grandiose and instead brings the material to a relatable, human level. Kinnear’s character is a regular family man with some slightly amusing secrets of his own. The subtle details of the characters’ lives are just as important to the big picture as the shock-value images.

Ultimately, the film is not only about awareness; it grapples with the difficult question of what we do with our awareness. Is Kinnear’s character more interested in fixing a widespread problem or in keeping his job? Does a college activist group embark on a futile letter-writing campaign against the meat plant or risk legal consequences by attempting something that might actually bring about change? In the case of undocumented aliens facing hazardous working conditions every day, what choices do they have? What does an audience do after seeing this kind of film?

Make no mistake. Fast Food Nation is difficult to digest. The cinematography itself is often grainy and unattractive. But as with cattle, it sometimes takes some uncomfortable prodding to move us from our complacency.

The Prestige: a review by F'er

2006-10-25T20:09:00.000-07:00

Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige presents a fine example of the inherent dangers in a “twist ending” film. When an audience has already solved a major piece in the puzzle because of too many not-so-subtle hints, is there any satisfaction in the final payoff?

Like Nolan’s first film, Memento, the story begins at the end with a violent death. A live disappearing act goes terribly wrong, leaving Hugh Jackman’s character, a turn-of the-century magician, drowned in a locked tank underneath the stage. Christian Bale’s character witnesses the event and is put on trial for murder. Like in Memento, we are left to wonder what led to these disturbing events.

From here the film jumps back to where it all began, when the two men, Robert Angier (Jackman) and Alfred Borden (Bale), get their start in the magic business as apprentices to an accomplished trick inventor played by Michael Caine. Angier feels slightly threatened by and suspicious of his elusive partner, a brash and impulsive hopeful who insists that people want to see newer, more dangerous tricks. When Borden’s risky behavior leads to an on-stage tragedy, an embittered rivalry immediately develops.

As the two magicians go on to begin their separate careers, Angier becomes obsessed with learning the secret to Borden’s astonishing “transporting man” trick. It quickly becomes a question of how far Jackman’s character is willing to go to outperform his opponent, and to what lengths Borden is prepared to guard his secrets.

It is an entertaining, suspenseful film with strong performances by Bale and Jackman. Caine, in wonderful fashion, provides the objective, moral center of the film. Scarlett Johanson also acts well as the love interest to both magicians, although Nolan does not seem to bring her character to any kind of completion. For a while she serves vitally to the plot; eventually she is all but forgotten.

The Prestige represents a strong effort, but comes up a little bit short of being an effective movie. Its sometimes sloppy handling of nonlinear storytelling and its inconsistent dabbling into the realm of actual magic contribute to a sometimes confused film that never quite achieves full potential. Worst of all is the film’s resolution. It’s as if Christopher Nolan is one of the magicians, setting up for the trick, revealing just enough hints and enigmas to culminate in a spectacular finish. Unfortunately, the payoff of the film was ruined when I figured out one of the great plot mysteries halfway into the movie. I could see what Nolan was hiding up his sleeve.

In this post-Sixth Sense era of filmmaking, many directors and screenwriters have capitalized on this twist ending premise, including Nolan himself with his effective debut Memento. Sometimes it is done well, justified by the point of view of a certain character who is just as surprised as the audience when the secrets are made known. At other times, however, it is hardly more than cheap, artificial storytelling, determined by a conscious decision to omit certain plot details here and there. The goal, perhaps, is to show enough that the audience will feel silly for not noticing all the hints scattered throughout the film. Nolan might have been too bold this time, which is too bad; his film is otherwise a clever study of the obsessive human desire for…well, prestige.

Pick Up

2006-09-08T14:39:00.000-07:00

“You may be making a grievous err,” said the blonde in the red dress to the man seated in the adjacent stool.

“Don’t tell me you’re married.”

“Ha! Of course not.”

“You’re not interested in men.”

“Oh please.”

“You don’t find me attractive.”

“I’ve dated worse looking men.”

“Geez, woman, what is it then?”

“Woman?”

That Massive Structure

2006-08-23T13:07:00.000-07:00

There is a massive concrete grain elevator that dominates the scenery of the new town that I call home. Shaped like an enormous amphitheater, the city layout stretches outward and uphill from the very location of this old grain elevator. It is an ugly, ominous, and strangely captivating structure, a haunting mystery of an edifice that seems to lord over the spellbound town like a high wizard's fortress. At night it is always completely lit up, and its windows--all the way to the uppermost levels of the building--put forth an eerie glow, as if indicating activity within. There is never in the slightest, however, any movement to be seen in those vacant, illuminated corridors. Still, from the comfortable darkness of my upper-level apartment, I maintain a vigilant watch upon the structure throughout the night, because I feel that it is watching me.

Perhaps there are ghosts there, such as the ghost of F. M. Martin, who in life was the man that rose to fame and fortune with his profitable milling operations, beginning in 1907 at what is now the site of the giant grain elevator. His company was successful due to its ability to both store grain and mill wheat at the same location. However, the town's website also credits a large part of the man's success to his close connections with federal government agencies, through which he was awarded profitable contracts, supplying grain to such government institutions as an insane asylum, a penitentiary, a reformatory, and an "institution for the feeble minded." There were eight contracts in all. As power begets power and wealth begets wealth, it comes as no surprise that this citizen was also famous for his pursuits in banking and real estate. His son Clarence even became the governor of the state.

Is it any surprise that I would connect this strange history to the qualms I feel as I gaze in fascinated suspicion upon the concrete tower, relic of the old Martin dynasty? The cold, time-stained walls of that structure resemble the stone walls of a prison. Is it ironic that that edifice carries such real-life, historical connections to a state penitentiary? I marvel at the curious histories of these small agricultural boom towns, forgotten to most. I wonder at such towns where the street signs bear the same names that are chiseled in stone above the doors of the old banks, banks that are built like temples. My new town was named after a Boston railroad tycoon.

It is very possible that Mr. Martin was a delightful, benevolent individual. I would have to do more research to determine more of his character. But his brief story, combined with my initial bewilderment at the grain elevator leaves me wondering. I have many large questions. For example, what are the secret machinations that take place between the heads of state and the wealthy elite? I don't think there are such family dynasties as the Martins today. At least, they do not seem to work as they once did. We hardly know the names of our town officials. Instead, we recognize the names of the conglomerate corporations, some of which are the residual monikers of the founding families: Ford, Dole, etc. In 1943, the Martin Milling Company sold its assets to the National Biscuit Company, a.k.a. Nabisco, and the operations have continued to pass hands to other companies ever since.

F. M. Martin continues to exert his power over this little town, perhaps not financially, but vicariously through the physical enormity of the grain elevator. As I go about my business around town this coming year, I will continue to look up. I will continue to keep watch for a sign of movement within. We cannot afford to lose sight of the hidden connections between money and power. We must watch for the unseen hand that would gather in everything around us, for the mouth of the insatiable beast that would swallow up our entire communities.

The Warehouse: a brief history and outlook

2006-08-08T20:16:00.000-07:00

Have you ever considered how the warehouse originated? Although most people today may not realize it, the history of the warehouse is rich and intriguing, dating back to ancient times. In fact, it is now commonly upheld among the archaeological community that the Egyptian pyramids are the oldest remaining warehouses. While modern industrialists would scoff at their geometrically inefficient use of space, these immense structures nevertheless contained inner chambers in which the Egyptian pharaohs stockpiled and organized vast amounts of valuable merchandise to be used in the afterlife. Because most of the pyramid chambers have been discovered empty, we must assume that the inventories of these storerooms were either looted due to lack of security measures or successfully “shipped” to the nether regions.

The warehouse has since evolved, adopting several innovative features along the way that have become standardized and universal. The use of walkie-talkies in larger warehouse buildings, for example, has replaced the prior use of tin cans and connecting strings, resulting in clearer communication between workers and a boosted sense of self-importance for all device carriers. Two other significant innovations are the wooden pallet and forklift truck, used in conjunction for the easy level transport of materials throughout a warehouse, much preferred to the original use of manual slave labor (this method too often resulted in damaged merchandise due to the collapse of exhausted workers).

Even today, the warehouse industry is advancing, and the job market is becoming increasingly competitive. Safe and efficient use of both time and space is the name of the game, and employers are continually seeking out only the most capable of individuals. In addition to forklift certification, several major warehouse employers are beginning to require a TETRIS score of 500,000 for all new hires. Scientists anticipate that robots will completely replace the human warehouse worker by the year 2025, assuming that robot labor unions will be able to negotiate favorable retirement benefits for all involved.

Trivia: Saint Barbara, who was locked away in a tower by her cruel father Dioscorus, is the patron saint of warehouses. She is also, of course, the patron saint of prisoners.

Physical

2006-07-11T20:06:00.000-07:00

terror is blue blood
seeping and filling
oxygenated places
outside of the skin

dread is masticated meatloaf
congealing and crowding
septic passageways
within an otherwise efficient excretory system

death and discomfort
threaten and cripple
my vibrant mortal frame
below

Where Have All the Birthday Balloons Gone?

2006-06-28T21:46:00.000-07:00

Denny's Restaurant used to provide patrons with a free meal on their birthdays. It was a sad day when that tradition ended. Year after year, I find it increasingly difficult to swallow the sad truth that my birthday is actually depreciating in value. I struggle over a moral dilemma: is my desire for recognition and celebration justified? Or am I clinging to childish conceitedness?

I am, too often, a selfish and self-seeking [along with a horde of other self-"fill-in-the-blank" adjectives] creature, bent on rationalizing my personal woes and sensitivities. But there is also a deep-rooted nature within me that wants to rebel against the time-worn copout that "life is unfair." There is an unselfish part of me that desires to be an advocate for the neglected birthday boys and girls around the world. I am a firm believer that a person's birthday should forever be a "special" day, in which humble sacrifices are made to accomodate for said person's general happiness and pleasure, in which the individual's significance is valued above that of the greater group, whatever group that may be. What has become of the significance and appreciation of the individual? It has gone the way of the buffalo, trampled beneath the westward expasion of "corporate" or "economic" interest.

Tomorrow marks the first time that I will ever have had to work on my birthday. I have a summer birthday, which means that I also never went to school on any of my birthdays, a fact that I have always considered a true privilege. There is a TV moniter in the break room of my place of work that periodically displays the names all of the plant employees who have birthdays in the month of June. Unfortunately, I am merely a "temp" (I have been working there for exactly three months now) and not an actual company "partner," apparently unworthy of recognition. I hate my job; I do not believe that I should have to go. I do not believe that anyone should have to work on their birthday. I would love nothing more than for someone to tell me to sleep in and enjoy myself for a day, to do nothing deemed worthy of being a "societal contribution," but simply to contemplate and celebrate the profundity of my existence.

It is now well past my bedtime. I am about to get into bed. When I wake up tomorrow, I will abide by the demands of the unjust system of which I am a part (a small cog). But I also vow to do my utmost to be a martyr for my own happiness if need be. I will enjoy and be grateful of my existence. I will be defiant.

Reader, forget not that you exist, and that, more importantly, your life is a beautiful and unfathomable miracle. You were created for an amazing and unique purpose, more valuable and significant than the existence of your government or school or even the company for which you work. Happy birthday! Praise be unto the day upon which you were brought into the world! It would be incomplete without you.

Given

2006-04-30T20:41:00.000-07:00

To accept, to receive, to offer, to yield, to share, to expand, to produce, to grow, to multiply, to satisfy, to enjoy, to sustain, to provide, to nourish, to improve, to enrich, to release, to unlock, to explore, to excite, to create, to fulfill, to partake, to bestow, to honor, to bless, to love, to challenge, to send forth, to draw out, to discover, to reveal, to make known, to break through, to repair, to invent, to construct, to examine, to ponder, to try, to fail, to renew, to continue, to replenish, to encourage, to rejuvenate, to invigorate, to brighten, to lighten, to use, to hold, to cherish, to touch, to see, to smell, to hear, to taste, to delight, to adorn, to praise, to protect, to preserve, to defend, to lay claim, to impart, to entrust, to distinguish, to seal, to set apart, to shine, to beckon, to guide, to unite, to forgive, to inspire, to teach, to discipline, to refine, to sharpen, to generate, to enliven, to intensify, to surge, to explode, to remain, to outlast, to triumph, to ascend, to overcome, to understand, to realize, to actualize, to eclipse all lies, to cast off all pride, to lay down one’s rights, as a sacrifice, from the father of lights, as the gift of life. We are given.

Amateur Backyard Wildlife Photography

2006-04-23T20:51:00.000-07:00

Highlight
Unnoticed
Mundane
Moments
Inside
Narrow
Generated
Boxes,
Isolating
Resultingly
Dramatic
Spectacles

For
Everyone’s
Enlightened
Discovery.

Beware
Extinction,
Excellent
Specimen.

Persevere
Or
Lose
Life's
Enjoyments,
Notwithstanding
Another
Tragic
End.

To Walla Walla and Back

2006-04-23T16:50:00.001-07:00

I. Skid Marks

They curve to the left
And disappear into oblivion,
That is, the oblivion of our
Forgetting, as we drive on
Toward our own destinations.

Where were you going,
And where are you now?
What caused you to stray from the
Simple straightforwardness of the path at hand,
An obstruction,
Boredom,
An untimely black hole,
Or did something in the distant hills attract your attention?

Whatever it was,
The moment came suddenly and
Left its ambiguous, screeching remark.
You left your mark:
A final, fateful testament,
Two parallel back lines,
Reminding us all of your departure.

II. (Coming Home)

As I drive my car through the mountain pass in summer, I am blissfully enthralled by the overpowering landscape that cradles me in green and blue shadows; I place myself on a particularly steep and remote forested hillside. Not once, however, have I strayed from the beaten trail and witnessed the true remoteness of nature.

Surfing the sea of faces (that is myspace)

2006-04-22T00:53:00.000-07:00

Your digital testimonies intrigue, perplex, and overwhelm me. My soul is shaken with grief. Your lives, laid bare before me, display their brokenness. Where is your voice behind all of those pixels and words? I am trying to read your story with the scroll button of my mouse. I have missed you (have I?), and I want to know you again, where you are and, perhaps, where you have been. But who is going to interpret this senseless clutter of words, sounds, and pictures?

What am I looking for? Your "pages" do not fit into a book that I can read from start to finish. There is no end to this maze of underlined words and dead-end photographs. It is an unattractive gridlock, signifying very little. Cheap, seductive poses. Columns of dialogue as prolific as bacteria but without substance or emotion. Interchangeable lists of pop-culture nouns, presented as flimsy proof of individuality. This journey of constant clicking presents so much but offers so little in the end. I give up and write. Your stories, I conclude, are all the same, and I am no longer interested. How can all of us be so cool?

I think I stand above you, looking down. So many of you were my friends, somewhere along the way, who rejected me and moved along. Was I completely forgotten, passed over? Or did I leave something behind, something of truth and significance that I might have imparted, in spite of my timidity? Our intertwined destinies have loosened and separated, leaving us connected only by the continually thinning frays of distant memories. This is my list of favorites.

Secrets shared and games of defining character played upon the wide-open range of the playground.

Countless birthday parties to which I was given but one, non-repeated invitation.

Girls. Girls. Girls. A day or two of love and validation, followed by years of waiting, hoping, and reminiscing upon those handful of said (bittersweet) days.

Your childhood is fled. Your innocence never really was. But this is our youth! What are we doing? Our lifeblood has been converted into cash by people in fancy offices. I am looking in from the outside, either too afraid or too disgusted to let myself into your proud circle. Should I also expose myself to the turmoil of this voyeuristic wasteland? Should I expose my need of affirmation? No, really. I need it. I still try to be cool. You were the cool ones! But I think that you are all trapped. How do I know? Because you all "logged in" today!

Cops and Dogs

2006-04-02T20:53:00.000-07:00

I passed a motorcycle cop on my way home from work. He was sitting on his bike, perpendicular to the highway, monitoring the law-abidingness of the passing travelers (I assume). The spot where he picked to station himself was particularly striking, the base of a smooth green hillside, not at all hidden or surreptitious. His bold presence was simply impenetrable. He immediately resembled a knight and his noble steed, an imposing black rider upon a white stallion. I lowered my driving speed by three or four miles-per-hour and checked my rear-view mirror for the next few hundred yards; I was only five over to begin with.

Sometimes driving feels like gun-running. I was riding with my dad a few weeks ago while he was fulfilling a bank errand. There is a road that goes into town, running parallel to the aforementioned highway, which was currently closed for repairs, open only to local traffic. Disregarding the large orange barriers, my dad drove the blockaded roadway. I suppose he felt obliged to waive the personal annoyance of adding unnecessary minutes to his task. It was like we were executing an illegal border crossing. There was a tiny thrill in knowing that we were trespassing, and a sense that we were justified in our cause. Both circumstances reminded me of Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress, in which a small outfit of rebels seeks safe passage across a war-torn feudal Japan, venturing bravely across hostile territories and guarded borders.

As civilized human beings we face the simultaneous threat and protection of civil order. It is part and parcel of a territorial impulse that is intrinsic to biological life, where order and chaos hang in an uncertain balance. Animals are born with instincts and mechanisms by which to fend off territorial challengers. I confront this fact every time I walk down to get the mail. Try as I might to move silently, I usually attract the attention of a pack of neighbor dogs who do not regard me as friend. At first, I hear the barking from a distance. And then I can hear the charge of the leader, this brown gangly mutt. I am pretty sure I will be safe. Then again, they seem pretty angry and they outnumber me. The last time I went down to get the mail, that gangly dog came right up behind me and acted as if he were about to take a big bite out of my right flank. Yes, that moment scared me. In retrospect, however, I am left with the indication that they at least considered me a threat.

packing

2006-02-24T14:27:00.000-08:00

They will fit nicely
Iwill make themfit
Together ifittakes
Alldayevensoit will
W o r k outfinesee

"Stay the hell off my intellectual property!"

2006-01-07T15:05:00.000-08:00

Bretheren, sistren, there is a glorious new frontier, a vast and unclaimed wilderness, overflowing with untapped bounty and livelihood. And it is located in the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. Go forth! Explore it. Discover a place where nobody has yet laid claim and start producing!

I, myself, have been doing some prospecting for quite some time, and it's worked out pretty nicely. I already own seven logos, three song titles, four cartoon characters (including but not limited to names, pictorial designs, and story developments), two food recipes, and a particular shade of lime-green. Many of these intellectual properties are already known and familiar to some of you. You are welcome to browse (with expressed consent, of course), but they are not for the taking. Luckily, there should be plenty of land for everyone! Land as far as the imagination can see.

Nevertheless, come quicly. Just yesterday I saw a young man walking out of a record store with the words Star Battles imprinted on the center of his white t-shirt. He clearly wrote it himself with a black permanent marker. As surely as day, a white unmarked van was there waiting for him at the curb, and a man dressed in black stepped out to hand him a subpoena. Even now, the frontier is changing. The days of roaming and freely partaking are all but over. The voice that demands free and shared ownership to the land of ideas is the voice of the naive, the voice of the savage-minded. Even now there are people lurking to steal YOUR jokes, YOUR quotes, YOUR legacy! Claim your IP today, before your ideas are marketed by someone less gifted than you.

And stay the HELL off my intellectual property!

Dear Santa

2005-12-24T22:11:00.000-08:00

This year for Christmas, all I want is a brand new 6-speed radio-control Popemobile with bonus action-waving John Paul II. I would ask my parents but they're both Protestants. I was snooping around the place in their bedroom closet were they usually hide my presents and all I saw was a book called Revealing the True Whore of Babylon. I figured that you, being a pagan, would be impartial and obliging to me in this little religious matter. Please tell Mrs. Claus I said hello. Thank you.

Sincerely,

F'er

(Revisit an oldie while you're at it)

"Should I stay or should I go?"

2005-12-22T01:34:00.000-08:00

Because you've got to let me know...

Should I stay or should I go?

My fate is in your hands, tied to a string, swinging over a piece of notebook paper that has been divided into two roughly equal halves by a red vis-a-vis pen, the left side labeled YES and the right side labeled NO. I am hoping you will drop it on top of the former, but you apparently haven't decided yet and the suspense is KILLING ME!

I don't like to be dragged along forever like an inanimate, unfeeling object. You have to remember that my fate is partially in your hands. What good are desires if we can never have them because there are tyrants guarding over them? Tyrants tend to be irrational and greedy, hoarding the things we want when they could freely give them to us with little effort or loss. Tyrants make you get down on your knees and beg. So you do! And then there are still no guarentees!

Dealing with you is a gamble. The stakes are pretty high this time, and I'm playing against house favoratism! What do you want from me, collateral? The promise of unwavering stewardship? Would you throw me a bone if I vowed to sacrifice my firstborn?

I'm not a perfect man, but I'm trying damn it! I know I don't deserve things to be perfect, but do they have to be bleak? Can't you at least give me the YES for now? I'm begging you! It's a small favor for something that would mean so much to me! I'll pay you back! Whatever you ask! I've got to make a decision soon, and I need to know if I'm gonna have your support in staying here!

And so you've got to let me know...

Should I stay or should I go?

...

Should I stay or should I go NOW?!!

(listen to "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash - simply b/c it rocks)

hE:ll, SE:ll, BE:ll

2005-12-11T21:46:00.000-08:00

My room is the warmest place in the house, and also the most aesthetically pleasing. The kitchen is an ugly, perennial sinkhole that resists cleaning. The living room is poorly lit and…well, cold. Sundown occurred around 4:30 yesterday, long before I left the house for the day. I saw the twilight blue of approaching night through the veil of my white curtain; a smattering of pink on the distant horizon prompted me to peel it back, but only a smidge, and only for a brief moment. The heating system runs somewhere near my room. It vents warm air outside, and there’s a constant spraying sound that resembles either a malfunctioning sprinkler or an amplified spitting baby. Let’s hope it never stops, because the temperatures have not reached above the freezing point for days now.

Outside, I have a car, but nowhere to go. It is expensive to drive, expensive to eat, expensive to seek after anything that will stimulate any kind of genuine excitement. I cannot muster the motivation to brave a walk, and so my legs are at rest on my chair or in my bed. I look at the clock at least 40 times a day.

Heaven, to me, is an arcology in the midst of a barren, polluted, and desolate wasteland. I walk two hallways and an elevator to work. I live in a comfortable bungalow half a mile above the frozen ground, and there are no curtains on my window. There is no need. It is easy for me to spend several pleasant hours looking out my window, picking out distant places in the wild landscape. I imagine being set down in these random locations; I try to envision the different perspectives from these distant pieces of ground. There is no need to leave the arcology. No need to be cold.

Time moves along, but I remain in my room.

hE:ll

SE:ll

. . .

BE:ll

Alone in my warm room, sleep shakes off all pressures and pains of being alive and well.

50th Post Extravaganza

2005-11-10T13:53:00.000-08:00

Bring out the jugglers and the men on stilts! Roll out the lion in his cage and the rings of fire! It's that time once again! Time to celebrate a benchmark in the history of JiVE, it's the 50th Post Extravaganza!

You may recall the last time we celebrated together, over a year ago, on the 20th of October, 2004. It's been a bit more slow going over the past year and subsequent 25 posts. Who knew, for example, that just nine days later, F'er would take a tremendous spill on the concrete? Perhaps that is what caused things to slow down for a bit...

from "On Spills":

"Will I run again? It will never be without a remembrance of today's infamy. It will never be the same. The laughter will have lost its original meaning."

I remember it well, and the heartache that ensued. It was an event that would alter the way I blogged (pronounced b-logged) ever since. F'er would become more elusive than before, often slipping back into the 3rd person, and emerging only now and again sometimes just to keep you aware that he was still there, still on the lookout for brilliant new opportunities to post.

from "Humble Beginnings":

"F'er is no quitter. These ramblings are his humble beginnings. He is learning his craft. He is amusing himself."

Since the 25th post there have been 4 new stories, 3 new poems, and 17 other entries ranging from essay to address to hyrbrid. Looking back over 50 posts, I am proud to have such an eclectic library. Sometimes intensely personal. Sometimes searching. Sometimes commemorating. Sometimes absurd. All F'er. The good with the bad.

And now for the fun part of the post! It's the awards ceremony!!

1. Best post about an awards ceremony:
"And the winner is...someone else...again" (Feb. 28th, 2005)

While this very post was a runner up, the blue ribbon had to go to my tribute post to Martin Scorsese. We're still rooting for you, Marty!

2. Most epic poem:
"Sea Wind" (Jan. 24th, 2005)

Yeah. I recited this poem to a friend of mine at a recent Thanksgiving dinner. No better way to revel in your own arrogance or advertise your genius than by reciting your own poems at joyous dinner gatherings. I wrote this poem after reading Moby-Dick, an amazing piece of literature.

3. Best nature essay (or as close to a nature essay as F'er will probably ever write):
"My Sprite Can" (June 10th, 2005)

I even managed to write about urinals in this post.

4. Best replacement-for-a-journal post:
"too many similes, too many metaphors" (Sept. 26th, 2004)

We're going back a little further for this one, post #20. This was a really tough one to decide, seeing as there were quite a few posts that could conceiveably fit this category, several of which I still like. In fact, many of my options seemed to be jumbled together around this same general period of time. But I had to go with this one. Why? There have been other posts that were much more "journal-istic" than this, but I am rewarding the art of this particular piece. I like that F'er went all out with the imagery in this one. I like that it retains an element of daring and excitement. And mostly, I like that this post was able to spawn a sequel close to a year later (it remains the far superior post of the two).

5. Post that most needs a sequel:
"Gastronomic Dispute" (Nov. 7th, 2004)

I don't know about you, but I am very interested in seeing where this relationship between my stomach and me could go. There could even be material for a screenplay there as a rollicking "buddy picture."

6. WORST POST:
"To be continued" (April 30th, 2005)

I'll be honest. The only reason I posted this crap was to make sure I didn't fail to have something written for the month of April. And a quick buck. I suppose there's an okay theme involved in it, but the post just degenerated. I like cookie monster?? No need to force the stream of conciousness thing, man.

7. BEST POST:
???

I think the jury is still out on that one. I've had some pretty proud moments along the way, like writing a film-noir Christmas story (Dec. 24th, 2004). That made up for forgetting to celebrate Veemas Eve (June 24th) this year. I feel like I'm gonna make a stop animation film for "About Climbing (Or not)" (March 12th, 2005) some day, and when I do, it will make that post even more glorious. And let's not forget my wonderful birthday rants. Unfortunately, I cannot boil it down to a single one. I have yet to publish the perfect post. And until I do, you will continue to be edified and entertained with JiVE. Okay, I'll be honest. I'm leaning toward the "25th Post Celebration" (Oct. 20th, 2004) as my number one pick.

That about wraps it up for me. Once again, we've had a fun time ransacking the past. Who knows what we will rummage through 25 posts from now. And more importantly, who cares?

Bloodred

2005-11-03T12:14:00.000-08:00

He walks into the lobby of the Empire State Building. The massive rippling of his bloodred robe dies away in the stagnant interior of the room. Security officers spy him immediately and reach for their walkie-talkies. Tourists waiting in line, young and old alike, are afraid. Children move insinctively behind their mothers and fathers. Mothers think of whispering something to their husbands. Fathers look casually away from the man, as if nothing is out of the ordinary. "This is New York," they tell themselves. The grand lobby will soon be decorated in Christmas splendor, a tree with heavy boughs bearing bright tinsel and stringed lights to take its place against the engraved marble wall.

He is "escorted" down a bland white hallway toward an unknown backalley exit. He no longer resists, his vacant belly slamming feebly against every side of his aging body. His head lowered, he hears a thunderous sound and feels a chill dampness on the tip of his nose, as the men with walkie-talkies forceably release him back into the wild of New York City and shut the door behind them.

The meow of a cat stirs him back to a living state. He begins to discern the presence of multiple cat whines as he lifts his head from the concrete pillow. In a box of cardboard between two dumpsters he sees a litter of kittens, nestling closely against the sleeping mother. The man in red extends a withered hand toward the calico cat, and the damp brown fur merely dents inward. His head bowed low again, his mind conceives a prayer for the sleeping mother, but a desperate resolution stifles it.

He looks up and sees the overcast sky, obscured first by coulds, further blotted out by the mighty fortress from which he has yet again been ejected. Were he a younger man, he would have risked all to climb his way to the top of that abominous edifice. But even now, his hands can distinguish no handhold along the sleek blackened wall. Now more than ever he senses the great gap between heaven and hell. And it puzzles him that this structure points its way upward, sometimes violently piercing its way beyond the clouds, sometimes seeming to stand only as a beacon and an arrow toward earthly deliverance. In one instant he wishes to topple the building down, to conquer the monstrosity and bring it underneath his feet. In the next he desires nothing more than to abandon his lowly existence, to slip into the elevator and let it project him to escape velocity.

He girds himself tightly in his robe and retrieves the dead cat from her place of rest. The kittens weakly cry and raise their noses into the air. They are hardly able to open their eyes, too young to understand their unwonted plight.

Despite the hunger in his stomach, he steps forth from the alley and walks down the twilight streets as a man with purpose and conviction. Wind and rain slap his cheek, but he does not resist. The lifeless creature dangles from his firm hands. His robe tussles and drags behind him. A police car creeps toward the robed man as he walks along. Momentarily, it matches his pace. The man turns to face it. He walks. His stare is hard and unflinching. The sinister creeping object that has haunted him at every corner for his entire life no longer causes him fear and trembling. The car with the moving red and blue lights, keeper of order, oppressor of the outcast. Follower of death. It would arrive at the scene of tragedy and all traces of the devil would be hidden. Where did those men in blue uniforms hide the devil's face? All places in the city were tainted with evil, stained with sorrow. The creeping car with the blue and red lights roamed the streets day and night, searching for the devil's face that it might be studied, collected, and painted over. The man in the bloodred robe faces the police car until it speeds away and around a corner, persistent in its relentless hunt.

He walks for a few hours until his hunger finally causes him to stumble. He enters the doorway of the nearest building, a dilapidated tenement house, and finds the entrance propped open by a phone book. He enters an elevator, his hands still clutching the dead calico cat. He transfers it to one arm and uses his free hand to push the button for the highest floor. The elevator automatically shuts its black wiry gate and, like a knowing Charon, ferries him upward. Shortly after, the elevator stops its rising motion and releases the robed man. He exits and walks down the empty hallway, but stops to gaze on a space of graffiti that he is unable to read. It is an indecipherable enigma to him. And yet he somehow knows that it carries the secret of his life's existence.

He finds a stairwell leading upward and follows its path. The stairway is narrow and unlit. It turns a corner and goes up seven final steps to a closed door. He opens the door and walks out onto the tenement rooftop, the highest place he is able to reach. He walks to the edge of the roof and looks down upon the streets below, searching for substance among the moving shapes of cars and people. All he sees is a constant, baffling world of motion, overshadowed by miles of immovable edifices, a landscape completely lorded over in darkness.

He remembers the day that the two highest towers in the city were brought down to the ground, when the sky was filled with a colossal plume of smoke, and the people wailed and moaned. The beginning of the end. The highest point of a corrupt mankind, the pinnacle of a damned earth, a fortress of steel rising to the threshold of an eternal kingdom, strewn about the cursed ground.

"The first shall be last and the last shall be first!" are the words that trail away in the wind and rain.

Setting the dead cat gently upon the ledge, the man pulls a dagger from within his tunic. With inexplicable tears in his eyes, he forces the antique blade beneath the damp fur. A tiny stream of blood is released. It begins to trickle over the edge of the stone railing of the rooftop and drop its way down toward the sidewalk below. He loses sight of it in the wind and is unable to see where it is landing. Drops of blood, raining down. Scattered. He would do more if he could. He would stand at the edge of a cloud in order to cover all of New York in the calico's innocent blood.

He will sit here and look up into the evening sky, past the subways where the devils roam, past the honking of horns and the treading of feet, past the top of the Empire State Building and the buildings larger than it. He looks for a break in the overcast sky, for even the smallest access point. He would shed his bloodred garment, even his hungry limbs, in order to squeeze through the blanket of darkness. For the tiniest access, he would condense his spirit to a morsel. If only to survive.

God

2005-10-12T12:50:00.000-07:00

I can breathe life into this plastic man.

I can give motion to his plastic joints.

This man has a story to tell.

A story of my creation.

Without me, he is nothing.

Dialogue

2005-10-05T01:19:00.000-07:00

"Computer, display all primary functions"

...DEFRAGMENT
...EXECUTE FUNCTION F41
...EXECUTE FUNCTION F219
...EXECUTE FUNCTION F375
...UPLOAD FUNCTION F301

...UPLOAD FUNCTION F301 COMPLETE
...EXECUTING FUNCTION F301

"Yes, Computer, that's fine. Estimated time of all functions completion?"

.......
.......
.......
...ESTIMATED COMPLETION OF ALL FUNCTIONS [F41; F219; F301; F375] AT 3308741 SECONDS
.......
...DEFRAGMENT COMPLETE

"Hmm. Computer, estimate all subsequent primary functions beyond 3,308,741 seconds."

.......
.......
.......
...THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE
.......
...FUNCTION F219 COMPLETE

"Computer, display all future primary functions."

.......
.......
.......
...THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE
...ESTIMATED COMPLETION OF ALL FUNCTIONS [F41; F301; F375] AT 3308720 SECONDS

"Computer, I need information on your future performance in order to...oh shoot! Computer, display all primary functions."

...EXECUTE FUNCTION F41
...EXECUTE FUNCTION F301
...EXECUTE FUNCTION F375

"Computer, terminate function f301 and upload function--"

...TERMINATING FUNCTION F301

"Yes, and please upload--"

...FUNCTION F301 TERMINATED

"Yeah, yeah. Upload function f201."

.......
.......
.......
...FUNCTION F201 NOT FOUND
...FUNCTION F41 COMPLETE

"Wait, what did you just say?"

...FUNCTION F41 COMPLETE

"No! The thing before that!"

.......
.......
.......
...THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE

"Computer, repeat...piece of crap! Computer, upload function f201."

.......
.......
.......
...FUNCTION F201 NOT FOUND

"WHAT! Computer, estimate all future functions based on previous function uploads and performance history."

.......
.......
.......
...EAT ME

continuation of an old metaphor

2005-10-02T12:43:00.000-07:00

It's been over a year since I plunged into the gorge with her. It was the first time that another person had put their hand in mine. As best as we were able to discern through the early morning haze, we had tried our best to estimate the height of the cliff and the depth of the water. I had nothing to lose. It was a no brainer. But she was a genuine daredevil, putting her trust into a boy that had never yet learned to swim.

And though I cannot speak on her behalf, I seem to remember that when we leapt from our misty vantage, the gravity was like the moon, as soft as I had ever felt in my entire life. I think we were still suspended midair for at least a couple of days before we actually touched the water. For me, it finally happened inside of a noisy, crowded room, where we had disbanded from the greater assembly of people to enjoy each other's company. The water was warm and shallow. My feet were planted comfortably on the ground.

Since that beginning, there have been several unexpected bends. Although it is impossible to see exactly what lies beyond each narrow twist, there has not yet been sufficient evidence of danger that would call for abandoning our river. The increasing depth of water still does not give me reason to fear. Not only is my companion an expert swimmer, but I sense a greater presence of safety and security.

Across what borders and into what foreign territories will this river pass through? Will it be that we come to a giant waterfall and lose sight of each other in the cold white churning? Or will it be that we will reach the ocean together? And then will that be the end? Or is it merely another stage before something greater, when all of us will be delivered from the water and the ground beneath, pulled suddenly yet gently by our teeth and skin, completely stripped down to see each other in our eternal bodies?

It is easy to get lost in a metaphor. To be honest, as wonderful as this year of navigating the river has been, it--like all things--can become normal and routine. But I do not mean to play down this experience, by any means. I have realized that I am much better with a companion than on my own.

And yet this final metaphor of our life still escapes my understanding. I put this question to you. Where is the heart? Is it beating there in a designated space beneath our chests as something we can physically see and touch? The same goes with the mind. Is that too just another organ, similar to be found in a dog or a gorilla, something that sends electrical signals to the furthest nerves in our furthest limbs? I believe that this body of flesh and blood is merely a training suit. It parallels something else. We are animals, true. But to see one another as nothing more must be near blindness. Haven't we been given glimpses of something greater?

Above all, guard your heart. Be patient and wise when you give it to someone else. But do not be callous.

The Snowball

2005-09-25T14:45:00.000-07:00

Two boys were on a hillside, playing in the snow. They were having fun making snow angels, full of excitement to see the impressions of their bodies in the snow. Then one boy said to the other, "my snow angel is bigger than yours."

"Yeah," said the other boy, "that's because you're bigger than me."

"I'll bet that I can make a bigger snowball than you too," the first boy challenged.

"No you can't."

So the first boy stretched out his foot and dragged it along the ground. "You stay on that side of the line and make your snowball over there. I'll make mine on this side."

"Fine," said the smaller boy. He turned to get to work.

Now the two boys were very good friends, but every time they played together, the innocent playtime would become a game, and the bigger boy would always defeat the smaller, weaker boy. Thinking that he would easily win once again, the boy with the bigger snow angel kneeled down upon his hands and knees. He reached out his hands as wide as he could to gather in as much snow as possible. "My arms are longer," he thought to himself, "and I will be able to lift more snow than him." When he scooped together all the snow in front of him, he began to gather together all of the snow in other places and push it into his pile. And when he thought he had enough snow, he fell back on his knees and put his arms around the pile of snow. But when he tried to lift it, the mass of snow merely crumbled in his arms. It would not stay together.

Meanwhile, the other boy, the smaller of the two, went to work on his side of the line. Starting with a small formation of snow, he began to push it all around. As he rolled it farther and farther, the ball of snow grew larger and larger. Everything in the path of the snowball was slowly accumulated into it. "Surely I am going to win," thought the boy as he rolled.

After a few minutes, the boy who had been trying to gather the snow in his arms looked across the line and saw that the smaller boy was creating a much larger snowball than his own messy pile. Seeing no way of winning, the bigger boy told his smaller friend, "That snowball is nothing compared to what I am going to build. I am going down my side of the hill to go gather all of the snow at the bottom. Mine will be twice as big as yours." And the boy walked down the hill and into his home, out of sight from the smaller boy.

Left unawares, the smaller boy continued to roll his snowball. "I better keep making mine bigger," he thought to himself, afraid lest he should lose yet another game due to his smaller stature. The day wore on, and the weather outside was getting colder and colder, but still the boy continued to roll his snowball. with every inch of ground that the boy rolled, the envy in his heart grew likewise bigger and uglier. Before long, the ball of snow was taller than the boy, and very heavy. It was getting harder and harder to move. And when the boy had systematically gathered all of the snow on his side of the line, his bigger friend had still not returned. The smaller boy briefly contemplated crossing the line and gathering the snow on the other side, but he worried that his friend would return with a bigger ball and catch him cheating.

By this time it was getting dark outside, and extremely cold. Determined to finally win a game, the smaller boy decided that he would have to roll his ball down the side of the hill and gather the snow at the bottom like his friend. But he could not easily push it toward the slope of the hill. With all his might he forced and forced, but the ball would not budge. "I hate him!" shouted the smaller boy as he ran into the ball with a final burst of energy and momentum. The ball moved forward. "I hate him!" screamed the boy once more. The ball moved forward again. "I hate him! I hate him! I hate him!" the smaller boy screamed again and again. And with each bitter exclamation, the giant ball of snow moved closer and closer to the the slope of the hill, until it finally began to move of its own accord. As it rolled it continued to accumulate the snow in front of it. But the snowball was now moving faster than the boy could move. Running and sliding as fast as he could, he watched as the ball rolled faster and faster. He watched with a mixture of terror and glee as the snowball got bigger and bigger. And when it reached the bottom, it did not immediately stop, but continued to roll all the way into the line of trees, where it collided and broke apart.

With the last remaining light of the day, the boy had seen the entire catastrophe from the middle of the hillside. His heart sank into a mire of grief and despair. He ran as fast as possible to the place where his giant snowball had broken apart. Like his friend before him, he resorted to gathering the mess of snow into his arms. But they were too small to gather it all up. Knowing that he was not as strong as his bigger friend, the boy decided that he would never be able to push his giant ball all the way back up the hill. "He tricked me!" thought the boy to himself. "He knew he would be able to roll more snow up the hill than me!" But the boy was determined not to lose the game. And taking up as much snow as he could carry into his arms. He climbed his way to the top of the hill. As it was dark, the boy stumbled many times. And with each trip, he would drop some snow. Nearing the top of the hill, the slope became steeper. The boy slipped again, but this time he lost all control and began to roll down the hill. On one particular tumble, the boy felt a sharp pain in his right leg. He cried in agony for several moments more until he reached the bottom of the hill.

The boy tried to get up and was prevented by the pain of his right leg. Mustering his strength, he tried two more times and failed to get up. It was dark and freezing. The boy was scared and alone. He cried out for his friend who had long ago run to the shelter of his home. Would the bigger boy remember his friend? Would he think to go looking for him when he realized he was not on the top of the hill? Would he be strong enough to pick up his smaller friend's crippled body and carry him home? The cold entered deeper into the boy's body, and he fell asleep.

More (Distracted)

2005-06-28T22:50:00.000-07:00

Can you buy contentment in a store? Can you order it off the internet? I think not. One of my all-time favorite shots in a film comes at the end of Citizen Kane. The camera pans overhead from a bird's-eye perspective across this enormous warehouse-type room where the deceased main character (one of the world's wealthiest men) had collected an immense fortune's worth of statues and treasures and toys. Most of them were never even opened, still hidden away in a big wooden box. It's a pretty haunting shot, and beautiful because it evokes such a profound and ironic sense of emptiness.

Sometimes I feel so infected with this desire to have more. I'm not obsessive or unrealistic. I really don't actually buy a lot of things, but I spend a fair amount of time on the internet looking at stuff that I wish I had. There's the things I have already that I'm not using (and that's complicated). And I'm already so sick of living in a messy house and a cluttered bedroom.

Why is my life so distracted when I live at my parents' house? Why do I put up with the TV being on so much around here when I feel that I should detest it? What happens to my brain and my soul that I end up feeling like a zombie sometimes? Every thought that I end up thinking about this culture is a disturbing one. It's overwhelming. But I feel like I can't do anything about it.

I've spent a lot of the past few days playing this old RPG on the Playstation. To me, I treat a videogame like a story and an experience. Which means that I become a little obsessed with finishing games that I've started. I have to finish a game, even if I get sick of how much time it takes, simply because it's an incomplete experience if I don't. I'll get in these phases all the time, where I spend all this time contemplating a certain series of games. I read about them online and look at pictures. I think about how much I want to play the ones that I haven't yet played, and probably never will play. I have these strange fond memories of video games from growing up. They have always filled my mind with wonder and amazement. But nowadays I play video games for a long period of time and end up feeling kind of wasted and ridiculous.

I always want to watch more movies and read more books and play more video games. I guess I'm addicted to stories. It could be worse. Perhaps. I've seen people who are preoccupied with obtaining more strictly material things. Last Friday I went to the mall in a very rich and classy neighborhood called Bellvue. More than you could possibly want. From a myopic perspective, wow, I see things I wish I had. Shiny matching shoes. Pick the color that best matches your season. Shiny iPods and iPod accessories galore. Spend a little extra and get the coveted 40 gig player! But there's already this sense that I am secretly suffocating. This whole building, this whole commercial district is clutter! If I were Citizen Kane and I decided to up and purchase the entire contents of the Bellvue mall, wouldn't I look silly in about ten years, maybe less than that. Style always has to change. Technology creates new technology and sneers at its outdated ancestor.

I think what I'm getting at is that I have too much of this on my mind. I can look around my own bedroom and just think about how ridiculous it is to have all this stuff. I see a box full of the books that I had to read in college. I'm pretty sure I read most of them. And I get such an inward pleasure in knowing that I have experienced all those stories and lessons. BUT THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH! I want to read them again! And in my mind I become this pathetic whiny thing, crying over what I can't have. I can't have enough time to indulge in all of the things that I want to experience. It saddens me that I'll probably never have the time to re-read that Victorian novel or replay that Zelda game again. Because I'll always want to play the next Zelda game and read another Victorian novel. I've also got a box full of DVDs over there. There's some I still haven't watched yet. And I'm already thinking about getting my hands on more.

I know that there is something I'm getting at beyond this cluttered warehouse. There's a REAL outside world that I haven't even touched on yet. This is like the tip of the iceburg. To every rich and shiny metropolis, there is a polluted and decaying slum (and I sometimes have this twisted feeling that more of America, more of the whole world for that matter, is going to be more and more of a slum, but that's another rant altogether). I just can't figure out what happened to my mind and my soul. This isn't me! I'm being held hostage somewhere else! But I can't get out of this predicament. I don't feel like I'm loving very much. Everything is a distraction to loving. Everything I describe is too vast and towering to do justice. If only there were a way to leave it all behind. And DON'T LOOK BACK! Sometimes that's what really kills.

Perhaps there is a desert wilderness called eastern Washington where I can soon go and spend more time actually THINKING instead of OBSESSING. Maybe everything is better over there. Maybe it's good to spend most of your time out in the middle of nowhere.

It's about 8 minutes from my 23rd birthday. Make that 7 minutes. I was blogging at this time last year. Funny how I find comfort in that. I was writing on this computer onto this blog a year ago today, contemplating the swicth from 21 to 22, writing a poem. This silly little piece of ground out in cyberspace is more of a haven than most real places I can think of sometimes. I'm already thinking about what will happen when I leave this work station. What will I do? How will I not end up wasting my time? Will I worry about my job interview this Thursday morning?

I am 3 minutes away from being legally 23 years of age. I remember in 1st grade when the 6th graders on the bus looked like grown-ups. I'm moving away. My being is altering. 1 minute away. I'm nervous. I have to look at the second hand clock! 20 seconds!

It's happened. It is accompished.

This has helped something. But I need a dose of something stronger yet. Something potent and cathartic. I think we've all unconciously attempted suicide by swallowing bottles and bottles of drugs. Their not so bad when we have a little bit, but we've gotten addicted to them to the point that we are sometimes closer to dying than to really living. Feeding ourselves so much bull. I want it out of my system. I want Jesus to wring me like a sponge and to fill me with Holy Water, water that won't eventually leave me poisoned and bloated or all dried up.

To the people that I love who are reading this, I can't believe that you are reading this. But I guess it's public and I guess you're all welcome. And I love you all. I hope that I'm not the only person that feels this way. If I am, then I guess I've got some issues to work out. Peace.

One more thing. I think I put up with the TV because it blocks me from having to deal with other stuff around me.

Cats

2005-06-17T00:27:00.000-07:00

There are two orange cats in our household. They are brothers and they look very similar to each other. Sometimes it is difficult to tell them apart, like they're twins. They come in and out of the house all the time. Apache, the more agile and athletic of the two, can open our heavy wooden front door from both the inside and the outside. It's somewhat incredible. The problem is he doesn't have the consideration for the rest of us to ever even think of closing the door behind him.

The other one has softer fur and somewhat of a baby face. His entire demeanor exudes a sense of innocence. When he comes into the house he likes to start following you around and rub up against your leg. The other cat does that too, but this one will stand up on his hind legs to rub his head on your hand if you hold it over him.

I have to live with the fact that these cats would kill me if they could. If I were the size of a cat to them, and they were then the size of a human, they would hunt me down and kill me for pleasure's sake. Thank God that He made us bigger than them. Have you ever seen one of these things jump? They literally jump up to places that are maybe five or six times their hieght! I'm sure you've heard of the phrase, "having reflexes like a cat." I've witnessed these cats in their hunting and playing. It's absolutely sinister. I once saw one of them dash up a pole to strike at a bird that was sitting up top. It was an instantaneous act of violence. The bird fell to the ground, unable to do anything but twitch its maimed and useless body. The cat looked at it and wandered off as if nothing had happened. Animal instincts are baffling, especially when the motive to kill overrides even the motive to eat. My dad at least put the bird out of its misery by clubing it with a plank of firewood.

Yes, our cats are inconsiderate bastards. They maim you for no reason and walk away. They come and go throughout your house, leaving doors open during the coldest of the cold season, tracking their muddy paws on your carpet, bedsheets and clothes. Even on a workday, they will do nothing but lounge around for hours on your sofa or your rocking chair, and if you disturb them in the slightest they can give you the most disgusted glare. Disregarding that they themselves have plenty of food in their dishes, they will not cease to annoy you when you are eating your own meal, climbing into your lap and sniffing at your food no matter how many times you have to pause your intake and drop them back on the floor. They drag their wounded into the house and leave you to be startled later on when you unexpectedly encounter them either lying helplessly in blood or running around, frantically looking for shelter or a way outside. And let's not forget their whining "meows" when they can't do something for themselves and feel compelled to get your attention, be you sleeping or awake!

Yet we love these things. We choose to have them around to keep us company. We forge relationships with these creatures that have no rational minds, feeling loved when they come to sleep on our laps and betrayed when they turn and scratch us. Perhaps, to live with a cat, the remorseless killer and most selfish of selfish creatures, is to foster the trait of human compassion. If nothing else, our cats teach me that I must allay my personal grudges and love them unconditionally.

The Verdict

2005-06-13T13:46:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting at a computer casually listening to a live news webcast of Michael Jackson's trial verdict that is about to be given. The cheering fans surrounding the courthouse are shouting and screaming their support. Millions across the country are waiting expentantly for the verdict. How did this happen?

I've seen videos of Michael Jackson documenting his superstar career. Little more than a decade ago, the guy was a living legend! He was more mythic than a religious leader, what with his costumes, his dancing, his technologically amazing music videos. I remember watching his performance at the Superbowl in 1993 when I was 11 years old. I would never have been allowed to listen to his music at the time, and we didn't have MTV. So this was a unique opportunity to see what this guy was all about. I remember being enthralled by his special effects entrance. He appeared on a video display billboard. There was a flash of smoke and he was gone! Only to pop out of the ground across the stadium. And then I think he vanished once again to suddenly appear on stage at the center of the football field. It was like sheer magic, and I couldn't believe it.

He is still known worldwide. He used his unequaled fame and popularity to speak in favor of world peace. Stepping out of his limo, the cameras went before him, and he marched with confiedence and with gratitude toward the onlookers who loved him. Everywhere he went there were crowds of hypnotized followers on his right and left, people in tears, unable to believe they were laying their eyes on the real Michael Jackson. People must have stretched their arms across the security barriers, just hoping for the slightest touch at the hem of his garment.

The funny thing is that the world is still watching Michael Jackson. Worshippers continue to surround him every moment that he enters a public space. But he does not represent the same mythic figure. He is still a mystery, but no longer a world ambassador, no longer a musical messiah. His face is commonly hidden and perpetually changing, distorted to the point that he now only resembles a regular human being with understandable human behavior and human motivations. Today, looking back over the years, from his childhood onward, the mystery is like a gothic tale. What happened?

"NOT GUILTY"

Not guilty on all charges. I just saw it all reported on the television. It was something of a spectacle outside. People shouting and rejoicing at each and every hearing of the words "not guilty." People hugging and crying, individuals who probably have no real or tangible relationship to Michael Jackson, but people that he has obviously touched nevertheless. There was one woman dressed in pink who released a caged dove at the "not guilty" verdict of each charge. What a symbol of...of insanity! There is something disturbing in it all. Simple pop culture turned into something too sensational and serious. This is justice, one of the supposed core values of this nation, intertwined with the realm of the provocative, which I suppose, in the end, is nothing new to human history. Regardless of what has really happened in these court cases, something about this whole journey is disturbing. Somewhere along the way, Michael Jackson must have lost touch with reality. But we have joined in and participated. Maybe he was never really given a chance to understand life like an ordinary person. I don't know. I never will. It's really none of my business.

I have participated in the madness myself. I wanted to know if this astounding individual would really be convicted of molesting children, if this man who once stood on top of the world would be confined to a state penitentiary like a common criminal. And the answer is no.

My Sprite Can

2005-06-10T15:52:00.000-07:00

I was sitting out on a dock on a small lake today with my special ladyfriend. I had recently finished a can of Sprite and set it down beside me. It had fallen over a few times, so we rested it sideways between two planks of the dock. After we messed around splashing each other for a few minutes a breeze dislodged the Sprite can from its place of rest and it started blowing down the dock. I hesitated for a fleeting moment before I got up and chased after the can, but I was too late. The can rolled off the dock and into the lake. As it floated away from us I had a glimmering hope that it might eventually drift close to an area of the shore where I could reclaim the can and preserve my integrity as an eco-friendly individual. It became clear, however, that the can was not going to float anywhere near where I could grab it.

I had become the very thing I hate. Even though it was an accident, I was disappointed with myself. That is another piece of synthetic human garbage that has marred the face of nature. We see this kind of pollution all the time: fast food bags sitting on the side of the road, beer bottles lying under a few centimeters of muddy water near the bank of a creek, etc. If you're at all like me, you sometimes involuntarily conjecture about the type of people who pollute in this manner, out of sheer laziness and disregard for others. I don't think I've been hanging out with this person. It's one of those common instances where we can spot the crime all the time but never the culprit. Take urinals at public restrooms, for example, the ones that still have unflushed pee in them. Usually, men will flush their urinal when other men are present. But when nobody is looking, why bother touching that contaminated piece of metal if you don't have to? Besides, the chances are probably about 33% that you had to flush somebody else's urine before you could go yourself.

The sad problem is that my Sprite can is probably never going to be picked up and deposited in a proper receptacle. There's a good chance that it will wash ashore or get trapped in some pocket of water and sit there for years fading. Of the few chance people that might wander off the beaten path and end up near the place where my can ends up, maybe one or two people will actually spot it. And if they are at all like me, they probably won't think to pick it up but leave it to lie where it lays. People don't like to pick up other people's garbage, and that's understandable. Why should we assume other people's responsibility? The years will go by. A new president will come into office. A couple of decades might pass. Flying cars will be zooming over the lake that might by then be drained to feed some fountain for some luxury casino resort and the can will still be there, buried underneath a shallow layer of sediment deposit. Centuries will pass by as if nothing to the abandoned Sprite can, all because I could not catch it before it fell off the dock.

Think about that factory where the Sprite can was manufactured and shipped out for distribution. Just that factory alone. Single out that one day when that Sprite can left the factory. Of all of the cans that left the factory that day, where are they all going to end up? How far might one of those cans eventually travel away from it's place of factory origin? How deep will the deepest buried can reach into the earth before it decomposes? How many years will will pass until they vanish into a completed form of decay? Their lives as Sprite cans will be short. They will quickly be consumed as refreshments at a party or at work or at picnics by the lake. But that stage is fleeting. The vending machines and the store shelves will be restocked in a week. What happens after all that? What happens when they become stagnant garbage? What happens for the next 500 years?

Secret Identity Revealed

2005-06-06T17:12:00.000-07:00

The identity of "Deep Throat" has been revealed. In the same tradition, it is time for the secret identity of "F'er" to be laid bare as well. But first, please read this F.A.Q.

1. Why did you hold on to your secret for so long?

Well, it is a dangerous thing to reveal your true identity when you write such scathing criticisms concerning powerful institutions and mafia families. If I had come out with the truth earlier, I might not have been an effective agent of social and political change for very long. By ending my anonymity, I am putting my life in danger.

2. So why now?

First of all, my friends and family have been encouraging me to do this for a long time. Secondly, I have recently installed a state of the art security system and will be concealing myself in an underground and renovated nuclear-proof bunker that I purchased from the government after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. I call it the "Mother Nest" (I painted the name in appropriate locations. Plus, there's a neat little banner that tells you you are entering the "Mother Nest" when you step out of the elevator. Hopefully I'll have an official sign erected soon :).

3. What's next?

I post an official challenge to any self-proclaimed "hero" that would wish to launch an assault upon my armed and armored underground battlestation. For the first challenger to successfully penetrate my defense grid and capture my physical person inside of the transfer chamber, the coveted title of "Champion of the Milky Way galaxy" and a $50 gift certificate to The GAP will be duly awarded.

4. Ok...but what's the catch?

No catch. But come swiftly, because if you are too late, I will have already transferred my physical person into the information network and been broadcast into the lives of every internet user in the Milky Way galaxy.

5. Were you involved in that presidential scandal about money and greed and power?

Yep, that was me, F'er. Or shall I say...Eggbert Bombay Richarchardson IV?

To be continued

2005-04-30T20:29:00.000-07:00

Just around the corner. Just around the riverbend. Before you even know it. Just when you thought it would never arrive. Faster than you can say...

The unknown is ever before us. One hill ascended reveals another. We walk toward the unknown and give it names. Truth. Death. The Celestial City.

The unknown is a place of ultimate rest. Ultimate knowledge.

"Follow the yellow brick road."
-the munchkins

"Follow the money."
-Deepthroat

"Let your soul be your pilot. Let your soul guide you."
-Sting

The yellow brick road led Dorothy and her friends to a bumbling fool who had nothing to offer.

When I graduate from college, I will not be any greater of a person. Jesus tells us to come to him as little children.

I like Cookie Monster!

About Climbing (Or not)

2005-03-12T01:41:00.000-08:00

My life is a succession of failures. Each new failure is a failure built upon previous failures. Before long, past failures advance in time to become future failures, so I become trapped in a room of failure-patterned wallpaper, failure textured carpet and a big sky above me. But to get out of the room would require that I scale the walls, the heights of which seem tantalizingly within my reach. If I get a running start and jump up just right, putting a lot of force into it, then I just might grab hold to the top of the wall. And if I have the strength or the dexterity to pull myself up from there, then I’ll be able to pull myself out and see what is outside of my cell of failure.

But I could fall and hurt myself. Or I could try and make a go of it only to end up frantically dangling my useless legs while the cell operator pushes the button that plays the laugh track sound through the loudspeakers. So I’ll sit on my failure-stained mattress and look up out of the corner of my eye and pretend not to watch as I notice people all around me climbing sheer-faced skyscrapers, thousands of feet above me. I’ll sit here and pretend not to hear the loud mass of screaming cheers that come from the outside, the voices that shout praise and exclamations of amazement to the fearless and powerful climbers. They are not meant for me. Nobody cheers for a person sitting down and watching other climbers. That would be either a mockery or the biggest waste of breath.

The worst fear is a fear of failure. And the worst failure is the failure of not trying.

"And the winner is...someone else...again."

2005-02-28T20:47:00.000-08:00

Fifth nomination for directing. Fifth disappointment.

Martin Scorsese: one of the greatest American directors of all time. Zero Academy Awards. Beaten by the likes of—most recently—Clint Eastwood, Roman Polanski and…Kevin Costner?!

Why do you think I wanted to watch the Academy Awards this year? It was for Marty. I wanted to be there in front of the television screen when his name would be called. When he would go up to accept the recognition for which he has so long been overdue. The word injustice comes to mind. And I’ve only been a fan for like two years! He’s been making incredible movies since the early 70’s.

Now the question comes to mind: Would it just be better to continue losing the Best Director Oscar, having already lost the chance of winning it for his best films, in hopes of earning the Lifetime Achievement Oscar that would recognize the genius of his entire career? I don't know. I shouldn't have to ask such a silly question.

I’m sorry, Marty. If it were my vote—which it surely is not—I would have already given you at least five of them. Keep making unforgettable films like you always have. It's like making a sandwich for you. A really expensive sandwich, perhaps, but a sandwich nonetheless.

This week F'er recommends:
The Aviator (2004)
Gangs of New York (2002)
Casino (1995)
Goodfellas (1990)
Raging Bull (1980)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Mean Streets (1973)

Red Road

2005-02-08T13:18:00.000-08:00

Features of a
Landscape like Hell:
Leathery gnarled limbs and
Harsh-postured shrubbery
Crying mercy to
Silent waves of heat
Like spirit-blooded fingers
That tempt you hither
Across the plane of
Fiendish vegetation.

Cracked and parched
Places of ground.
It’s a choked and dried throat,
Disdainful of water;
A ground that is
Wickedly pious in its thirst.

Most notable feature of a
Landscape like Hell:
Red graveled roadway
Cutting through
Long and straight,
A red slit across the orange valley.

Traveling down this road,
Rubbery burning soles
Bring unrest to
Then settled now trampled dust;
Clouds of red confusion swirl.

No peace in such environs.
Gray boulders waste to
Piles of orange rubble to
Wind-fettered specks of red;
Red specks that bounce
Throughout the burning valley,
Till perhaps a flooding rain
Pleasantly rushes to drown,
To carry trapped substances to
An imagined bed of peace
At the bottom of an imagined sea.

Weary and feverish you
Trudge halfway upon your hazy way
And pause in the depression of
A natural sluice to
Gaze wistfully sideways.
The teasing, waving air
Watches and yet beckons.
A fancied watery wall
Approaches with intentions of
Smothering as you smile and stand.

Now crawling low,
Red road presents
Magnified features:
Sundry scraps of metallic relic machinery,
Rusty razors embedded in Red Roadway;
Fitting implements.

Dead wooden sign
Suspended from a
knotted Joshua tree
(the tree itself recalling
a shrub-assuming
shade of Dante’s seventh circle),
crudely contrived and engineered,
the crooked hanging of the block of wood
more noticeable than its words:
“Beware flash floods.”

This is a place of spillage,
Red rusty water or
Red ripe blood
Makes no matter.

Failure

2005-02-06T21:28:00.000-08:00

Ease up
Side by
Side. Yes (actually
I have no
Idea).

Too far ahead of car
Next to me.
But perhaps
Not. Okay,
Back it up, nice and slow.

Turn, she
Tells me.
Yeah (somebody else
Is controlling this).

Turn-
Ing. Turning.
Curb, that’s
Definitely the curb
Behind my back wheel.

No problem. Push forward
And turn. Spin that wheel, she says
(where are the pats on the back?)
(or the horse whip?).

I know! Now back and
Spin!
No progress

Three
More
Tries

Same result

I
Can’t
Parallel
Park

Period

Sea Wind

2005-01-24T16:16:00.000-08:00

A wind blown from the east
Delectable new feast
Mixed well with tastes of wine
And dark and ruddy brine

The sea we love to hate
Our ship's bedfollow mate
With drunken spirits donned
We pace the decks prolonged

The sail a learned muse
Collecting silent clues
Her drapery takes form
New mysteries forlorn

Soft ballads from long past
Drift swiftly by the mast
The lookout man asleep
New dreams now plummet deep

And all the crew astray
In lands of grass and hay
They graze the brightened fields
Old bitterness to yield

Are these the ancient times
The winds that strike in rhymes
The rhythm of the past
Old mariners surpassed

But never drowned or stilled
These visions heavy filled
With flavored tastes of wine
Sprung up from out the brine

F'er + 1

2005-01-23T19:01:00.000-08:00

Today is an anniversary. An anniversary to myself. It has no formal name. But it has what an anniversary must never lack.

Henceforth from this day, I shall always endeavor to walk boldly and unfailingly in the ways of my Lord. I shall ever strive to seek after that which will bring glory unto his name.

Yeah. Today is an anniversary, but it will never be celebrated like today. It will never have much remembered significance after today. F’er is a mask, a man behind the curtain. And a man behind a mask is allowed to present an oath in the genre of ceremonial address. A person is free to describe any new kind of genre.

But I just told you that F’er is a mask. The man behind the mask does take pride in this day which to him is an anniversary. A year ago today marked a turning point. The closing of a prolonged ceremony. A decision to attend church. That was a small part of the decision. The church service is of little significance. It was the decision, which prompted further decisions. Shalom. The People’s Republic of China. New friendships and fellowship. New purpose. An amazing relationship. To be followed by even greater events and further decisions in a great chain of unfolding.

I shall call it, “F’er + 1.” And there will be much napping. It should be a day of rest and thanksgiving.

Humble Beginnings

2005-01-19T18:13:00.000-08:00

F'er has no plans of abandoning JiVE. Many pliable individuals have joined the blogging bandwagon only to become disillusioned by their sense of isolation. With no one to read the fruit of their literary labors, they become something worse than starving writers. Quitters. Poor pathetic quitters, selling out for the duties of the so called "real world."

F'er is no quitter. These ramblings are his humble beginnings. He is learning his craft. He is amusing himself. His audience is minimal. His brain configuration nominal. Always alliterating and fastidiously forming rightly timed rhymed phrases. Carrying heavy symbolisms through word-walled mazes. Symbolisms symbolizing literary masterpieces. F'er constructs timeless symbolisms.

Stick around.

Investigation at 42nd Street

2004-12-24T20:21:00.000-08:00

So there I was, sitting behind my desk, working my way through the 300th page of Moby-Dick (the great American novel, so they'd told me, even though I'd been at it for about two weeks, and far as I could tell it was just some whaler's handbook with a cute story about a white fish and a crazy sea-captain, not a detective or a crime mystery to be spoken of). I hear a timid little knock at my office door. "Come in," I call out, expecting that it's just the landlord coming in to shyly inform me I've got four more days to come up with the rent. Yeah, business was slow. Seemed like all of a sudden people started to have moral scruples against my line of work.

Someone asks you, "So what do you do for a living?"

You tell them, "Freelance investigation." Watch them turn their nose up at you. You can read the assumptions all across their face.

Most people think I just spy in jealous lovers' bedrooms taking pictures from the closet. First of all, I'm a delicate person. People have even called me sensitive. I don't go digging for dirt where it aint there. I don't go running to the newspapers. I don't dial up the mayor calling shenanigans. I don't judge. I get paid to gather the facts that people probably already know about but are too proud to rightly admit. At least they tell me that they can't afford to get their hands dirty, whatever that means. Way I see it, they'd rather live a lie than muster the guts to confront the truth. Pay someone else to that. Do you want me to spell it out for you? I'm a dick! Only my middle name aint Richard . . . It's Henry.

Anyway, back to my story. The door slowly opens, and in steps some broad in a black dress. Sheesh! It's 12:00 and I'm hungry. Who is it this time? A senator's wife? She's young. Blonde hair. Not gonna take it very easily. I say, "Look, mam, you suspect you're husband is cheating on you and you're probably right. But maybe you should save yourself the grief, huh? Use your money and take a vacation." My stomach was growling, what can I say? I wouldn't have said it if I hadn't seen it happen a thousand times before.

"I'm afraid you've judged me wrong, Mr. . . "

"Just call me Henry."

"Mr. Henry."

"My apologies. So what CAN I do for you, Mrs. . . "

"It's Miss."

"Excuse me."

"Miss Trinket."

"Miss Trinket. What can I do for you?"

I look at the clock. 12:02. I know right about now the line down at Joe's Sub Shop has probably strecthed out to a 15 minute wait already. No use squirming outta this one now. You gotta understand. It's never easy working for women. I mean, there's gotta be some level of trust between you and your client, and with the bad reputation I already get for being a member of my (honest) line of work . . . well, trust is something that I've found takes time when you're talking about a man and a woman.

"I work at the orphanage on 11th Avenue. Well, last night someone broke into the kitchen pantry and stole all of the milk and cookies. I wouldn't be so concerned except for the fact that this is the second night in a row that this has happened."

"So you came to me."

"Well, I didn't want to bother the police. But also . . . "

"But what?"

"Well . . . "

"Well what, Mrs. Trinket? Anything you might be thinking makes my job easier, makes your case potentially quicker and cheaper to solve."

"I believe that it's Santa Claus!"

I drop my head. As does my stomach. It was a Friday. Fridays are always bad luck, especially on a Christmas Eve. You think you're about to kick back for a nice relaxing weekend.

She goes on, "I'm sorry. Perhaps I shouldn't have come here. I . . . "

"No! Look, I'll help you out. I just need you to sign this contract, it contains all of the information regarding my fees and your rights . . . "

Truth was, I'd dealt with this guy before. Mr. Santa Claus. It was about three years earlier. Toy shop manager comes into my office telling me there's this guy been coming around the store lately. Big fat man in a red puffy outfit. Apparently he'd started coming in every day, wistfully admiring the model trains and racks of stuffed animals. When the cash box started turning up less money than what was supposed to be in there, that's when this manager starts to get some suspicious ideas about the manic depressive fat man. Turns out it was the manager's son had been felching extra cash from his daddy's business. The guy was raising a spoiled brat for a son, but he was too busy with his own affairs to even notice that his kid had been going about causing trouble, getting his name pretty high up on the naughty list.

Well, I'd followed this fat red guy anyway. I was curious. He looked familiar. When he finally stopped for the night in a back alley on 42nd Street, I tripped over a garbage can. Blew my cover.

"Who's there?" the guy calls out. I can hear the fear in his voice. I don't blame him. It can be a rough city at night.

"Not to worry, sir," I tell him. "I just feel like I know you from somewhere, but maybe I was wrong. The name's . . . "

"Henry. I know, son."

I stagger backwards.

He says, "Kris Kringle." And he holds out his hand. I start to walk with him to some shantytown on the East Side. He tells me it's warm there, a place with burn barrels and more or less friendly company. We're talking on the way, and I finally convince him to let me buy him a cup of coffee and a piece of pie at this nice little diner I know uptown. Turns out he only wanted some milk. They didn't have any cookies but he settled for a muffin.

Long story short, turns out the jolly fellow had gotten a bit disillusioned over the past few years about his job. Seems that Christmas had become too much of a commercial gimmick. People didn't want Christmas for what it was, a time to be with their families, eat delicious cooked meals, wake up with bright cheerful faces to see what new toys Santa had left them under the tree (all out of the goodness of his heart, mind you). Kids were greedy these days. They didn't want trains. They wanted violent video games. They wanted money! First of all, that wasn't easy for Santa and his helpers (as he called them) to meet the demand of. That required a lot more complex machinery and manpower. Worst of all, he'd begun to read columns about himself in the newspaper. Some parents had been claiming that they were unsure about the moral character of a man who snuck into people's homes in the middle of the night, much less certain children's bedrooms where the young ones had left thank you letters addressed to him. I gotta say, I kinda knew where the old guy was coming from.

Well, after a few hours and a few funny stories later, we got up to go.

"Listen," I say to him, "I'm sorry people misunderstand you, Mr. Claus, but I don't think you realize how special you were to me when I was a little kid."

I told him about the time that I got the poster of Micky Mantle that I'd really wanted, how I still mounted that one on my bedroom wall. I think I actually convinced him to go back home and keep working. I mean, that next Christmas morning I walk down to my living room to find a tubed package sitting next to the record player. I didn't bother to get myself a tree that year, I still feel bad about it. I open it up and it's a poster of Babe Ruth.

It looked like Kris Kringle was down in the dumps again. How could I blame him? Maybe he was expecting me to come after him. I figured he'd been hanging around the orphanage because he cared about the poor kids there. In any case, it looked as if I would have to go talk some of the jolly happiness back into the red suited fellow once again. Hey, it was my pleasure, especially if it paid the rent. I picked up my overcoat and headed out the door. I paused to think, but just for a second. Then I made my way down to 42nd Street.

Evacuation Procedure

2004-12-14T22:35:00.000-08:00

CUT IT! CUT IT, DAMN YOU! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD CUT IT!!

...

Did we do it? Did it work? If you can hear me, then we've succeeded in breaking through the Sector 9 defense grid. If not, then this message has already been intercepted by the High Supreme Information Regulation Bureau, and we're doomed. Our location team has picked up two very weak signals, one from Florence, Italy and the other in...Scotland? Expect an evacuation drop team in approximately 54 hours and...

WHAT! CHECK AGAIN! GODAMMIT YOU TRYANT BASTARDS!!

Alpha H and Omicron C! Listen carefully! We have reason to believe that there is a mole among you! Trust no one! Our evacuation team has disappeared! Most likely they have already been captured by the enemy. God help them.

These are your instructions. Wait for a sign. It could be tomorrow, it could be a week from now. We will have to depart from a new safe location. One of our operatives, someone you will not recognize, will infiltrate your location and report to you with your pre-programmed emergency code. DO NOT REPEAT IT! DON'T EVEN SAY IT ALOUD TO YOURSELF! JUST REMEMBER IT! You must then extract the G27 Jexingsmith Plasma Chip from your anus by whatever means necessary and turn it over to our operative to verify your identity. You must cooperate with your evacuation leader to the last detail! Remember that our operatives are trained and experienced in the field. They require your trust. If your evacuation leader is a woman then she is most likely hot and will want you to bang her senseless, partly as a cover and partly because she is extremely sex-crazed.

Our hearts are with you in this dark hour. Please know that we consider your lives vital to this resistance and that we will do anything and everything within our power to bring you both home safely. Good luck and Godspeed. Signing out.

PUNCH IT!

F'er talks and eventually recommends a film

2004-11-30T01:58:00.000-08:00

I couldn't let myself pass by a whole month with only two measly blog entries. So let me share something interesting that I was thinking about today. I learned that Sir Isaac Newton was wrong. Masses do not attract each other. A black hole sucks in light, but light has no mass. It is pure energy. The sun will also bend light that shines from stars billions of miles away. Once again, light has no mass.

Here's the deal. We now believe in Einstein's theory of relativity. And we all know that E=mc^2. Well, this is what mass does. It bends space.

Now, in a black hole, space is warped so much that it pulls everything into another dimension that does not exist in our universe. What?! I know, but apparently it's true. Apparently, astronomers have reason to suspect that there are 10 dimensions. Now, is that just dimensions of space? Because time is also a dimension, and, yes, black holes also bend time. I don't know.

All I'm thinking is this. I feel like that is an important thing to know. At the same time, that is nothing I would ever need to know. Is it wrong that I am 22 years old and have never until today learned about the true nature of the force of gravity (even though I still do not understand it by any means)? How are we so smart? Nobody has ever seen a black hole. How do we know they're out there? This world has got some geniuses. I wonder, however, if anyone really understands it all. Everyone great is standing on the shoulders of the great discoverers before them. It is a great chain of invention and discovery, and does anyone truly comprehend the genealogy if its linkage? It's a web. An enormous web of information and knowledge. We don't necessarily need to know step A to have a grasp of step K or step L. We might even be able to be the bridge to step M.

Also. I lied. I am thinking about one more thing. There is, in fact, a film entitled The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension. The film starts out with our hero Buckaroo Banzai going through a mountain, through the eighth dimension, in a super fast prototype car, out in the desert. And if I remember correctly, he was not the first. Another guy went through years before but got temporarily stuck and went crazy, possessed by a creature of the eighth dimension.

I'd like to think that Buckaroo Banzai is real. That he is out there protecting us. Using his knowledge not merely for money or his own personal fancy, but using it to protect us from those evil minions of the eighth dimension, who have been invading our universe, posing as humans, for decades now.

Sitting Still

2004-11-13T01:34:00.000-08:00

The TV signal is like granola tonight. And I'm aching. The painter usually comes on around now. I would know for sure if I had a clock, but I'm through with that. Who wants to get trapped like that? TV is bad enough, but at least I've been freed tonight. Now if I could only find something to eat. The shelves have just about run empty. The microwave keeps running when I pull the door open. I don't want to get some kind of cancer. I'll steer clear of that. Machines. They're probably killing us. Like this TV. It's just showing the stuff that's moving all around us all the time. Radio waves. It's energy. Energy that we're bombarded with every second of our lives. That has to do something. Light. I should turn off the light. Light is stronger than radio. It's better to stay healthy. These crazy nutjobs. Killing themselves slowly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They even left their lights on when they went to sleep. Have some respect for yourself! Their blankets smell of spices. It's all over me. I can't get away from it. I'll bet that even if there was running water to take a shower it would still be on me when I got out. Why haven't I turned off the TV?

I can't see. But if I sit here and look around long enough, my eyes will adjust. I remember reading about these people that lived underground for generations. They turned into blind monsters. But their sense of hearing and smell became so honed in the process. They lurked around the nearby villages and stole children from their homes at night. I don't remember where I read that anymore. I suppose it probably wasn't true. You can't trust people! People will let you say anything these days and get away with it. There's no restraint. And we call that freedom! We're just trapping ourselves in with a big wall of lies. It would take millions of years of evolution to create a species of blind human beings. There's no possible way that there will be civilization in another million years. Probably not even the next hundred years.

I wonder if that static...

How would I know if it had all ended? Nuclear explosions obliterate New York City. How long before the effects of that reach here? There's just this granola on the TV screen for maybe 25 minutes and then there's no more feeling. No more time. Because there's no such thing as time really, just another stupid invention like the TV or the microwave. It's a dimension. And we don't understand it. It's not cyclical. And we can't live in a cyclical mindset. Otherwise, all of the pain that we escape from will catch right back up with us again. And I can't accept that. I have to believe that this is random.

I better just check...

Still the granola. Still no food. And I'm suddenly glad that their blankets smell of spices. I think it's covering up the stench. I better not think of that. It will just get worse. But it's not that simple. I can't just tell myself something and make it be true. If there is a stench then there is a stench.

How long has it been since I've moved from this position? I think the cold has frozen my joints. I need to pour hot water on myself like my mom used to do to the car in the morning before driving me to school when the doors were frozen shut. That always looked so nice. The warmth. The awakening feeling. It must be so wonderful to be warmed like that. To be brought back to life.

I have to urinate. I could go in my clothes. That would be so warm. But then it would become uncomfortable. And if I'm gonna be stuck here I shouldn't make myself uncomfortable.

What time is...

No! I can't get away from it. I'm tired. So what? That doesn't mean that it matters what "time" it is! How did we let them do this to us? Wasn't there someone who spoke up when they began to trap us? Nobody listens to us. We have the answers. Not to everything, of course, but it doesn't matter because nobody listens to us. They didn't listen to me. So I had to save them myself. Why don't I turn the TV off?

Gastronomic Dispute

2004-11-07T11:15:00.000-08:00

My stomach has experienced better days. All of this panicked tightening, coupled with the intake of volatile acids that react harshly with unsettled stomach acids. I'm sorry, stomach. I've overlooked your feelings. But you've made your point, and you've made it clear as day. And really, it's just gotten to the point where I'm gonna have to tell you to just knock it off. You're starting to interfere with my responsibilities. When I'm put in strange, unfamiliar circumstances I tend to act impulsively. You know this. It's nothing personal. Yet. I mean, keep it up and we'll make it personal. I'll put an ulcer on you. What? You don't believe me? Try me.

Look. Forget that. I don't want to fight. I know this guy. He's a peer listener. He volunteers at his high school. I think he'd be willing to sit down with us and help us work all this stuff out. I don't want to keep fighting like this. I need you to digest my food. And you need my body to put yourself into. The last thing I want to do is remove you. I mean, I could try and find another stomach, but we both know how hard it is to find a good fit. So whaddya say?

Awesome. give me a hug. Just gimme a hug, for crying out loud! It doesn't mean we're gay! Geez. Now what do you want for breakfast?

On Spills

2004-10-29T20:37:00.000-07:00

Run and you take the risk of spilling yourself on the concrete. That's what happened to me. A big mess of F'er, sprawled over pavement. I should be a skater. Then there would be a method to the madness. I would have tripped on that curb, but it would have been in an attempt to grind it. And that would be admirable.

Will I run again? It will never be without a remembrance of today's infamy. It will never be the same. The laughter will have lost its original meaning. Perhaps that is why comedians use new material. One night they screw up, forget the precise delivery of a joke and change the meaning. That's why Radiohead refuses to play "Creep" live anymore. Not because they're any more mature of a band. They messed it up a few years ago in concert. Thom Yorke forgot the words. The drummer dropped his sticks. It was embarrasing. They could never play it without conjuring up that moment of failure.

Okay. This has gone on long enough.

25th Post Celebration

2004-10-20T13:47:00.000-07:00

Time to celebrate! This marks the 25th post of JiVE! And everyone knows that celebration must ensue on the 25th of anything. Well, okay, this isn't an anniversary. And even television shows don't usually celebrate a benchmark until they get to something like 100 or even 500 airings. So this is a modest, but nevertheless appropriate celebration, because I don't really have anything more significant to discuss. I say we take a look back and revisit some of our more notorious posts of yesteryear (or yestermonth...or yesterweek)...

Tuesday, June 22, 2004:

Man, this was a big day. 3 posts! Something that has not been repeated to this day! And what an ecclectic group of posts it was. I wonder what was going through my mind. Here is a quote from each of the three posts...

from "About my Blog":

"Our journey towards an understanding of the universe will be travelled upon different roads, even if we accept the same religious truths."

Wow...I was probably being a little too deep for my own good.

from "The Official 22 things that I Want to do Before I am 22 Years of Age":

"What was I thinking?"

That sounds a little more like me.

from "In a word...'exceptional'":

"And the word was 'exceptional.'"

Once again profound...but this time, I believe, more focused. I must have certainly come full circle on June 22nd. Deep ambitious thoughts, followed by doubtful catastrophe, but restored with epiphanous clarity. Isn't that life? Isn't that the epitome of the human condition? We are all of the time caught up in a cacophanous funnel cloud of abrasive, half-formed ideas, broken in their embriotic development by the very tulmultuousness of our ever-changing horizons. Even solar systems are unstable, unpredicatble entities. What?! Am I completely moronic? Why do I even bother with this blog nonsense? I don't even feel like I'm in a whirlwind, so why did I even say that? I should have seen this coming. Wait! I think I understand. The only certainty in this life is uncertainty! That's it! I've done it again!

Well, I don't think I have enough energy to sort through any other posts for the time being. That was too taxing. But they are all archived for your and my perusal. So thanks to all of you who have been faithful and supportive to JiVE over the past few months. The uncertainty. The renewal. The laughs. The thoughtfulness. The hiatus to China. The comeback. The new challenges. The new experiences. And once again...the uncertainty of the future. What will become of F'er 25 posts from now? Will there even be 25 more posts? I can only hope. But who knows really? And more importantly...oh yes...who bloody even cares?

Drift

2004-10-15T01:57:00.000-07:00

I remember that day you tripped on shrooms. That was weird. I didn't know it at the time. I just thought you were high. All those old feelings and thoughts cramped into your halluco-world in that kitchen where we had the munchies one night and Charlie went the way of the buffalo. How did it look in comparison? A part of you was about to drift away like a floating chunk of glacier melt off. Were you able to keep your bearings? I only ask because I have no clue. I'm pretty grounded.

I'm really not giving a hard time. I miss the stuff I can't get back. For a time, it was good. It was what I needed. And now everything seems to be drifting away from my center. It has been. I have to travel too far to get to where everyone has gone. I'm just an island anymore. Used to feel like one, but I wasn't, not then.

I had an old life. I have a new one. Like you. You had an old life. You have a new one. For a while we seemed to intersect. We ran a similar curve. "Actually, that's not true."

So I wonder what it feels like to know what you know. I wonder if I could have followed you to that halluco-world. What would I have seen when the walls of 21 years of construction were made to bend and shift? I bet it would be more than a feeling, sea-bottom walking. My revelations have come from a different source. It's harder to believe in them. Sometimes you gotta force yourself. And then it pays off. I like where I am. But the continents have drifted. The globe is unfamiliar, and I no longer recognize it.

can't fix it

2004-10-12T16:46:00.000-07:00

I regret walking into an unsolvable problem. There are some people that become obssessed with fixing broken things. Their computer has crashed. The programs aren't working properly. Something is wrong. So they spend the next four hours utterly in vain, trying to pinpoint what is wrong with their computer. The longer they remain at the task, the more frustrated they become, because nothing changes. I'm not exactly like that with physical things. I don't really bother with busted machines or stupid math riddles or jigsaw puzzles.

But something much more abstract is broke right now, and I'll be damned if I know how to fix it. I noticed it earlier today. I let it go. I moved on. I thought about it later, checked on it. That may have been a mistake. I feel like my tinkering has made it worse. I feel like a complete idiot. Two hours gone by now. Other broken things, things that I can fix, have been neglected in the mean time.

Where did this come from? As the theme from Full House posits, "What ever happened to predictability?" And all I can think about is what I possibly could have done wrong to make this all happen, besides not just leaving the problem to run its natural course. I begin to think that I am the very source of the problem. And now all I'm doing is journaling, and that's not interesting. That's not even productive. So here I go. I'm gonna force myself to forget about this crap and work at things that are within my knowledge and power.

...I want to blame my blog (which is pronounced B-log, by the way). I feel like this thing has gotten me into trouble before.

we have eyes that speak

2004-10-12T02:26:00.000-07:00

we have eyes that speak
louder than muffled words
easier to stare sunward
than to withstand your gazes

words that do not cut
but impart more truth
than can be held in
cheap paper gift bags

(though gifts we readily
receive and cherish)
words that convert only
with almost vain effort

a touch strikes deep
sprung from unseen recesses
culminating surface caresses
and returning to deep

transferring unsung truth
that is nevertheless
a sort of betrayal
and a resulting frustration

a taste of something too
sacred for young emotions
and all that remains
is a struggle for words

hard-fought words and
timid muffled breath
hard-formed truth but
proper understanding restored

we do not forget but we
know more new truths
dark and good in a curious haze
let our eyes focus on the lines

hardness on the brow

2004-10-07T16:24:00.000-07:00

My life is like a volatile substance. And I am an incompetant scientist. Somebody pushed me into an expensive laboratory with a new immaculate white coat and told me to observe this chemical. I don't know what it's doing. It's splitting and conjoing and exploding and bubbling. As soon as I notice something worth recording my cell phone rings and I have to answer it. Or I reach into my pocket protector to realize that I left my pen somewhere around the room, and by the time I find it and get ready to jot down information on my notepad the chemical's behavior has already changed, and I forget what it was I had planned on writing down in the first place.

What's with my crazy similes and metaphors anyway? Really, this is nothing more than a classic example of blogging about blogging. What makes things worse, why I feel even more ridiculous, is the fact that I just wrote about two paragraphs and lost them because I went to a new web site in the same window. I've just spent the last ten minutes or so trying to rewrite what I had already written, and for some reason it doesn't sound nearly as good as it had before. That's frustrating. All a part of what I was talking about. Now that happened and my feelings have changed.

Oh man. I need a vacation. Luckily, I'm getting one. Pretty much starting now. But I'm tired and still stressed about school and work and school and relationships. I never intended this to be a journal. But it has kind of replaced my journal, which was updated infrequently anyway. There's probably only a couple people at best who read this, one of them likely being myself. My feelings have gotten in the way of my art.

But I still want to say something interesting. And something interesting happened today. I have a quote that I heard from an astronomer today:

"In the beginning there was hydrogen and helium."

Wow! The way he said it was not Biblical or profound. I don't even think he realized then how ironically funny this sounded, at least to someone like me. Whenever I hear a sentence start with "In the beginning..." my mind is confronted with unfathomability and religious theology. It makes me want to insert some deductive reasoning and begin a Third Testament:

"God is hydrogen and helium."

But then I would have to accuse myself of heresy and get some friends to burn me at the stake. And that would be awkward. Then later today, I read the opening of a William Faulkner story:

"At first there was nothing."

Granted, it's easy to take a sentence out of context, and I need to read the continuing 23 pages of the story. But I'm pretty sure there was an intentional religious allusion on the part of the author. It's hard for us humans to understand the beginning. We're not supposed to understand it. We don't remember being born. There might as well have been nothing before our existence, because what is the purpose of anything but for our own interaction with it?

There was always God. Weird. And there was not always us, but there always will be? Eternity. Weird. My life feels volatile and changing. God is changeless. Will my life always be an unstable liquid? Especially if my life never ends. Unfathomability. God is hydrogen and helium? People should not talk to me, in spoken or written word. I've heard enough for a lifetime to play around with and figure out. Give me 2,000 years to order everything I have observed thus far. Check up on me. Maybe then I will be ready for more. Or just give me five minutes and maybe I'll forget it all.

too many similes, too many metaphors

2004-09-26T19:55:00.000-07:00

Oh man! I've really done it this time. I feel like I've dished up more food than I can eat. I'm like the scientists in Jurassic Park who built a dino theme park before figuring out that you can't put up a fence and hope to contain an extinct group of animals that had to be eradicated by a frickin' asteroid collision. Which basically means I'm like Dr. Frankenstein. From one point of view, you could say that I've created a monster that has broken all restraints that I could ever hope to enforce. Of course, if you've ever read Frankenstein, you would hopefully understand that there is sympathy for the monster. Instead of being afraid at what I have done, I should try to understand it better. To show it love and care. Throw away all of the deluded expectations I may have had that my creation was meant to serve me, to gain me fame and triumph. It is a responsibility.

What I've written sounds bad. It sounds like I've commited a crime. Far from it. What I am feeling is excitement. Very likely, I am days away from a major change in my life. All other concerns, like work and shelter, seem so shallow compared to the grandness of what could be going down shortly. It deserves to be recorded in the blog annals of modern history. I have been running down a long footpath, gaining momentum for the bold leap into the deep gorge below. And for the first time I can begin to see the edge of the cliff. We are in the dark movie theatre, and the time has almost come to don the ceremonial 3D glasses for the action highlight of the film.

But as my first paragraph hints, I am experiencing strange feelings that I had not anticipated. I'm nervous. What if I jump into that gorge only to realize that I never learned how to swim? I thought I had it pretty much figured out. Now I realize that this step I am about to take is not a small one. Things are going to be a lot different. And it's exciting. But I must keep perspective. I can't forget that others have gone before me, only to end up shipwrecked, burning their wreckage on a deserted shore in hopes of rescue. They tried to captain their vessel through forbidden waters. In their excitement, they experienced a temporary pride in their accomplishments, putting too much faith into their own limited knowledge of navigation. As they drifted farther and farther off course, they forgot in their fever-stricken panic to look up at the the sky to the one constant source of guidance.

Let me never forget you, God. I thank you for your blessings. Let them never become idols. And now help me figure out this stupid English paper.

In spirit and in truth?

2004-09-20T22:42:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since we've actually heard from F'er. And while one could possibly make conjectures about F'er based on his blog entries (I will freely admit there is a lot of F'er in these blog posts), perhaps we need to return to some more blatant honesty. Every once in a while, a writer may be called to emerge from behind the curtain. I ask you now to indeed pay attention to the man behind the curtain! At the same time...be careful! You can't totally separate the F'er from his words. F'er is words. As spoken by Lauren Hill, "Me without a mike is like a beat without a snare." Okay, so I really didn't have a very good reason for quoting the Fugees.

I find myself wanting to be a true worshiper of God...

"Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth." -- John 4:23-4

All I know is that this passage resonates with such truth for me. Maybe it has to do with the fact that there are three forms of "truth" in the verse itself. I found myself wanting to walk over to the railing overlooking the ground floor of the library last night. I imagined myself declaring these verses to my fellow hard-working students, and watching their confused faces while I just looked on with a grin before turning to leave. In fact, I really don't completely understand what Jesus means when he says this, and I hope it is not because I am like the hardened pathway, or the rocky or thorny soil. I want to meditate on these words. As for my fancies of being a crazed, soap-box preacher, perhaps that just sprung from my recent desire to speak words of truth. I desire the Holy Spirit to impart me, to charge me with a surge of profundity, that when I speak in passing conversation to my brothers and sisters, God's words would pierce the walls of their doubt and misunderstanding.

What does it really mean to worship "in spirit and in truth?" I mean, I feel like I could give a simple explanation, but I also feel that there is something deeper that needs to be uncovered. I would love to hear a sermon about worshipping in spirit and in truth. Worship is a personal offering to God. We can worship in singing, writing, giving, what have you. It compliments the work that we do in His name. Our worship is the tasting of life-giving waters:

"But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." -- John 4:14

We are given abundant life. Thus, even in a desert place (a picture of an old map...the Sahara), we can bring life to those dying around us. Because "the Father seeks." We do not have to search for our destiny. We don't have to probe the singulartiy of the black hole to find truth. I don't really have to worry so much about where to go after graduation. I listened to a song today that spoke to some of my recent feelings. The climax (yes, climax) of the song goes like this:

"This place that I'm supposed to be,
is not the chair of a desk in front of a mirror
Can't you see that it's not here or there or anywhere
But in speaking distance with God,
and where can you go that's too far?
Because I can worship him anywhere.
Yes I can worship him anywhere."
-- Plankeye -- 'Bicycle'

There's a certain freedom in that. It's good to know that I don't have to go and "find myself," that there is a purpose for me being where I am today. I am here to worship my God. I can read the Bible in the library. And even here there is a harvest. I see a lot of thirsty people around me. They want something true, kinda like me, but they don't know where it is. So, like I said, it doesn't matter so much where I go. Yet I still find myself thinking of West Africa and pirates and diamonds. And I wonder if I'm trying too hard. I see a plausible connection. Trouble is, do I see a connection between oracles and the stream of consciousness? I suppose time will tell. Likely, I'll look back on this blog and chuckle.

F'er continues to hide. F'er has been dealing with a lot of strange new things. F'er is listening to emo-punk. F'er wants to worship in "spirit and in truth." But F'er also wants to do something, and perhaps that is the hardest part, the most challenging.

4829 H Street

2004-09-16T22:28:00.000-07:00

A certain house outlives its builders, it's first tenants, maybe it's second tenants, perhaps scores and generations of passerbys. It is a way point on a larger scale of time than an inn. It is something that is owned, yet never owned. The house is like a mother, and its tenants are her children. She enfolds them under her wing. She stands tennaciously through the wind and the rain, the bitter cold snow and the pounding hail.

We force our changes upon this protectress. We force her to conceal our darkest secrets. We scar her with nails and make her carry our memories and desires, covering her walls with the heavy images of exotic worlds where we imagine ourselves to be happy. We bore her with holes and invite corruption to diffuse itself into the rooms, until it is reflected in every corner, under every table. Colors and sounds of fear. The mother cries, she bears testimony to her pain, yet we drown her angiush in our business. We silence her moaning frame with hypnotic information, and we lose ourselves to sedation on soft surfaces. We feel her yet think only of the hardness. We forget her. And in our forgetfulness we trample her. She bears the filth of our travels, our earthly wanderings, and it collects. She wipes our soles.

Is it me?

2004-09-13T22:18:00.001-07:00

"Look back I sift through all the cliques
Roaming the halls all year making me sick
While everyone's out trying to make the cut
What
And when you think you know me right
I switch it up"
-Deftones -- 'Back to School (Mini Maggot)'

I'm like a superhero. I'll change on you so fast. I've got so many identities, you couldn't track me down if you tried. You go ahead and go out there into the world. Move to the big city. Follow your dreams. Find yourself. Try out for cheerleading. Force yourself into that circle of friends. Laugh at the things they're laughing at. Go out on the town in a limo. You think I'm looking at you for acceptance? I'm trying to figure out a mathematical equation for the distance between your stupid proud smile and the knot in your stomach that keeps telling you that someone's gonna find you out.

And you know what? I'll even play your game. And I'll play it better than you ever could. All I gotta do is switch hats and you'll think I'm 2 Dangerous! Maybe I'll walk outta the house in my beanie and you won't even wanna talk to me. You can make your judgements. But I figured out all your psychological puppet strings. Sorry. You're gonna have to think like me if you wanna figure me out. And if you do wanna figure me out, happy hunting. Maybe we could go out for a beer, talk about our dreams, talk about how stupid everybody is. How do you know I won't flip your ego too? Please...

Vacation

2004-09-10T17:18:00.000-07:00

I feel like a gypsy squatter right now. Life is so confusing. Some property managers came by my house today, completely surprised that I was living here. I try to convince them that I have an agreement with the landady that lasts through the month. The old guy tries to tell me a different story that he heard from the landlady. Does he believe me? I don't know. "What can we do to make your part easier?" he asks me. I'm thinking, "What the hell is my part old man?" True this house is messy and filled with all kinds of crap, but it ain't mine. I didn't make the mess. It was a hole the day I moved in a year ago! Why is this my problem? Gimme my frickin' security deposit back, you wench of a landlady! You better not try and screw me! Oh, so I may have to vacate by the end of the month. No problem! It's only the middle of the frickin' school year.

I feel like there are forces at work more powerful than me. There was definitely an agreement, and encouraging words that this house could very well be mine for the rest of the semester. But now I feel like a squatter, and I want out.

I wish I could say, "no problem." I wish I could just put on a vinyl record and sing:

"I get by with a little help from my friends
I get high with a little help from my friends"

Apparently, in his later years, after the complete divebomb of his career, Orson Welles was a bit of a transient, somewhat of a Hollywood nomad, rooming and boarding at the hospitality of friends. It must have been like housing a timeless relic to keep this broken-down man, this forgotten and abandoned genius of his time, at one's estate. You would be living not with an ordinary tenant but a genuine, mysterious piece of history!

This, however, is not the aftermath of my life. Actually, I don't know what it is. So many strange, often difficult occurrences have been happening in my life lately. And so many sad, confused feelings have been now and again invading my mind. And they are triggered by different things, the thought of a friend, an envisioning of the future that is just as assuredly dashed by my doubts as it had been brought into confident focus. These property managers have disturbed the temporary piece of mind that I had been experiencing. They are like a car that has driven through a beautiful reflection of the city skyline after a refreshing rain. Forgetful me. I mistook what I had been looking at as the real thing. The image of my life that I had been dwelling on was only a distorted replica. With difficulty I attempt to pinpoint in my memory the time that this beautiful, upside-down picture caught my attention and began to put me into this trance that I have finally been awaken from.

Is it just reality come raining down? Is it a confrontation with inevitability? Aren't we all meant to be drawn from our luxury and comfort at some point in our lives, to be dragged out into the pouring rain? Where are the cameras? What is the name of this "reality show?" But I am not in the pouring rain. Some people are. I am simply in a doorway. Or a threshold. In some stories I have often read of certain characters who are introduced "on the threshold." We have a literary term for this. It is called a "liminal" description. Perhaps I am in a liminal existence. Ever since I heard the knock on my door this afternoon, it has been as if I could begin to see the individual pieces of this house fade away from existence. I need to escape before I am swept away. This is cleaning time. Reality is expected at any moment. I have stayed here too long. But it's more than just this house. Something is catching up with me! And I don't know where I have to run to stay ahead.

Penance

2004-09-09T15:58:00.000-07:00

Alex finished his set and stepped offstage. He felt a little embarrased, as he always did after a performance. It was a strange profession for someone like Alex to choose, someone who felt uncomfortable and out of place under the bright glare of a spotlight. But the act was over and behind him once again, and once again he would be ready to face the few spectators who would approach him to pay their tributary respects and flatter the musical talent that Alex never quite felt he genuinely had.

After sealing his guitar away in its black hard case, he stepped out into the dimly lit room. His friend Josh came forward and the two exchanged a smooth ritualistic hand shake. It was a casual yet necessary gesture that signified, not only their mutual recognition of friendship, but their sense of brotherhood and shared experiences. "That was awesome, dude," his friend congratulated.

Alex forced out a little chuckle and looked away across the room. "Thanks," he quietly responded as he began to wind up his cords and stow away his equipment. Keeping himself occupied was a good way to potentially ward off the awkwardness of this sort of conversation. How was he supposed to respond?

"Hey," Josh quickly interjected, "I want you to meet my friend Mogely." Alex turned from his task and acknowledged the presence of the young guy that had been standing next to his friend. This young man, who appeared to be in his early 20's, took a step forward and threw forward his hand with a broad, friendly smile. Alex politley offered his own hand and the two exhanged a brief, single shake. It was a quick gesture, but Alex was momentarily surprised by both the warmth and strength in the young man's grip.

"Nice to meet you," they both said. And the three men stood around for a moment, wondering what to say to each other. Alex already knew a little bit about Mogely's story from Josh. He had just been released from prison a few days earlier, now a born-again Christian trying to get back on his feet. And while Mogely professed his intentions to begin a new life, to walk forward upon the straight and narrow, Josh was there to mentor him and safeguard him from the snares of the past. Society, although with good intention, was already forcing him to confront certain past habits and addictions in the form of volunteer programs and support groups.

After talking for a few minutes about coffee and basketball, Alex asked Josh if he could help him carry his amplifier outside to his car. Bringing it inside had taken more energy than Alex was now left with. Mogley, however, immediately responded, and squating down, fought to get a firm hold on the ridiculously heavy machine. Standing up, he asked in a friendly voice, yet with a slight, involuntary grimace, "Which way?"

"Oh...ah...follow me," Alex hesitatingly replied, a bit surprised at Mogely's action. Alex, unawares, picked up his guitar, and the two young men began to walk outside toward the parking lot. Alex suddenly realized his rudeness and turned back to say, "Do you want some help, dude? I know that's pretty heavy."

"Oh, no, it's all good, man. I used to have to carry these heavy boxes all the time when I used to work at a warehouse." Alex could see that his arms were beginning to shake, and he ran ahead to unlock the back of his car. Mogley shuffled over to the vehicle, struggling under the weight of the amp, yet trying hard to hide the obvious strain. Setting it down as gently as he could, he took a deep breath and told Alex, "Well hey, man, it was good to meet you. Maybe I'll see you around again."

"Yeah, totally," Alex responded. After a final moment of staring silence, they again shook hands and Mogley turned to go back inside the cafe.

Alex just stood and watched as the young man walked away. What had just happened? There seemed to be something extremely significant in the interaction that had just taken place. Mogely had grabbed that heavy amplifier as a man that was somehow desperate. There was such a strange necessity in his reaction to the call for assisstance, and it hadn't even been directed at him really. And then Alex began to think about the concept of penance. Are we expected to pay a penance for the sins we commit? Alex got into his car and sat there in silence. He was overcome with sudden and immense guilt.

my shadow

2004-09-03T23:05:00.000-07:00

We all have dark things that follow us. They are our shadows. And they're most hideous and powerful at night, because they're all around you. Feelings, whatever they may be, are amplified at night because of the shadows. Shadows are feelings. And they have names. Mine is Loneliness. What is so aggravating about Loneliness is that he (although it very well could be a she) stares at me through other people. That's how he taunts me. He has fun in crowds. And then, in an empty room, he whispers these deafening noises into my ear...no, not in my ear, but it gets to my head nevertheless. And he's all I can think about. I remember in middle school, how I used to bend my head to the ground and it did damage to my back. It was his fault. Though my head may be held high nowadays...it's funny, I still can't look at people in the eye. Because sometimes he's still there. And boy do I curse my shadow! I blame him for a lot of things in my life. But he keeps me company. In fact, sometimes I get this funny idea, and I don't know if it's true, but I get to thinking that maybe I put him on a leash. Maybe I'm not really trying to walk away from him. I think I might actually be taking him for a walk. Why else would he want to stick around with me? Anyway, I still get this other idea...this is one that I've had for a lot longer, but I suppose it must be even more untrue, beacause I can't find very solid evidence in favor of this one. At any rate, the idea goes something like this: Loneliness is gonna face something fierce one day. It's gonna come up against something he's never seen before and run away. And then something new will follow me around. Another shadow? I don't think so. But it won't be Loneliness.

"Azeem the Great One, I am home!"

2004-08-18T01:24:00.000-07:00

We're sorry. This post has been temporarily or permanently deleted by F'er. (11/16/11)

3 minute message from China

2004-07-16T06:10:00.000-07:00

When you're in Beijing, don't pray for rain. Or if you do, make sure you don't have to catch a train. Or if you do, make sure you are at the train station first. Chinese people can't seem to handle driving in the rain. Gridlock is insufficient to describe the chaos. Thank you.

China ho!

2004-07-01T00:13:00.000-07:00

Alright, folks! After a rough start, a glorious comeback, some laughs, some tears and some uncertainties, we come to a significant fork in the road for JiVE. This, I am afraid, will be the last entry of my blog for what could very well be a hiatus of more than six weeks! F'er will be leaving his native country to visit another on the other side of the world. China. As part of a cultural exchange program, I will be travelling with a small team of American college students from three regional schools. For the bulk of the program, we will be located at a university in the city of Lanzhou, where each American student will be paired with a Chinese, English-studying student as roommate. I could continue the details, but I won't. Details are too uniteresting for JiVE. Needless to say, I am anxious. And my packing is not going so well as of yet. And I'm running out of time. And I'm writing a blog entry? I suppose one of the most significant things I will miss is blogging, which includes the reading of my friends' blogs. At the same time, I think I need a break from some of the commercial and consumerist absurdities of American culture. It will be quite interesting to be in a place where Chinese food does not go by the name (in Mandarin, of course) "Chinese food" but merely "food." My friend and I had a good conversation about this phenomenon once.

Anyway, if any of you American stalkers out there were hoping to discover my whereabouts this summer and come "visit" me, you had better start digging a hole now. Or you could book passage to China.

I leave you all with a few questions...

1. Has your life been an examined one?
2. Are you feeling bloated and light-headed?
3. Am I not extremely cool?
4. In what year will the human race finally dig a hole from the United States to China (you can see I am fascinated by the concept)?

Twenty-two

2004-06-30T23:36:00.000-07:00

Alright...I'm reposting something I had up for a little bit on the 29th. There are a number of reasons why I'm uncomfortable to do so. First of all, it's a poem, and I don't normally write poems. Secondly, it plagiarizes something that was both written (quite beautifully I might add) and experienced by mindovermatter of Synaptic Transmissions, an experience that touched him personally and me vicariously. I encourage you to read about it here. I suppose it conflicts with my notion of "individuality," upon which I have lately written of my frustrations and confusion. As if I couldn't come up with my own experience to write about! Well, in my perhaps completely unnecessary defense, I did not begin writing this poem with the intention of alluding to mindovermatter's blog entry (since that is what I have to go off of). However, it seemed that the point I was making was illustrated quite well in his train story. I had no qualms writing the poem, which was intended to be nothing more than a humble excercise in artistic expression. By posting it, however, I fear of appearing cheap and pretentious. Nevertheless, I seem to have the go ahead from mindovermatter. And because this simple piece of writing is nothing more than honesty, which this blog may need more of from time to time, I give you a little insight into what F'er was thinking about during the transition from 21 to "Twenty-two."

Twenty-two

All I care about is me
And about my discontents
Countless dreams I fail to reach
And wasted time I’ve spent

I just turned twenty-two
Only fifteen minutes ago
Fifteen minutes, twenty-two years
What do I have to show?

So clearly I can see the world
In chaos and decline
My mind can see its problems
Though I only work at mine

I know I’ll never find content
In a world that’s sick and dying
Yet I can claim a love and grace
Sufficient for the trying

I still cannot be selfish
Hoarding love as wealth
It’s given me by overflowing
In sickness and in health

I will fail and I will hurt
And dreams will seem like dreams
But love, how small, will hit its mark
And rivers flow from streams

A boy of four or five
Was walking with his mother
She did not know what train to take
And needed help from others

Her own hard life was pain
Her innocence defiled
And now the debt to pay would be
Exacted from the child

While sitting on the train
A sad young woman boards
Her eyes betray the troubles
That the cruel world awards

And then she sees the boy
Perhaps as in a mirror
She takes her place beside the pair
In love there is no fear

Her soothing voice of comfort
Makes young bright eyes shine brighter
Her candy and her smiles
Will make his burden lighter

As if she were an angel
She comes and disappears
But angels I do not believe
Wear eyes as sad as hers

She will fail and she will hurt
And dreams will seem like dreams
But love, how small, will hit its mark
And rivers flow from streams

No safe bets

2004-06-30T03:13:00.000-07:00

To give something of one’s self can be both ironically selfish and simultaneously courageous. Why is that? Life among other people is a constant exchange, and our transactions can be absurdly unequal. We give anger for sympathy, empty encouragement for vulnerability. Perhaps the worst exchange is unrequited love. To be hated is one thing, especially when we know that we are undeserving of such feelings. But to give love and receive anything less is truly despairing. For that there is rarely consolation, and a person may seek desperately for an explanation, all in vain. That we may never understand. In our ignorance we anticipate a fair economic system, yet experience will teach us that reality is anything but ideal. There are no safe bets.

Frustrations

2004-06-28T20:14:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I will be 22 years old, and I ask myself what I have to show for my life thus far. All you think about when you turn 21 is about how you can now legally drink and gamble. If you didn't consider yourself an adult at age 18, then you were sure to have reached that status at 21. And now there's nothing left but to face life. There are no special bells and whistles from here on. What is special about 22 is "Oh crap! I'm 22!" I feel like it's time to start figuring things out. I have one more year of college, and then I need to be ready to make some kind of decision as to where the next segment of my life will be positioned to run its course.

I've just spent the weekend in Canada with some friends from college. We were visiting another friend up there. Last night I talked with a guy who had graduated last year as a studio art major. I asked him if he had come to Whitman expecting to be a studio art major, hoping for some reason that he would say no. Turns out my hopes were confirmed. He had had no idea as an incoming freshman, expecting to be a math/physics guy. But he has such a passion and budding knowledge about different kinds of art: painting, architecture, etc. I know this because he often brings up such topics, his thoughts, knowledge and observations, in general conversation, as he sees things out the window from a moving car. He has a passion for art, and it's exciting and encouraging to see.

As I said, I began to talk with him last night, voluntarily beginning to talk about myself and my own desires. I have such a deeply rooted desire to create. I feel as if there is a reservoir of potential energy building up within me ready to be released and put to use. But I don't know what to say or how to say it. I just read the recent posted entries from the blogs of my friends, and I though they were beautiful. In many ways I connected with them. I enjoy this blog, and I have had some genuine fun writing some of it. And maybe that is good. But how is it important? How is writing about my thoughts of film all that important? I've never created a film. I dream about how awesome such an experience must be, but I have nothing of value to say, or if I do, I have no idea how to fashion my ideas into any kind of cohesive form. I have tried to express my creativity through playing the guitar. Yet I realize that I am not that good, nor will I ever be all that much better than I am. That's just the way it is. I've tried writing songs, but I can't ever do it. There have been plenty of various riffs and chord progressions that I have come up with, but I cannot for the life of me put anything together! I have no idea how to put together a song! And I'm not even talking about writing or applying lyrics. That's another obstacle that I can't overcome on its own. I wish I could write stories, but I don't know where to start or where to take them. My own experiences? Ok, I can do that, but what do I say through that, how do I describe this particular experience? I begin to write, not having any idea of what my objective is, and immediately stumble on how to form a sentence. I am so critical of what I do, that I silence myself before I ever even allow myself to speak. How will I ever get from the point of merely envying the passion and genius of other people to being able to express my own?

I remember being a very happy kid in the sixth grade. I was nerdy, scrawny, four-eyes, what have you. But my classroom that particular year became a comfortable environment in which I felt encouraged to be myself, to revel in the hidden corners of my ridiculous 12 year old imagination, and bring them to life. I am romanticizing the experience, of course, but it was truly a time that I was allowing myself to create in different ways. There were these humorous comic characters that I invented, such as a character who did nothing but played ping pong. I suppose to describe him, he was invisible except for a smily face, two arms and pair of shorts. He permanently carried around a ping pong paddle in his left hand. I'll never forget that stupid little character. And it makes me proud that I can claim complete creative ownership over that.

It is difficult enough for me to create my own opinions. It seems that anything I argue is simply an amalgam of opinions and ideas that I have collected from various conversations, sermons, eavesdroppings, speeches, etc. Is it just me, or does anyone else feel like they are so easily persuaded? Two people will be arguing against each other, and I will be able to do nothing but perceive the truth and validity of the claims of both sides! What do I have to argue that comes directly from me? Should I try and cut myself of from the opinions and exclamations of other people. Do I just need to sit down and be patient, and begin to ponder about the world and its problems, and from this patience and isolation, allow individual thoughts to flow? Can it be, in fact, somewhat dangerous to our individuality when, although upon good intentions, we seek out knowledge and ideas from alternate voices? When we read books from African Americans writers and watch films by Native American directors? What if our individuality is, in fact, more like something that is slowly shed and torn off like old skin, the more we experience the world and listen to the voices of its different people?

Well, this is probably not it. But I must say, I do not know how to reconcile my frustrations. This past weekend has been strange. I have hung out with three different groups of friends: some people I used to be friends with from school who I eventually drifted apart from, friends from college, and my best friends who came from church and youth group. It was a fun and unique experience being among all three groups. The first group made me wonder what my life would have been like had I shared their similar group experiences in high school. The second group made me think about how much a college experience like the one we share has forever opened up our eyes to a new way of looking at the world and the lives ahead of us. Among the third group of friends, I realize that remaining in the same place will probably limit a person's development. One's ideas will not be changed. Unless you force yourself to adapt to the challenges of a new environment, you will not easily change much at all. What this means, I suppose, it is that my individuality is indeed not completely my own. I owe who I am as much to myself as to these different groups of friends, with whom I have shared similar experiences. In retrospect, that ping pong character from sixth grade would probably not have been invented had it not been for my friendship with a particular friend from that class.

Previously, I had been asking myself, why don't I feel like I completely belong to any of these groups of friends? But then I also remember a brief situation from last night, in which I was sitting with the friend I had gone to visit in one of his hometown cafes. He was approached by one of his old friends, and their conversation was brief. This guy must also know what it's like to be caught in the middle of past and present experiences. He must also have old friends who he has trouble relating to now that he has been away at college for the past 3 years.

Maybe my individuality is the very reason I feel such unrest among groups of people. Where am I going with this? This has become sort of stream-of-consciousness. I think I am trying too hard to build up to a resolution. A few minutes ago, I felt I was on the verge of something profound. But my indecisive nature, my too critical thinking and my fear of writing too much (too late) has perhaps reared its ugly head once again.

I am not really all that worried about turning 22. It does sound dramatic to say that I am. I just listened to a song by Switchfoot called "Let That be Enough." In it the singer says, "It's my birthday tomorrow / No one here could know / I was born this Thursday / 22 years ago." Remembering this line is what caused me to listen to it, because although tomorrow is NOT Thursday, it is my 22nd birthday. The first words to the song say, "Wish I had what I needed / To be on my own / Cause I feel so defeated / And I'm feeling alone / And it all seems so helpless / And I have no plans / I'm a plane in the sunset / With nowhere to land." I don't know if this was really what the songwriter was feeling when he wrote the song. Maybe it too was a bit of romanticism, but I can definitely relate to what it says. My station is nothing new. Perhaps even the writing of such a beatiful song was not enough to satisfy his anxieties. Perhaps he too felt critical of what he had created, annoyed that his poetry was too simple and lacking a true sense of individuality. The song actually continues, "And all I see, it could never make me happy / And all my sandcastles spend their time collapsing." He has seen much of the world by 22. But no matter what new places he travels, no matter how many new experiences he might enjoy and be influenced by, he will never be completely at ease, never quite feel like he can belong. All of the things he creates never quite acheive the greatness that he strives for in his mind. They are like sandcastles that get trampled on or demolished by the tide in the midst of their construction. Maybe they just buckle under their own poor design, because they were never built strong in the first place.

The friend who I talked to last night told me a particular piece of advice that I should probably consider. He told me that to become great at an art, one has to practice it every day. Maybe this sort of excersize is a step in the right direction. Maybe allowing myself to ramble on like this as a way of conveying my frustrations is a means to settling them. Who knows? And more importantly, who cares?

Happy Veemas Eve!

2004-06-24T22:17:00.000-07:00

Well, folks, it is another 6 months to Christmas Eve. Which means that today is 1/2 Christmas Eve. Which means that it's 1/2 X-mas Eve. Which means that it's V-mas Eve!

Oh man, have I got some crazy Veemas Eve memories, like the one year my mom severely overcooked the peacock and we all had to eat cereal instead. We were all in such down moods, because, you know, we had waited all year for another peacock dinner, and it was ruined. So we're all sitting around the table. I was eating Corn Flakes. My sister snaps at me, "Stop kicking my feet!" So I was like, "Am not! Am not!" My sister takes a spoonful of Captain Crunch, gives me the nastiest glare you've ever seen, and flings it at me. It hits me square on the forhead! I've got milk and soggy little Captain Crunches runnin' down face. I take a spoonful of my Corn Flakes, and I fling it over at my sister. It goes right over her head and splats on a picture of Grandpa on the wall. My sister is cracking up, pointing her finger at me like a little brat. I get so upset that I take my whole bowl of Corn Flakes and dump it on my sister's head! This whole time, our dad is just shouting and shouting, telling us to stop it. Too late, right? Well, right as my sister is about to pick up her own bowl, my dad reaches across the table to try and stop her. He knocks over his hot coffee, spills all over his lap. This makes my dad shout out in pain, so loud and sudden that it freaks my mom out. She drops her glass of water on the floor. It shatters. And now, it's all over. My dad is throwing spoonfuls of cereal at me. My sister is flinging blueberry jam at my mom. Mom goes for dad, I go for my sister and we just start making a mess of the dining room. This goes on for a minute or so. Then my uncle, who we had all forgotten about because he had been sitting on the pot for the last 5 minutes, he sneaks into the kitchen and grabs the burnt peacock. So here are all the rest of us in the middle of a Veemas Eve food fight. My uncle walks up behind my dad. He takes a big swing and just pummels my dad with the peacock to the side of his head. Everybody stops. We're all completely stunned. And then, of course, we just start laughing. I don't think I've ever seen my dad laugh so hard in my life. I thought he was gonna pass out. Anyway, we were all happy once again, and we went bowling. I'll never forget it.

So, now I wish a very mirthful Veemas Eve to all my readers. Kids, you all go on to bed now. You don't want Old Mr. Sneezlebums to pass up your house because you're still awake!

A response to the American Film Institute

2004-06-23T19:33:00.000-07:00

Last night, CBS aired another annual installment of the AFI's 100 years series. This year's program was entitled "100 years 100 songs," and the AFI counted down what they decided to be the 100 greatest songs to appear in film, the only criteria being that the song had to have lyrics. I was intrigued by the idea, and I had taken a gander at the AFI website which had listed the 400 nominees. There were a few interesting and creative choices. Sadly, these more interesting nominees were, for the most part, overlooked.

It seems to me that the AFI often placed more value merely on the song, rather than on the juxtoposition of moving image and song. For evidence of this, I point to certain songs that were awarded which appeared in their respective films only in either the opening or closing credit sequences. The song "Nobody Does it Better," which corresponds to the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, for example, is a song that appears at the opening credits. And while the opening credits to James Bond films are visually interesting, it is not what the program talked about. "Rock Around the Clock" was another song that was awarded. It too is a song the merely corresponds to the opening credits, in this case to a 1955 film entitled Blackboard Jungle. Representing 8 Mile, a film that I have seen, was the number 93 song by Eminem, "Lose Yourself." This song does not appear until the very end of the film as Rabbit walks away and the credits begin to roll.

I think that "Lose Yourself" is a pretty amazing song. I'm not upset that it was awarded, but it goes to show that the AFI did indeed emphasize the song over the sometimes ingenious way in which a song is used to enhance the viewing experience. The latter I would have found much more interesting. The AFI overlooked what I believe are some of the most incredible uses of song in film. They failed to honor the ways in which the film-school generation filmmakers of the New American Cinema often reinvented the concept of popular music in film.

Take the Doors' song "The End," for example, which was one of the initial 400 nominated songs, as it appears in Coppola's Apocalypse Now. There could not have been a more perfect score to accompany the beginning and ending sequences of that film than this song. The haunting doomsday lyrics of Jim Morrison, coupled with the mystically eerie yet simple guitar work of Robby Krieger, coupled with the organs and every other aspect of the song, create an already unforgettable piece of music. Now couple this to the images of the film itself, Martin Sheen's borderline psychotic character moving around like a drunken martial artist, completely strung out and losing all sanity in a hot and humid Saigon hotel room. Fast forward to the end of the film, in which Sheen's character once again assumes this bizarre and horrifying persona, on his way to brutally assassinate the enigmatic Kurtz. The Doors song plays again over the unforgettable shot of Sheen slowly emerging from the still river like a silent predator. This is art!

There you have it, an example of how the use of song enhanced the cinematic experience in a profound new way. There are other directors besides Coppola who have acheived incredible cinematic moments through song. I am immediately reminded of two very similar, both incredible, montage sequences in two of Martin Scorsese's mob pictures, Goodfellas and Casino, that utilized pop music to help tell the sad and fateful stories of how the mafia was destroyed by the very reckless behavior that made it initially powerful. The former is carried along by the second half (without lyrics, I admit) of the song "Layla," the latter film using, quite fittingly, "House of the Rising Sun." What did Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" really do for film? It sold a bunch of CD's, made some people lots of money and annoyed most of us Americans for a few weeks.

This is my humble opinion. I have no problem with "Over the Rainbow" being the number one song. But there could have been a much more interesting variety selected in the top 100, that would have challenged viewers to think about the many different ways in which the historical combination of song and film has influenced the cinematic experience of the present day.

A room fit for a blogger

2004-06-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

I've done it. My bedroom, which was a shamefully messy and cramped disaster just 2 days ago, has been transformed into the perfect blogging environment. The bed has been moved from the south wall to the east wall. In its place is my "desk" and computer. This particular arrangement, which I remember working well back in high school, has allowed the room to be opened up. For those all-too-common moments of writers block, I now have a convenient amount of open space to pace around in and think. My northern window is now unobstructed, and if the neighbors feel so inclined they can now watch me change or walk around without a shirt (and possibly pants). My college books have emerged from the state of suspended animation that is storage and are now being proudly displayed on a proper shelf. I am ready to blog. Who wants to do some jivetalkin'? Who wants some?

In a word..."exceptional"

2004-06-22T18:46:00.000-07:00

Last night, I was asked to think of one word to describe myself. It did not take me long to come up with that word. And the word was "exceptional." I think that I will stick to that. If ever I am asked to describe myself to another person, perhaps a perspective employer or a blind date, I will boldly declare that I am, in a word, "exceptional."

Upon further consideration, I realized that there was another good word. While I cannot truthfully apply this word to myself, it is something to which I can nevertheless aspire. And that word is "contagious."

The Official 22 things that I Want to do Before I am 22 Years of Age

2004-06-22T16:55:00.000-07:00

Well, a week from today is my birthday, and I will be 22 years of age. Which means that I have a week to accomplish "the official 22 things that I want to do before I am 22 years of age." They are as follows...

1. Watch all 6 Star Wars episodes in one sitting, preferably dressed up in a Stormtrooper costume. (Scratch that one. Curse you Lucas! You were supposed to have finished them ALL by now!)
2. Get married and honeymoon at the Neverland Ranch.
3. Get divorced and go hit the singles bar.
4. Produce a children's cartoon show promoting ecologically-sound thinking.
5. Discover what the Batcave is really a metaphor for.
6. Eat a pound of broccoli.
7. Free Tibet.
8. Free my mind.
9. Patent an invention, preferably something that will take care of grease stains.
10. Write a check for $1 million dollars and rip it up in some homeless person's face.
11. Grace the cover of Sports Illustrated, preferably for achieving athletic greatness in a sport.
12. Dive headfirst into a giant mound of leaves.
13. Earn the respect of my colleagues.
14. Escape to Cuba by makeshift raft.
15. Achieve true flight for at least .09 seconds, and possibly grace the cover of Sports Illustrated.
16. Build a robot out of 1,000 other disassembled robots to create a MASTER ROBOT, and possibly patent it.
17. Develop a taste for mariachi music, good or bad.
18. Post bail.
19. Sing the National Anthem underwater.
20. Decline a major award.
21. Sever all ties with South America.
22. Get sunshine on a cloudy day, as the feller once said.

Well, shoot, with the exception of number one, which I most likely WON'T be able to accomplish by next Tuesday, I've got my work cut out for me. What was I thinking? Where am I gonna find a pile of leaves in the summer?!

About my Blog

2004-06-22T15:05:00.000-07:00

I started this blog only a few days ago, and I immediately ran into problems with my first entry. And that is never a good thing. Most likely, I was simply lacking direction. Perhaps I should have started out with a goal or a mission statement. Then again, that doesn't really conform to the way I do things. I always felt that having to write down "New Year's Resolutions" and "goals" for the new schoolyear cramped my style. But at the same time, I am extremely critical of the things I create. Well, I still haven't solved my problem. I'm only continuing this blog, because it seems like a cool thing to do. I may be able to express myself in new and exciting ways. I enjoy what I have read from other people's blogs. Here's what happened...

As stated before I did not like my first entry. My next entry was basically an apology for what I had posted. It's just not the way that I wanted to start off. So, I have taken the coward's way out and deleted those first two entries. I copied and pasted what was written to a Wordpad document, and perhaps in the future I may repost what was written. Maybe I will try again to describe what had been on my mind, with better success.

I didn't have to do that. After all, I have entitled this blog "JiVE." In other words, what is written here may be nothing more than meaningless, wasted space. I am more inclined to accept the worldview that we are more or less insignificant as individuals in comparison to the bigger picture. Our own opinions, creations, joys, sorrows, triumphs, nay...our very lives, as profound as they may be to us as individuals, are merely our own opinions, creations, joys, sorrows and triumphs. We all have to figure it out on our own. Our journey towards an understanding of the universe will be travelled upon different roads, even if we accept the same religious truths. My acceptance of Jesus Christ, for example, is merely the beginning for myself. There is yet much to be learned and experienced. But they will be experiences unique to me.

I'd better stop there. Because it was only my first two entries that were deleted and not my third (which now will appear as the first, entitled "Favorite Movie Moments Vol. 1"), it does not mean that the remaining entry is any more or less absurd, more or less worthy of deletion. It is simply a matter of my own personal taste.

This is JiVE. It is what it is. Who knows what lies ahead? And more importantly, who cares?

Favorite Movie Moments Vol. 1

2004-06-21T16:41:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple my personal favorite movie moments...

1. Almost Famous: The band is all together in an airplane. The plane enters a storm and begins to experience some serious turbulence. What begins as an attempt by the lead guitarist to express some sentiments of love to his fellow friends and band members, in the face of a danger that might not be survived, soon becomes both a mile-high confession and a frantic, shouting match that reveals some hilariously disturbing secrets and brutal hostilities between the people on board. And the plane suddenly lands to safety.

2. Boogie Nights: Dirk Diggler and two of his friends pull a ridiculously stupid stunt when they visit the home of a notorious (yet simultaneously ridiculous) L.A. cocaine dealer, hoping to score money on a trade of baking soda. Scared out of their wits and tripped out on drugs as they are, the dreadful mood is not relaxed by the menacing bodyguards or inexplicable presence of a young Asian man who walks around the room and randomly lights of firecrackers to the tunes of "Jesse's Girl," which is being blasted to deafening volumes from the stereo. This is one of the most intense scenes of any film I have seen in recent memory.

Interestingly, I have come to realize that both of these scenes serve a very similar function in their respective films. They are perhaps the most important climax moments of both films. The poo hits the fan. Both the bickering rock band Stillwater and the washed out porn star Dirk Diggler are forced to come to terms with the new low that they have found themselves in. What follows for both characters (Stillwater being a character) is a moment of shame and embarrassment, one that will be faced with either despair and resignation or a glorious redemption. These films have many similarities. They both revel in the glory of the 70's, depicting the precarious journey from obscurity to popular fame, and the prices that must be exacted for such a prize. In the end, neither Dirk nor Stillwater can continue on their upward journey until they can admit and "repent" of the cruel and foolish things they have done.