old man, i warn you against reading this if you're in a mood. it might inspire you to do something rash, if you haven't already.

it exists within a particular frame. an escape, like sleep for fatigue.

in an impulsive way, suicide has no moral implications. it is selfish, clearly; loved ones would be heartbroken. but as everyone who has 'lost' a loved one knows, eventually you need to get over it.

[ poetry removed... ]

at the age of fourteen, a promise: to end things after ten years if no purpose for continuing had been found. now, a purpose seems to have bubbled up from the cauldron of mixed intentions and stirred emotions.

just in time, maybe.

upon close inspection, actions are still at odds with visions -- history up to this moment will not produce the promised future. all this listening and the words still come out wrong. thoughts remain confused, movements are more circular than ever.

death can exist as a perfect measure. for someone who desires to feel most alive, carving a shorter yardstick takes a stronger feeling than most people are willing to admit.

delight.

a dark cold mist. fog and condensation obscure all other sensations.

dense silence presses against the window pane. inside, the flourescent ceiling panels release epileptic spasms of light, stabilizing for intervals of a few minutes at a time. lurching through the darkness, rusted wheels squeal and spit white-hot sparks onto the rails in a feeble attempt at finding release from their irrefutable guidance toward an empty destination.

a figure sits by the window, motionless -- in all ways identical to my own appearance, it flickers in and out of visibility; afflicted by an inability to look anywhere but forward, it is possessed of little more substance than a melancholy apparition.

from my vantage on a parallel track, we seem to be headed in the same direction. do our paths diverge at some point? are we slowly curving away from each other toward a horizon that neither will see until it is upon us? is the figure truly a ghost? a warning, perhaps? or is it a possibility for my own future?

am i a reflection of it?

. . .

the clumsy picture painted in words above is, of course, an illustration of a concept. it's all a mistake, i think sometimes. all of the passion that i once felt leaves me. if not for money, what shape would my life take?

i have no dreams for the future anymore, only for the present. that may be the source of my fears -- that my path leads to an ignominious end. but i fear that if i allow my dreams to extend into the far future, the present will be sacrificed in the pursuit of those dreams... and tragedies seem to invariably befall those who dream of the future without thought for the present.

this present seems to move so slowly! maybe it is time to become a ghost, to pass through time in anticipation of the future rather than always taking care of the present moment.

but that just seems careless.

. . .

the riddle: i can be pursued every day without being found, causing both exasperation and delight in the same breath; i am worth living a life of a hundred years for, yet i am a source of fulfillment such that one who thinks of me is prepared to die, contented in his sleep by the pleasure of having glimpsed my true form even for the briefest of moments.

what am i?


audio: marumari . eno test

here.
... and accepted here.

: )

physicalist experimentalism

standing at the window, he places five fingertips against the pane. a blacklit summer night, outside it is warm; inside, rising body temperatures excite the atmosphere against the most diligent efforts of the air conditioning unit humming soundlessly above.

a single white tablet sits on a small table a few paces away, held in rapt attention by a lean young woman wearing piercings in strange places and a slightly feral expression. her eyes seem to shimmer as rare shards of flourescent light glance across dilated pupils; she seems unblinkingly fixated on the mitsubishi label etched into the surface of the pill. sound ripples through the darkness, vibration moving outward inexorably as if each molecule were designed to trasmit crystalline impressions of the audible spectrum with absolute granular clarity. if one listened, the music could be felt as well as heard, to the point of understanding silence and pause as the most basic and intricate elements of its composition. his back is turned to her as she continues her ritual gaze. his hands are strong, the slender fingers of a piano player betrayed by calloused knuckles. his awareness is enhanced similarly to hers, but he feels a calmness rather than stimulation. sensitive whorls trace unique identifying patterns on the glass beneath his touch. the window pane feels unusually cold, recalling the texture of slick ice.

eyes closed.

the depth of sound pushing from every direction disorients him for a moment, creating a sensation of hypersensitivity on the eyelids; an accompanying impression of sound as chaotic fireworks and tracer bursts of light swirling in syncopated rhythm. swaying slightly as his kinesthetic orientation shifts in response to the sound and light, he pushes lightly, transferring weight from heels to toes. the movement deepens his touch against the window pane, but the feeling of cold persists even after prolonged contact.

eyes shut more tightly.

focus on the contact between glass and fingertips. a secondary disturbance, from within the glass. the light show behind his eyes congeals into a map of his fingertips, the vortices and explosions becoming a pressure-sensitive photogravure etched into a background equilibrium of dark energy. increasing the pressure of his touch, he leans forward, nose only inches from the polished surface.

his push elicits an infinitesmal sliding motion within the glass itself. at first, he barely feels it. the dimensional visualization of his touch dissolves into raw particles, only to reemerge at extreme magnification in a matter of split moments. as he pushes, tactile feedback enhances the resolution of the mental image. at first, glass and skin are clearly differentiated. the disordered amorphous solid arrangement of energetic particles that is "glass" becomes distorted by the intrusion of external pressure. time becomes visible as a singular dimensional quality, as both causation and correlation between elements. distortion in time becomes a merging of sensation and interpretation; he feels the glass strain to maintain kinetic intransigence, even as it begins to bend.

pressure receptors embedded deep within his skin register a shivering, wavering resistance as the second order transition deepens. finally, the areas around his fingertips attain minute heat elevation as molecular bonds relax and expand. the visual map pulsating before his closed eyes becomes more intense; he feels the pressure as a measure defining the expansivity of his attention span.

expansion. the glass now feels less dense, giving way to a syrupy goo that conforms to his skin. the emergent viscoplasticity gives rise to an increasing concavity as the transition nears completion. the syrup begins to flow as it continues to change state, fixed boundaries between glass molecules giving way to a homogenous collidal dispersion of supercooled liquid.

three fingers are encapsulated; the strain is immense on both physique and psyche. tremors begin to ripple through his body as muscle tension begins to fade. attention falters and ebbs as he realizes the impossibility of what is happening. instantaneous loss of the time dimension from his synaesthetic visualization disables his perception of the state-shifting disequilibrium. the vision fades into a blizzard of vibrating particles, receding into the darkness of his mind.

he feels her standing behind him with that unnatural gaze of hers. the clack-clack of her barbell tongue piercing brings him back to the world as he slowly opens his eyes, even the darkness seeming intolerably bright. slowly removing his fingers from the window pane, he sees her move toward him in that way that she has, that light step and predator's grace.

shaking himself quickly as if awakening from a trance, realizing that she had said something to him. mumbled assent and a nod of the head; she was hungry. he had glimpsed the thirst in her eyes earlier, but the thinning crowd would make them overly conspicuous. it was time to go.

the pill sat unattended at the table, dancing its glitch-hop dance. moonlight poured through five finger-sized curves in the glass window pane a few paces away.

audio: trs-80 . i am energy

question. answer.

future. past. who. how. why.

silly questions, but i find it difficult to stop them.
sexuality, survival. what use is all this existential bullshit, anyway?

just go, i tell myself. force yourself to survive. find a place of your own. for now it doesn't matter whether it is beautiful or unsightly, perfect or decrepit. i always imagined that motivation comes from basic needs and the desire to transcend them.

september passed without me, as if driven forward by its own impetus. one of the aspects of being a consultant: time is elastic. there is no set schedule -- i move when clients ask for help.

but this has also become the rhythm of my life.

time tightens around me, pushing me ever closer to its warped continuity. i move through space, breath and awareness enmeshed in a taut interthreading of intention, action and reaction. i have trained myself to the point that body and mind can move without me; they know what to do. on the train, running through scenarios. am i ready for the possibilities?

days pass, a week is gone. each instant is gone at the moment that it reaches the threshold of awareness. in the midst of calculated motion and measured emotion, mind ebbs and flows between absence and presence, preoccupied intensity and serene transparence; yet my grasp is always empty.

is this a singleminded approach? one evening a few weeks ago, a vague sense of breathlessness crept into to the middleground between thought and feeling. impatience: move faster. you're still here. get moving. keep moving. the nonverbal intonation of an ambitious impulse, the insolent arrogance of a self-improvement mantra. you can do better than this. can't you?

i sat with the feeling for a bit; gaze wandering absently downward to street level, the view was partially obscured by the fiery brilliance of dying leaves paying tribute to the fading autumn sun. although night had long since fallen, the leaves wavered but held fast in the evening wind, their colors muted by the darkness yet vivid in contrast to the asphalt shadows of the intersection five stories below.

after a few moments, eyes raised to the phosphorous pinpoints of stars and constellations, it becomes apparent that this ambition is creativity's bastard child. combined with a shifting awareness of my own limitations and an insistent sensation of restlessness, i find that there is a continual struggle between inner potential and outside reality. starting a business is one manifestation of the resultant intentionality, but as time passes, my mind craves a deeper satisfaction.

how can i create an object in the world that embodies past and present, projecting its intrinsic value to others in a way that embodies their own hidden desires for understanding? how can i have a positive effect in the larger human world?

what skills do i need to gain?
who will i need to become?

i've had a long time to ask the why questions. i wonder if the answers are enough to prepare me for what comes next.

Vote!

And vote for the candidate that you want to win,
not for the candidate that you expect will win.

 

 

 

 

 

immortality or celebrity

some endlessly repeat the once-clever saying that "the world is a stage", but there may be a couple of noticeable differences between the two. sometimes it seems that actors live life from the outside in.

i had been debating the idea of taking further acting classes in addition to the one that i had taken in school. at that time, i took the class on a whim, trying to escape from the orderly clutches of university -- mostly by taking classes that interested me rather than those prescribed in any particular major. my interest in acting had since been encouraged by playing a lead role in a student film earlier this year, combined with kind words from several people regarding my prospects.

the main obstacle thus far has been money, with time constraints due to launching the business coming in close second. there was a fairly expensive six-week workshop over the summer that ran for about a semester; i had almost enough money to cover that -- but any emergency funds would be diverted to the workshop. not a smart move, considering that most of my efforts to that time had been geared toward buying health insurance. the idea was to become insured and start taking that mouth-watering jujitsu class to supplement the little bit of gracie and hapkido that i've learned over the years. jumping at the chance to take up a new passion with acting would mean pushing all of my prior intentions to the side with no immediate tangible returns.

no, the martial arts meant more than that. acting was too young of an idea at that point. the concept of becoming an actor hadn't obsessed me the way martial arts had when i was seventeen. so i waited, investing my time and energy in the business instead.

over the past month, the opportunity has arisen to take a longer, nine-month course in the meisner school of acting... and of course, it costs twice as much per trimester. again, i can almost afford it, largely due to time spent building the business -- time that would have at least partially been spent in acting class otherwise. so i looked at the idea of debt.

...

a starving, mangy rottweiler stares fixedly at a bloody, juicy steak, knowing that he will certainly receive five lashes for every bite... but the lashes will come after he has long since sunken his teeth into the succulent hunk of meat that lies just beyond his reach. mouth working feverishly, he salivates, then drools; feels his teeth gnashing despite his best efforts to remain calm...

...

luckily, i have a bit more self-control. acting is beyond fun, but i have no illusions that it will lead to material fulfillment in the way that a successful business will if nourished properly. debt without enablement of a means to repay it seems somewhat less that useful, regardless of how i spend the borrowed money.

walking from bedroom to kitchen late one night to take a snack, i see brad pitt sitting in the guest's seat as conan o'brien tries to pry a straight answer out of him. he slouches, flashes radiantly white teeth, speaks quietly, gestures comically; mumbles something past cosmetically perfect lips about playing the role of achilles and how the harsh physical training was "against his nature"...

calm, collected, perfectly composed in a daring suit undoubtedly tailored to the state of second skin. the audience is transfixed by him. fabulously wealthy, desired by millions, envied by even more.

part of me wanted that, i suppose.

...

a job interview with a prospective business partner about a month later. the venture: build technology infrastructures for small- to midsize clients in the city. dressed casually, in stylish muted greys and understated black, voice tinged by a slavic accent. he looked tired, verging on beleaguered. as we shook hands, he settled easily into his chair in the makeshift conference room as i mirrored his posture, but with an intentional touch of the "attentive" forward lean ;)... after giving a dry synopsis of my career thus far, i breezily mentioned in response to his cordial probing that one of my interests was acting. "after all, who doesn't want to be a superstar," i joked.

a pause. he sat back, looking more rumpled and drained than before.

"me," he said simply.

.........

as i reached for the newly issued credit card, the reasons and rationalizations happily slithered out from the darkness and offered themselves to me, promising delights and pleasures to soothe my confusion. why, i asked myself: why take another acting class, saddling myself with debt on top of the student loans that i am still paying back from college? good times, meet interesting new people, came the inviting serpentine hiss, silently encircling my frontal lobe to strangle all coherent decision-making ability. remember how it felt to transform yourself? to become another creature entirely? to express something that felt so real, and yet you could walk away from it at the snap of your fingers?

yes, i can remember that. to "physicalize the given circumstances", inhabit the psychology of a character within his imagined environs. to fabricate an atmosphere of human reality and step inside of it for the length of a scene, to interact within a consensual hallucination on stage with other actors. unreal, scripted, planned spontaneity... i was only a beginner in this particular art. gradually, though, i became able to smile and feel amused by the everyday antics of stoic businessmen and scatterbrained hipsters, both equally self-absorbed and lost in their own dramatic creations of self. acting was an escape, a chance for me to step outside of the pressure cooker that was my own somewhat precarious situation.

the social apparatus that has arisen in the superstar culture of today, however, takes the ideal of transformation and glorifies those who can do so at will. most attractive is the actor's ability to apparently shift his own identity and assume the guise of a completely different person. as i considered those insidious desires that threatened to compel me to the brink of deep financial hardship for the sake of such an "art", i realized that actors exist to pretend. they create a convincing ruse, an emotionally seductive illusion. in today's world, the actor is expendable as well as indispensable: there are so many actors, so many people who mistake simulation for self-realization. so many people wasting the transformative power of their imaginations searching for a shortcut to fulfillment... but how many people will remember brad pitt when he no longer stands in triumph on his most recent box-office smash hit? how many people remember the multitude of movie stars of eras' past? even more so today, the accumulation of stars crowd the landscape; a trailblazer fifty years ago is just another good actor today.

so i turn the idea around, and look at human behavior as the source of acting itself. why are actors so powerful? what makes an actor so valuable that they are worthy of near-idolatry by the popular culture? it seems that something of the actor's protean qualities, the ability to fully embody a heretofore non-existent character is a large part of his or her appeal. but looking into history, has there ever been a great man or woman who did not understand and exploit the dramatic potential of their actions?

in other words, what was it that makes achilles' story worth telling even after hundreds of years?

the function of dramatic structure may not be to provide actors with their own technical jargon and sense of technical mastery, but rather in its application to the real world. by realizing that people are mostly too afraid of others' judgement to transcend and create their own characters, i see that a great man is not born, but rather, he must create himself.

having considered this, i remove myself from the hollywood shell game of superstar astronomy in which "ordinary people" try to find their own likeness in the faces of stars... i see the perfect women who look frighteningly bland without professional makeup and mannequin's pose, the gorgeous male stars who are cast more by stereotype than acting skill, and the people who 'love' them who are only trying to find in the stars what they lack within themselves.

i would rather lead a life whose story will be told by some other digitally enhanced mtv-ready humanoid than contribute to the postmodern celebrity factory, only to be forgotten after last call and the death of the spotlight. yes, i will study acting and drama, but the application lies in the creation of a life worth remembering. after all, to be ordinary is to be forgotten, and to be remembered is the only true form of immortality. of course, even that definition is self-contradictory, because memories inevitably succumb to distortion over time, and eventually fade away. achilles becomes lost in the image of brad pitt, who is in turn lost in the sea of good actors who truly do nothing but pretend.

audio: aesop rock . basic cable

no prayers for rain

the vacuum. emptiness and silence. it was almost too quiet. as if the sounds of the outside world had been sucked away and all that remained was a vaguely disconcerting pressure imbalance exerting a weak push against the eardrums. woven throughout that imbalance was the quiet shush of balanced white noise. while jacked into the rear panel of my custom-built workstation, the electronically generated anti-sound is interrupted momentarily by the faintest whirrs and beeps. absence of outside noise was the purpose of course, as i gently remove the earcups and feel their considerable weight in my hands.

the headphones just arrived today; designed for heavy use at the racetrack, they are built with 12db noise reduction for filtering out low frequency ambient sound.

why?

loud upstairs neighbors.

young people, like me. there have been loud neighbors before, but the situation was somewhat different then. the previous neighbors were Big People. as in, elephants in vaguely humanoid form. stomping around at all hours with television/stereo pushing noise through the floor. of course, that was a matter of intentional disrespect. they have since moved out, and i may recount the story later.

but with the current neighbors, there is a sense of diurnal rhythm. they are normal-sized, don't leave their television on all the time, and are quiet at night. so i feel less compelled to create a physical incentive for them to change their behaviors; if i was a teenager living in an apartment building, i would want to listen with the volume up.

unfortunately, i've got work to do.

during the day, when i am not at a client, i work out of my office space in the apartment. at this point, a quiet working environment is essential for the creative thoughts to emerge, recombine and eventually express themselves as solutions and ideas. when only the loudest, most obvious ideas can be heard, the less apparent ones -- that are often the most useful tools in solving problems -- are often drowned out. given that i am building this business with creativity rather than experience, the ability to listen to the small voices is essential in working around obstacles.

in buying headphones though, i feel as if something isn't exactly as it should be. having found their resting position suspended from the craning neck of an old matte-black desk lamp whose days of illumination have long since past, i regard the phones impassively for a long moment. as the thoughts begin to reveal themselves, motivations and reasons stumble forward into view. eventually the line of reasoning with strongest explanatory power becomes apparent. isolated as a variant of flawed logic, i open the lid and take a closer look.

i recognize the underlying concept as an instance of the general mistake that most habitual consumers make: building a castle to keep enemies out. instead of working with the situation to find the answer from the inside, this concept encourages the simplistic answer -- block out the cause of the problem by adding a layer of "protection" against unwanted intrusion.

to extend the negative aspects of the metaphor, a castle creates immobility and implies that the world is to be escaped from when possible; that the world is to be controlled as an entity external to and divorced from oneself. my understanding of things, however, is directly opposite to that idea: i am part of the world, and as a creature with inevitably limited knowledge and power, i am not in control. it seems that to attempt control of the external world is rather like praying for rain from a cloudless sky.

having understood the flaw in my reasoning that was bothering me, i consider an alternative solution. the alternative lies in finding a way to adapt rather than fight; to adopt an intelligent strategy rather than buy a crutch that protects me for the moment while leaving the underlying problem untouched. in this case, the problem is not the noise itself, but my interpretation of the sound. i can remember many times, intentional and not so, in which my mind simply turned off the perception of external sound -- during intense concentration, for example. what if i could selectively filter out the audible noises around me at any time, regardless of the source or environment?

that seems to be a skill worth looking into. and once mastered, i won't need to pretend that i can control the world by paying for temporary peace of mind; i will learn how to create it for myself.

audio: david last, cham and beenie man . vitamin s [david last mix]

Godwin's Law.

i still like mike.

... and i fight more than i love

"i want you," pops up in the IM chat window.

i feel a bit tired upon reading this.

i like men. that's a starting point.

the lack of strained masculinity is refreshing among men wherever i find it. so in general, i like gay men who aren't living the lifestyle; just getting on with their lives.

he fell into that category until recently.

we've been friends for about five years, lost touch for at least three of those. now we talk sporadically, and up until now, we've been flirting a little here and there. i do it because it's fun and gender is not much of an issue for me.

he's about ten years older, a successful corporate "team member", and you would only know that he was gay if you had been around others who weren't absolutely fabulous. so we flirt, and at one point in my life, i was genuinely curious to know what his lifestyle was like. as the fates would have it, however, we never had the chance to get together.

time has passed. i am now fully content to play verbal games with him, but otherwise stay friends. men can be beautiful, but this is rare and not something that i actively search for. and with this fact is the understanding that i see beauty in a man the way some would admire a statue; the aesthetic value doesn't automatically entail a frantic session of leg-humping and marking territory ;)

my sexuality remains undefined. i don't rule out the possibility of finding a man sexually attractive, but also have yet to meet a man who interests me that way. unfortunately, curiosity has put me in a tight spot with this old friend -- he wants more from me than i am willing to give.

yes, flirting without intention can get a person into trouble...

now i know what it feels like to be pursued by a well-meaning, persistent man... and soon i might even get the chance to give the "just want to be friends" speech.

it is flattering, i must admit. and i can't help but laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation.

motion: moon saeng kim . wonderful days

[ + ] coming unzipped.

just needs

he sleepwalks as time brusquely pushes past him. the years pass slowly, mocking him because he cannot keep up. he is numb, and yet he stiffly imitates the outward manifestations of thought and feeling. desperately, he fakes a smile, cracks a frown, speaks empty words, yet even he knows that such things are hollow.

mortified by the idea of making a choice, he settles for nearly nothing instead. unable to see beyond the illusion of momentary security, he is still vaguely aware that he wants something more; the dull ache is practically visible in his posture. he also knows that to reach for that something is to abandon the old shell of himself, the comfortable daily routines and opinionated ignorance of being 'well-informed' yet helpless to change his world and himself.

:: the demon-filled darkness

he fears pain, looking instead for the simple answer where there is none. i just need a better job, he says. i just need to have more time, more fun. he can't bear to let go of the harmful relationships, the people who reflect values that he wishes to move beyond; they accept him because they too are immobilized by fear. each clings to the other, renewing their infectious insecurities with every idle conversation, and in their attempt to live longer, they prepare themselves only to die a little bit every day.

:: children are the reason?

he pretends that children are a reason to live. as i look on at his struggle and compare it with my own, i wonder: every species of animal has children. what is it that makes a human being different from an ape or a dog? the human mind has the capacity to move beyond sociobiology, beyond the genetically predetermined urge to procreate. i can, at least conceptually, choose my life's purpose if i am aware that there are choices and that it is possible to reach for them. circumstances may not allow for the fulfillment of certain goals, but as a human being, dream can become reality, even if only within my own mind's private imagination. a dog or an ape will never write a computer program, compose elegant poetry or even fabricate such amusing diversions as 'heaven' or 'hell' and their attendant mythologies. i would rather live a life of delusion that one without dreams. further still, i would rather live a short, harsh life of striving than a long one of slavish contentedness.

:: the pious croak

all creatures eat, sleep, shit and fuck. as a human being, for me that is not enough. an animal that can think, feel and create but chooses to wallow in its own glorified bodily functions seems little more than a monster. but i see that so many people are afraid, paralyzed by fear, that they cannot even take a step beyond the illusion of security and compulsive adherence to our genetic programming as reproductive machines. it is the easy way out to look at the world with a teary eye and say 'children are our future' with a pious croak in my voice... and of course the children of this era, having been indoctrinated by this same mantra, look forward to future generations and repeat the same useless existence of our parents. they became their parents because in the end, to become parents was all that they strove for, all they had left when their dreams died. with nothing else binding them to this physical world, they blindly imitated those who came before.

:: cruel and unusual?

i suppose that to most people, the idea of living life now by removing the compulsion toward child-rearing and security may seem cold or strange. more unthinkable to me is the knowledge that most people seem perfectly content to live pre-arranged lives, not thinking twice about the fact that every animal on planet earth performs those same basic life functions. i wonder how many people would actually consider living their lives as more important than pretending that they can survive indefinitely, living a 'good' life by following the backward traditions and habits of their progenitors. my life is being _lived_ as long as i move freely, as long as it is driven by a purpose. i am only barely surviving if my movements are constrained by fear of death, discomfort or pain.

as a human animal, i can choose to live a life of running from fear to fear, looking for some impossible sense of permanence or security. all creatures live for the sake of longevity; this can't possibly be all that there is to life.

:: now versus later: live in this moment or die slowly

on the other hand, i can choose to live now rather than wait endlessly for a so-called 'better tomorrow'. with the understanding that either i die now or i die later, i can see fear clearly and decide to live fully with this time rather than waste every available moment on my knees, begging for just a few more moments. i most likely will not choose the moment of my death, but i can choose the actions of my life.

it has taken a long time for me to feel that in my bones. now i wish for some way to give that feeling to those who matter in my life before i lose my sense of connection to them. sometimes it seems that my thoughts die once they pass my lips, as though i breathed smoke rather than air.

something tells me that it may be time to walk away again, to find others who are still changing and becoming something other than what they are. but i wish i could shake my loved ones awake, even though i myself still feel drowsy. we have all of eternity in which to sleep; why waste the opportunity to be alive, even if only for a moment?

:: it feels right today, but there's always tomorrow

still i am afraid of making definitive statements. definition allows for a kind of self-righteous fundamentalism that seems legitimate, but is never justified except on its own terms. if my sense of truth does not coorespond directly to the cold beauty of nature, who is to say that i have not lost my mind and constructed a false reality in order to crown myself king? logic and rhetoric can twist nearly any prevarication to become indistinguishable from truth. how can i avoid deceiving myself if all of my thoughts may be thinly veiled attempts at soothing fears of irrelevance in a world that continues without need for conscious intervention?

this evasive sense of clarity feels like another empty shout bouncing back from the walls of my own mind. how long will i be trapped in this asylum of refractory thoughts? for every answer, there are three more questions.

running out of fingers i'll have to use my toes. so now i'm a pornstar. or so a fair number of people seem to think. it seems that every time i turn around, someone mentions porn with my name attached... somehow, when i say the words "business", "client", "acting" or "modelling", suddenly people's minds jump straight to porn. bizarre. it would be fun to listen all these weird rumors once in a while, though. maybe i could take that job offer as a topless bartender at a gay bar, so generously offered to me a few months ago: "and what the bartender does with patrons after hours is nobody's business", he says. umm... okay... *just nod and smile*...  anyways. think i'll start keeping count.

select : copy : paste.   the fictional touch:information is penetration you are standing in the middle of the room. a gentle evening breeze brings the fresh scent of flowers and a sharp coolness to the air. "Come here," you whisper, as quietly as the undulating satin curtains filter moonlight past the windowsill. sitting in a victorian-era mahogany chair with burgundy plush upholstery, i lick my lips in anticipation and cock my head to the side to better interpret where you are. my blindfolded eyes are closed, conjuring images of you in my mind's eye that sight cannot. on hands and knees i crawl slowly as you guide me with lusty tones toward your feet, your voice the irresistible combination of a jungle cat's purr and the imperious haughtiness of a wrathful temptress. i can hear the smile in your voice as i move closer. closer still and you laugh lightly at the game that we play, aroused at the sense of power that i allow you to feel by slinking across the room like a hungry jaguar to his mistress. i feel the muscles in my body taut and strong, honed from years of training and discipline. abdominal muscles rippling and back muscles flexing, alternating with well-defined pecs and arms, strong hands that push at the floor as i prowl, pacing and hungry for you. we both realize, however, you are at once the master and the prey as i reach your skin, hot breath first, then fingertips, then lips. Tracing a meandering line from your ankles upward, i feel the delicate tapering of calves up to knee; the soft flesh betrayed by the finely sculpted curvatures that tense and release as you shift on your toes, agility mixing with anticipation. you growl softly as i kiss the inside of your knee, caressing your thighs as i travel upward. my hands wander higher, past ample hips to graze your abdomen... again i am pleasantly surprised that i can feel the slight outline of toned abdominal muscles moving in time with your breath underneath the suppleness of your skin. i kiss your belly button and tongue it playfully as my hands reach higher, cupping your breasts and barely touching nipples, immediately causing a shiver and a sharp intake of breath on your part... finally, standing, i draw you close to me, gently massaging your back as we move together slowly. my fingers lightly dance along the contours, inward from your shoulderblades along the valley of your spine, down to the small of your back, spreading outward to encompass the firm rounded globes that threaten to defy gravity. you draw back from the embrace so that your face is only inches from mine. pretending to smack me across the face with a laugh, your fingernails find their way to my lips, tracing along my jaw to feel the pulseline of my throat as it quickens. down to my collarbone and deep enough to leave an impression, you follow the scratch with a soothing kiss. cradling my head in your hands, you slowly, agonizingly remove the blindfold from my eyes... and tie it around my wrists. "you can look, but you can't touch," you whisper, standing up on tiptoes to reach my ear. with a playful bite on the earlobe, our eyes lock, the deep dark brown of mine penetrating deeply into yours. we kiss, lips soft, breath hot, for a long moment. you push me away with a strength that both surprises and intrigues me; it is your turn to hunt and define the limitations of our encounter with your touch.

real power lies in regular expressions
damocles never danced better than beneath the sword. (72)

strange to see people that i like living apparently haphazard lives, and realizing that, to them, my life must seem completely driven by the wind without any particular direction.

an idea has threatened to congeal from the mess of thoughts that continually caroms between the few neurons that are functioning creatively at any given moment. as i take quiet mental note of the fragments that surface, the rest of my mind continues the unconscious pattern-match dance that racks my brain for meaning at all hours of the day and night.

spurred by a few sentences read and then re-read, absorbed and then reblended into a sticky mass of experiences and principles, the throughline of all this conceptual action lies within the idea of selection pressure. i had fallen into the habit of allowing my mind to amble through overgrown fields of unfinished thoughts to search for useful ideas. read a few pages here, search the Web there, download a book here, have a conversation there. everything goes in, only a few bits and pieces survive the struggle to create relevance in my own personal context. i act on what remains, sometimes filing an attractive idea away to be re-fit into the puzzle later as more details emerge, giving flesh and muscle to a skeletal blueprint in the tortoise-vs.-hare race for a uncertain outcome.

in this case, all of this cogitation was geared toward business. money, actually. the pressure is real enough: lack of health insurance; an instinctive flinch reflex at the prospect of life in the corporate gristmill; a desire to live a debt-free life with time to spare.

the question, obviously: how to build a strong business?

the particular words that spurred my approach resonated vaguely with the familiar voices of dawkins and darwin, but were derived from the author's analysis of human motivation in the context of greed and lust for power. the meaning of these words: one of the greatest motivators toward a goal is opposition; surmountable obstacles are the among the most effective galvanizers of purpose. the identity of a nation-state depends on the ideological opposition of its enemies; the consciousness of an individual relies on those things that it can identify as being not-self -- otherness.

as the words sunk in over the next day or so, i decided to put this theory of limitation to the test in my own experience, taking the form of a deadline. now, i am not one for giving everything an arbitrary time-to-live after which there is some equally arbitrary punishment for failure. on the contrary, positive incentive seems to be a far more effective means of inspiration; although goals set in the future are inevitably arbitrary, at least they can be viewed with promise rather than dread. and so the equation was finished as if without a choice in the matter: i was to make one thousand dollars in the span of the next five business days. how? i hadn't the slightest idea.

my plans toward establishing profitability in recent entrepreneurial pursuits have begun to unfold at the pace of an apoplectic snail. time to look for plan b. five days, one thousand dollars. time was my enemy, as always, but in a concentrated form; a mental hyperbaric chamber in which the atmosphere crackled with the collision of ideas rather than oxygen molecules. only the strongest ideas survived the continual battle of one hundred and twenty hours confined in the cerebral cage that was my mind.

strangely though, only late wednesday did the electrical impulses form a perceptible cohesion toward my intended goal; until then, i had allowed my unconscious mind to continue unhindered in its unknowable calculations, preferring that to the headaches and useless frustrations of conventional problem-solving.

at that point, my brain upshifted into conscious action.

thursday morning, noon and evening were nonstop movement, sometimes an uninterrupted flow, searching for the answer. emails to my business pop3 mail account back and forth, phone calls made, terms negotiated. one dead end; another deal almost made, but nixed at the last moment; another deal -- this one apparently sealed and done, money sent -- only to find itself dead on its feet. just more obstacles as i continued onward.

friday afternoon, the last straw, a few hours left, each minute surging past. no breakfast, moving too fast. searching, sifting through mountains of information to find the right questions that will lead me to the right answer[s]. i see darkness but i feel heat, just one step away. i wrestle with the invisible opponent Time, a game of go played with real intentions.

suddenly, there it is.

i find myself inside a virtual trade network, spanning the wired world and encompassing every niche in my target industry. as a legitimate business entity, i have access to hundreds, if not thousands of contacts. the keys are now mine; i am free to accelerate. sitting back, i log out, smile and exhale deeply.

...

no, i didn't make a thousand dollars in a week. but i'll see what i can do in the coming month.

and of course, there's always plan a.

audio: kraftwerk . aerodynamik (alex gopher/etienne de crecy dynamik mix)

first things first

all cockblockery aside...

time to put the dueling sides to rest. i've got work to do.

on the verge. the business idea is starting to reverberate, reaching critical mass.

my skills have been proven to clients... they are prepared to give positive referrals to their colleagues, friends and relevant others.

the first email newsletter is finished... ready to go for monday.

the key now is to complete the illusion -- find a way to emulate the professional aspects of a small consulting firm on a shoestring, garage budget. all of the elements are in place; it is now a question of molding my habits and lifestyle more to meet demand.

that means nine-to-five availability, client comes first. i'm not too keen on the idea of giving myself a nine-to-five, but then i remind myself that in this position, i own. i would rather the world be an egalitarian wonderland, but for the moment, fuck it... that's not the way it is.

ten percent of profits are reserved for giving to non-profits as a way to compensate for this little foray into capitalism. i can only reform the system from the inside, in a very small way. the first goal is self-sufficiency. once i have reached profitability after dealing with living expenses [and taxes], then i can think about using my powers for good rather than evil ;)

the first milestone has been reached in this little experiment. onto the next. when i get there, hopefully i can look back and take stock of things from this perspective, or something similar to it.

audio: tango & ratty . time and space

i miss

split-second dream on the verge of nodding off
i saw your face in an unbidden memory
art class, you had mono, orange hair and a new
fairy tattoo

four oclock i should be sleeping

write me back if you remember?

time runs
but where does it go.

bad memories are still memories. so what happened to mine?

from ages thirteen to twentyone my mind draws a grainy picture fear-uncertainty-confusion in a mishmash of light and dark. a suffocating humidity surrounds my attempts to recall memories, a stifling heat that makes traversal of the past a painfully slow and unpredictable effort. using years and apparently significant events as an index to the series of events, more often than not there is nothing there. when sitting with old friends, inevitably the mental scrapbooks open a little wider with each drink and soon a raucous outpouring of anecdotes fills the room. "remember that?" they say, and everyone nods.

but i don't.

although i know that there was much time spent alone, there are few discrete moments of the solitary times either.

where are my memories?

the timeline of the past is felt more often as an emotional continuum than as a personal narrative of events. strange to know how it felt, but without the context of what it was to feel. almost as if searching via tactile feedback for a light switch in the darkness along a tiled wall; each tile with a different texture that is recognizable to the touch but not consciously identifiable. the smells are pungent and hang in the air, charged with an electric energy that jangles the nerves. all of my senses are aware and recording the experience, but in retrospect there is no synchrony to the sensations.

as i awaken each day, the previous day quickly resolves itself into to-do lists, appointments and ideas. but the essence of it, the awareness that i am continuing from yesterday into today, very often is absent. will i ever gain something more than a vague sense of time's passage? at what point will i begin to have memories that i can actually remember with any degree of certainty?

...

sitting in the swiveling eggshell chair by the window at three-thirtyfive in the morning, i look outside at the rainslick streets reflecting the pale streetlights five stories below. the l-shaped corner of the shabby old couch tugs at the corner of my eye and i turn to look. sitting there to my left is a projection of myself, two years from now. he is a shadowy form, for i have no way of divining his physical appearance. all i can see is a disembodied smirk as shakes his head slightly, slowly, sarcastically; he leans forward and whispers. i hear his voice, my voice, and i know that my mind is enacting a simulation of the question -- one that i had asked myself only moments before the apparition appeared:

in two years, what will i wish i had done at this moment? what path will i have taken; which one leads me toward the person that i wish to become?

in that shadow of my future self, the one who may be a ghost of one who died, may be a vision of one who survived, i see no reflection of those who now surround me. none of my friends look like him, none of them feel like him. the world in which he lives gives me no clues. those among my friends and acquaintances whom i would say have "succeeded" cannot point me in their path and guide me.

i need to have another conversation with this guy, and soon.

audio: dizzee rascal . brand new day

who and how

thinking. about-

acting. society. imitations of one within the other.
strange dreams.

trying to sleep earlier but seeming to wake up later, all the while sleeping for the same amount of time every night.

trying to think but daydreaming instead, every time i look up at the sky. clouds chase the sun, wisp-thin fingertips too slow to grasp the elusive source of heat and light. the closer i get, the farther i have to go?

a step further: my desire to outlive this threadbare life is fueled by the fantasies that i see others pretending to enjoy.

let's go for a drink.

let's go for a drive.

let's do clubs.

let's go for dinner.

	a party;
	[another party]
	a hotel;
	breakfast.

let's go.

let's do.

but how can i do now without paying twice for it later?

i tried living that way; all i felt was stress, latent fear of the last straw being broken and everything crashing down.

i won't live on faulty prayers and blind assumptions. to acknowledge death is one thing; having done that, how to go about living life? i'm not sure whether to go deeper in or move farther out; is it possible to become more, to have more -- and stay empty and centered?

whatever. platitudes are useless anyway. seems best to forget them as soon as i touch them. as if simplicity could be _possessed_ in the way that a word possesses a concept; entraps it, reduces it, chokes and stuffs the experience into a neat bundle of lexical references. nothing is extraneous, but words function to construct a sense of the truth without ever getting to the heart of it, the taste of it.

in order to succeed, i must change. but in adapting to the world, how can i keep from becoming a textbook example -- a "success/failure story"? everyone around me seems to say 'do now, think later', but if i don't think about what i do, how can i end up where i want to be? and if i think about what i do, how can i avoid distraction in the face of a world full of apparent options, many of which will not reveal themselves as mistakes until the moment of completion?

--

it seems like i have a mid-life crisis every six months, he says, half-chuckling as he nestles further into the headrest. he turns away from me to half-open his eyes in an unfocused gaze, time passing as a slow blur at fifty-five miles per hour outside the window. my eyes trace the delicate line of his jaw, the overhead light casting a heavy, quiet shadow over his boyish features as unkempt dark strands creep down to encroach over his brow. absorbed in his self-oblivious state of drunken contentedness, i follow his gaze out over the departing city lights. the train rescues him from a night of partying and me from a long day of rehearsing scenes for my friend's film.

but imagine if you lived your life, always certain of yourself, never asking questions, i replied. how boring...

he closes his eyes and pretends to sleep. as we resume our conversation a few moments later, i notice in my peripheral vision, a well-to-do middle aged man peering intensely into a magazine, straining to appear casual as he eavesdrops on our conversation.

--

i must admit, i have felt more excitement and seen more nearly-attainable possibilities in the past few months than ever before. as if the world is a box full of mirrors, i open it a bit wider every day; but without a clear understanding of the myriad reflections, i see pieces of dreams filling in the blanks where my self would otherwise show through. i wish to leave that warped image behind, but am at the same time curious to see who will be constructed by experience, crudely fashioned through a crooked social lense as a tree's branches are pushed and bent by the wind in the struggle to reach the sky; evolving to become something different tomorrow than it seemed to be at the beginning of today.

if only i could stop having these violent dreams. but desperation and inspiration are two sides of the same sensation, i suppose. what use is excitement without a little fear to make it real?

audio: joshua collins . project 3 [chris lake]

In a way, Jackson's brief peepshow was a godsend to FCC Chairman Michael Powell, other Republicans on the commission, and conservatives in Congress. The incident, however tasteless and inappropriate, really was small potatoes as national crises go. But it gave Powell a chance to shift discourse away from his campaign to remove restrictions on how many TV stations a sprawling conglomerate can own -- a proposal opposed by a vast bipartisan grass roots coalition.

As some of Powell's critics have pointed out, letting a few giant corporations own all the TV stations and cable systems in the country makes it more likely than ever that local community standards regarding what's fit and proper to broadcast will be ignored. Concentration of power leads to abrogation of social accountability. It makes TV literally all about money and nothing else.

[ + ] www.washingtonpost.com

the search is the engine

"find an expert," i said.

she nodded. a few moments later, i realized that she was still staring at me.

"i'm sure that i can find some leads for you" -- a reassuring comment, though i was not at all sure of anyone in my circle who could provide search engine optimization [seo] for her professional networking organization's website.

either become an expert, or hire one... and so the game began.

my new tech company, a testing ground for the development of my pitifully lacking business acumen, consisted of a rather catchy brand name and a hastily html'd web site. the transformation of some old server space paired with a new domain name has become my virtual office lobby. inside that lobby sits a cobwebbed marble pedestal in dire need of dusting, atop of which sits a cellphone that doubles as my work and personal number. nothing legal yet, but of course, image is [nearly] everything at the conceptual stages and this is a test run for my 'virtual' office; since this is a tech services firm and i am sourcing[?] most of my talent from independent consultants, what real need is there for a physical office?

this transparent functionality was at the core of the clever maneuver that i was about to perform. my client needed an seo specialist and i have other things to do that don't involve massaging google's eyeballs, so it was necessary to find someone who was an expert in that messy business. but of course, i wanted a piece of the pie as well, because, quite plainly, if you can do it, why not?

i found the head of seo for a rather monstrously large-scale internet headhunting agency who was willing to freelance under the aegis of my fledgling brand. i promptly referred him to my client. my client, however, was not to know that i was pulling the strings -- i was merely referring a friend of mine to give her a helping hand. once she had given my seo man's name to her professional organization's web director, she would no longer play a part in the game, and i would have access to my first seo account through the sterling efforts of my seo guy.

now, of course, the plot thickens and twists a bit, so pay attention old man, there are details here that you may have forgotten.

my client, an independent psychologist, had been trying to find a coveted spot on the board of this professional organization of which she was a member. this required her to endure months and months of interminable ass-kissing and rather excruciating antics to come to the attention of the board. but all this effort would give her a very prestigious position on the organization's web site, which in turn would boost her visibility to potential clients. the search engine optimization project, innocently suggested by her tech specialist [moi], became her holy crusade towards recognition and riches.

unbeknownst to me, she had decided to take this project as her own and connive her way into a new place at the table as a board member in the process. very clever indeed, but this placed her as the very visible middle[wo]man, which would place the whole project in jeopardy if the organization knew that i also was profiting from the deal. the conflict of interest created by my working for both her and the organization would be too egregious to ignore.

none of this would have been an issue, of course, if it hadn't been for the fact that any contract negotiated between the organization and my seo guy would have to include the name of the consulting firm that he was working for so that the fees would be sent to the proper entity for collection and redistribution. now, since my client had placed her opportunistic little nose right into the thick of things, i could no longer use my company's name in the contract because she would see it, give it one sniff, and have my head on a pole by the end of the business day.

my client and i only became aware of each other's schemes at the last possible moment, and it disappointed me quite deeply to be on the brink of closing a rather lucrative contract in such a spectacularly crafty manner -- so close as if to taste it -- only to be cancelled out by someone who needn't have been involved at all. the real sting is that she is already quite affluent and yet still craved more; i, on the other hand, have only my wits and a couple of ideas to my name.

it was nearly a day before i decided to withdraw the name of my poor company-child from the contractual agreements; quite a difficult decision to tell my seo man not to represent my firm. part of me wanted to kill the deal through a scare tactic, but my seo man would have lost out, and so would my client. the client, though, would have found no remorse from me -- she seemed overly greedy and rather distastefully absorbed in the machinations of this professional organization. she was doing well enough; why not let me play too?

and yet, at last it seemed wiser to give my seo man the job at least; we had never met in person, only over the phone and through email, but i had helped him to draft an acceptable proposal for the work ahead. in a final, almost tearful email, i formally ceded control of the project to him as a "gesture of good faith" looking toward a future relationship, which he graciously accepted. through all this, he remained blissfully unaware of the javelin that had splintered my professional armor as a near-deadly blow in the maddening-yet-exhilarating joust between myself, the client and her organization. my horse was still intact, and i limped off the field, gathering these broken ideas and holding them close to the tattered chainmail of internal fortitude that protected me as a last resort.

i sit here, reconstructing those ideas, piecing them together, creating a stronger foundation to draw from in the very near future, finding the chinks and sealing them to be both more resilient and more flexible.

---

a small trinket of information that comes as another unexpected turn, a dirty little gem that makes my concession and loss somewhat more palatable: my client was in the midst of a personal tragedy in the form of an elderly, ailing father at the time; her unpredictable behavior seems to stem from the stress of such unsettling events. to care properly for him, she may need the money, or at least find a proper use for it. so although i lost the account, it would seem that the ability to relinquish control, in this and similar instances, has both personal and professional value. the unforeseen speaks loudly, even if incompletely; had i acted out of spite and destroyed the deal, she may have suffered much more than i... of course, maybe not. but as it is, i have found an experiential referent for the otherwise pedantic axiom that it is best to know when to stop before becoming consumed by the often destructive urge to win.

Hax0red by saru.

0wnz0r3d by ???

empty packets, cold wires
the disembodied mind does not exist?

to express with words. verbalize. to limit with constructions of language. the instinctive restriction of sensory experience to typeface, conceptualization, dry interaction between individuals over the phone through the blind modulation and demodulation of ones and zeros.

i depend on being able to see my interlocutor. i can't tell how the other person feels through a chat window, whether or not they understood what i was trying to say. they can't see my face -- was i joking? i can't see the rise and fall of the rib cage -- are you flustered or unaffected? "lol" says almost nothing.

i am left with an afterimage, reconstructed memories of face and mannerisms, half-alive shadows that fade by the day. hot and cold, gazing at the screen, trying unsuccessfully to conjure a simulation of what you might look like right now, smell like, feel like. i can only read your thoughts if i can read your lips.

...

suddenly the 'conversation' was over. i was forced to pretend that i hadn't felt that suppressed flinch, the sharp burning sensation that demands to know why the moment was so brief and the end so sudden. on some level, these unformulated thoughts began weaving a path through my mind.

...

i've played this role all too often. quietly waiting, using silence to stir emotional reaction; being the one who was pursued, sometimes by a woman, sometimes a man -- the game never changes. offline becomes online, the real world is condensed into a time-lapsed facsimile of google-searched witticisms and heartless emoticons.

the easiest way to hurt someone is to leave them alone, the simplest way to create frenzy is to feign absence and disinterest. it bores me to think that people actually enjoy being strung along this way, baited by the romantic image and switched for a lesser reality, always at the sweet, climactic moment of having nearly captured the object of one's fevered infatuation. the cycle of disappointment continues, stripping away all feeling until every encounter becomes a calculated game of "can i hurt you before you hurt me?"

circumspection and emotional distance are so easy to forget in favor of feeling something. the constant acculturated reminders that "passion" is the only transcendent value, fever is the only antidote to the dull solitude of self-consciousness. to be alone is to feel a desperate separation; to think of oneself before others is an insult to the group.

the crowd forms as they recognize that they, as individuals, are alone; the mind is inseparable from the body that contains it, rendering direct communication between minds impossible. there is always the intermediary of language, the encoding and decoding of symbols in which only the stronger signals are kept, while the imperceptibly rich meanings that lie in the background are swept away. the result is an apparent exactitude in the transmission of compressed ideas, but something indefinably crucial is lost. why cling tighter to the illusion of shared dreams?

the answer seems to lie somewhere beyond explanation. the butterfly dancing among the petals becomes a moth settling on a dusty windowsill.

audio: boom boom satellite . push eject

just grow up

thinking about maturity, friendship, marraige... and why there is such a predictable pattern to most relationships.

it seems that to 'grow up' means, more than anything else, preparing for childbirth and the ensuing responsibilities.

as a boy grows older, it is impressed upon him by society that, at a certain age, it is alright to pretend that he is rebellious and strange. at a later point, society tells him to look for a woman and develop a pair-bond with her for a tiring and hectic, but strangely rewarding life of marraige and children.

at about the same time that the boy decides to settle down with that [inevitably] unique and special lady, he also begins to sterilize his lifestyle and shed much of the unfashionable, unpresentable aspects of himself in an attempt to fulfill his new role as mature adult. this has nothing to do with his actual self-understanding; rather, it is the triumph of the masculine pose as he relates to the expectations placed upon him by the outside social world. the female has her own parallel metamorphosis to undertake as well, most often in the subordinate position of mother, caretaker, nurturer, the one who the man swears to protect against all the world's myriad evils. the man takes up his metaphorical sword and shield and figuratively thumps his chest, marking his territory and resolving to defend it jealously, as any self-respecting man should do -- a real lady expects nothing less from her man, her fearless knight in shining armor.

why would the majority of young people willingly strip away their sense of differentness and inidividuation in a surging collective rush toward banality and the inflexible rigidity of intellectual old age? one reason may be the preparation for providing a role model for the child that is soon to become a dependent part of his/her life.

take out the piercings, cover the tattoos, remove or suppress all aspects of the personality that can be perceived as offensive or somehow not exemplary and child imitation-worthy.

along with the idea of denying oneself for the sake of the child is the idea of stability on another level: the financial. it seems necessary for the man to be financially stable in order to provide the monetary security needed by his family. this requires that he already have a sense of direction in his professional life. since professional pursuits consume much of his waking lifetime, he must also be well settled in terms of his general direction outside of work as well, for lack of time to pursue new interests in meaningful depth.

a person is only "grown" when he or she is no longer calibrating his/her internal compass; angst and the inherent destabilization of evolving character traits are no longer acceptable as modes of expression, in large part due to the fact that an immature or "incomplete" personality cannot perform the necessary parental duties as part of the support structure for the growing child.

the question that i see, then, lies within two levels, personal and professional:

personal - how many individuals truly learn the limitations and potential of their own personalities before feeling the pressure to "grow up" or become suitable role models-- reflections of society's so-called virtues?

professional - how many individuals find the interests and spheres of influence in which they feel most comfortable and, dare i say, inspired? how many actually find their own professional world rather than bowing to the pressure to conform to the so-called "adult" world of business and the apparently almighty dollar?

can this self-denial be used as a weapon in society to force the conformance of the individual to self-repressive norms and roles, even without the explicit impetus of impending familial responsibilities?

example: an artistically/creatively inclined person is scorned for such individualistic leanings and is coerced by those who "know better" into an ill-suited life of shuffling papers and meeting administrative deadlines. such childish desires are best left in art class, young person: we have more important things to do.

thus the stigma is attached and the machinistic corporate lifestyle/culture is advanced. these values are internalized over time and passed on as acculturated norms, thereby creating a largely unconscious ideological process that has the potential to indoctrinate whole generations. such internalization silently informs those values that are deemed "normal" and socially acceptable to the exclusion of alternatives, even to the extent that alternatives do not seem to exist, or are dismissed out of hand. financial incentives and the appearance of security, real or [all too often] illusory, provide empirical verification of the "truth" provided by such forced normalization. who will argue against a paycheck, particularly with the promise of more on the way as a reward for good, i.e. productive, behaviour?

then of course, the flipside of the equation lies with those people who decide either not to marry or who remain childless -- are they not fully "adults" in the sense they have few obligations beyond their own immediate needs?

all of this implies that for most people, the apparent soul-searching and rebellion during their youth amounts to virtually nothing as far as their actions later in life are concerned. almost everyone eventually succumbs to the evolutionary, sociobiological predetermination of the reproductive cycle.

at first, it seems strange to think this way, but of all of the people that i know who fit the stereotypical 'rebel' image, most of the older ones spend a couple of years whining about 'getting old' and 'becoming their parents', and then they go ahead and play those roles, right on time and exactly as expected.

rebellion, then, seems to be a transitory phase to be grown out of... but if that is the case, what is the point of proclaiming your individuality at all -- particularly if at some level, you know that it is all just another societally mandated shell to eventually be discarded and forgotten?

is it possible, through the ruthless scrutiny of social norms and continual self-examination, to find a different path and become something else entirely?

i wonder.

audio: shakkazombie feat. lunch time speax . 4747

george michael . freeek

and then there was...

... valentine's day.

the box wafted a dark chocolate fragrance
over her nose and
past her lips, caressing
her tongue as she touched it to
her fingertips.

tilting the lid in an eager bid to release that which lay inside,
no sooner had she done, than was she suddenly to realize
that inside the box

a most clever fox with the eyes of a man and teeth of a wolf

had presented her with a human heart for valentine's day.

as soon as she saw it, she nearly dropped the box
wicked she felt, smiling inwardly
as her new heart beat for joy

perched smartly in the container, it was her new toy
no doubt, procured at great cost and sacrifice
on the part of her lover.

glancing up at the clock from beneath hooded eyes
deep in the throes of a pulsepounding lust, she growls softly
and licks
her growing canines as they begin to anticipate the lascivious
oh-so luscious pleasures of a man's blood and soul
just in time for midnight to toll.

red wine drunken directly from one mouth to the other.
on top, howling to penetrate the darkness of the night.

bring light to emptiness, sound to silence
deafness to pain and lust for love,
sensual pleasure in place of lasting joy.

one night becomes eternity?

motion: george michael . freeek

dark out,  dark in?

it is early evening as i sit on the floor in the half-lotus, swaying slightly from side to side in time to the beat. emcees usually annoy more than amuse, but on this particular track, he actually complements the sound.

so the question: am i losing faith in myself?

i realize that recently i've been questioning myself in a negative way -- more, actually, that my commentary has been more toward looking for a solution than simply moving with a sense of purpose. i'm being more conscious of things than i would normally; looking for a clear path through a future that is invariably unpredictable.

...

she sits in the passenger seat next to her boyfriend, who is one of my oldest and closest friends. pausing momentarily from the exalted position as "radio consultant" for the trip, she takes a rather determined expression and gazes far away beyond the windshield, past the gales of cold rain and sleet that come in waves against the steel and fiberglass exterior of the car, only to be driven back by the acceleration of his foot on the pedal. i sit behind the driver's seat, listening to telepopmusik's "love can damage your health" in my headphones and absently touching the rain's rhythms from behind the glass window.

looking over at her, i think wistfully that she and he are perfect for each other: both loud, even bombastic at times, as if life itself finds them happily drunk from each other's company. at times like this, however, both are quiet; he is focused on keeping the car on a straight plow's course down the deluged highway, and she looks on as a vicarious embodiment of his effort plays periodically across her plain but at times absolutely delightful features. not the girl for me, but so perfectly his. naturally, she and i became fast friends.

suddenly she turns in her seat, carelessly brushing aside rogue strands of dirty blonde hair.

"so what do you want for the new year?" she tosses back to me, eyes shining amidst dark shadows, a strange smile playing across her slightly glossed, unlipsticked lips.

in absence of a real reply, i give a half-joking tone, answering her smile with a bored grin.

"a direction."

she laughs lightly at the opaque non-answer. i return the favor, asking her what she wants. she hides from serious questions for the rest of the day with the skill of an expert fencer.

...

a year later, i know the answers to her/my question, but there are still so many opportunities for exploration that i fear missing the one that was a perfect fit. at the same time, part of me craves the ability to reject society on its own terms -- to finish my college education and spit at my so-called "professors" from the podium at graduation time. to be able to look at my yuppie friends and tell them that their way of life isn't the only one. i can play your game, but i choose not to. i like them as people, but their lifestyles are incomprehensible to me... debt as an investment, fine... but debt as a lifestyle choice? no. being a slave chained to a cubicle is something i've done before, while they were still in school learning how to obey their professors, whose places would soon be taken by know-it-all bosses. i refuse to live a slave's life, regardless of how many perks there are.

but this on-my-terms lifestyle is so uncertain and time-consuming... and i have very little money [or time] to waste. on the verge of starting a consulting business of my own, i am torn between three forms of learning:

self-directed physical and intellectual training, my default mode. topics include nutrition, physiology, psychology, cognitive science, zen, martial art, drawing, interface design, computer programming, maybe neurophilosophy if i ever feel confident enough to spout tomes of nonsense like the traditional philosophers do.

externally controlled physicality, which basically means becoming a martial arts teacher and physical trainer/therapist. i am taught, and i imitate the traditional forms of the "masters" who came before for fear of disrupting customers' expectations of the fearsome street boy-turned-man that they imagine me to be.

externally controlled intellectualism, becoming a stereotypical rumpled philosophy major or a pocket-protected computer scientist or any other kind of -ist that requires years of formal training; submissive by necessity to external authority that imposes "educational standards". standards that coincidentally require the replacement of individual inquiry and curiosity with an institutionalized obsession with production, conformant to supposedly objective criteria. these rules, of course, just happen to coincide one-to-one with the rules of the white-collar factory that i came to know and love while working full-time as a web designer when i was nineteen.

torn i am, so i say. do i care? not really. but of course if i am torn, i am fearful of standing on a precipice and not jumping off for fear that the wax wings i have fashioned are not sufficiently well-crafted to grant me flight. looking down at the chasm below, up at the golden heat of the sun high above, and far across to the other side of the yawning pit where all is calm and quiet. i feel nothing as i look across. i know that i must jump, and i know that i may fall. if i stay on this ledge, i will most certainly die. if i jump and fly, even having gotten across, one day i will most certainly die. death comes in either case, it is only a matter of time.

the question, then, is this: what is the true source of my resistance? why do i not just jump and let the rest sort itself out?

i fear being carried along with the wind; i fear the persuasive power of others; i fear the smile that changes minds; i fear the machinations that allow the powerful to transcend and control. i fear being controlled and living in a comfortable box, having my favorite toys and time to enjoy them; i fear not feeling pain anymore and not realizing that life without pain is the anesthetized disinterest of cattle in a feed lot. the starbucks life is too easy, too normal, too meaningless. and yet it seems frighteningly real for those who live it. i know that life; it is death, incrementally timed by a gilded stopwatch.

i fear having power, being possessed by the illusion of control, watching others obey, and realizing that my revolution has done what all true revolutions must do: come full circle. the masochist becomes the sadist, the bottom becomes the top. truth never having been found, the pleasant lie of success is all that remains.

...

sure is a whole lot of fear, for someone who doesn't care. of course, i don't care because i've learned not to, i've trained myself not to. which makes interacting with certain types of people a bit of wicked fun... but i love my peeples, more or less.

so what is left?

i wonder if it is the struggle itself that i live for.

in which case, it's time to jump.

audio: cool hand flex . must feel

interesting...

and then it seems like eighty percent of everything i do is wrong. so what if i'm right? people are the ones who create right and wrong... mob rule seems to be the only real kind.

so why do people pretend that truth matters? do open-minded people actually exist? i'm starting to doubt it... i'm not open-minded, which is why i study so much. i dislike ignorance, but i dislike staying ignorant even more. it seems that if a person has other people telling him that he knows the truth, even if this is obviously not the case, he will believe what he is told instead.

sometimes the world really scares me... because i remember times when i was told things that were obviously wrong, but i believed them anyway. even more frightening is that although i have rejected that way of thinking, it just makes more obvious the extent to which people disregard critical thought in favor of like-minded opinions. and yet, no one calls themselves close-minded -- it's always someone else's problem. i am alone because my friends use each other as props, each leaning on the other to form matchstick castles fastened together by social class and unchallenged assumptions, both about themselves and the world around them.

i haven't felt such a strong and sudden sense of discouragement in a long time... but it feels like there's nothing to do about it. i don't know what stones there are left to uncover that don't have poisonous snakes lying beneath them. nothing like seeing the world reflected in my friend's eyes and realizing that those eyes also belong to the people who i trust the least. realizing that i have heard these words before, and having predicted that they would be said again this time, but still finding myself unable to change the outcome. and not knowing where to go from here, if struggling to live this way is worth it at all. too much failure... why persist if there is nothing to gain? if there is truly balance in the world, and for every bad there is good, then there must be equal amounts of each. if that is the case, what is the point of any of it?

all i see clouds, all i hear is wind. all i feel is pain, all i touch is dust.
time starts to run faster now, and i have less and less.
i could reset the clock, if only there was a reason why.

judo dreams

the beige tatami mats gave their rough yet springy texture beneath my bare feet as we closed the distance, hands outstretched and ready. he stood opposite me in a semi-crouch, the opening in his gi top revealing a brawny chest that shone with sweat. it had been a long workout, but we were just getting started.

i glanced over at the only other person in the small dojo hall. he sat impassively at the sidelines, a large russian boulder with flinty grey eyes. stout and bearish in stature, he was about my age but with many more years of experience as a grappler. this is just a practice session, i reminded myself, feeling a peculiar exhilaration: the beginner's jitters that i always feel when stepping into an unfamiliar world. from a traditional stand-up art to one that focuses primarily on grappling was like the difference between swimming on land and diving into the ocean.

it is this very difference that draws me to grappling arts, from mixed martial arts competitions to my own experiences against larger men. in a fight, the smaller fighter lacks reach and often power against a larger opponent, thus necessitating strong groundfighting skills to get a hopefully-quick submission or crucial break.

quick shuffling steps, low center of gravity, fingers tense, hands searching for a grip. we clash, grasping sleeves, elbows, pushing one side and shoving the other. kuzushi, break his balance, keep him from breaking mine. suddenly he switches stance, simultaneously wrenching my shoulder high and shifting his hips into mine, taking my balance as his own. the feeling of being swept into the air is instantaneous, thrilling, and ludicrously speedy as my free hand automatically moves to slap the mat and diffuse the force of the throw. he holds onto my arm and guides me to the mat, almost gently to be sure that i don't land in an awkward fashion. acceleration of 9.8 meters per second squared as i hurtle to the earth, gravity suddenly a punishing force. a whoosh escapes from beneath me and inside of me as i expel the air from my lungs, tightening every muscle to protect against the collision with the floor.

he lets go of my hand and rushes in for the finishing move. we wrestle for position as he tries to move to full mount. i struggle to keep pace; he is smooth, fast and moves deceptively. finally he crashes downward from a standing position with all of his weight, manuevuring past my outstretched legs.

stalemate. i have him in the guard position, legs wrapped tight around his midsection, one arm outstretched and grasping his collar. my legs are strong and my heels are locked together behind his kidneys. he's not going anywhere, at least not without a fight.

he slaps the mat, laughs to the big russian watching intently by the sidelines, and says to me, "not bad. you're not such a beginner after all." my eyebrows raise involuntarily as i realize that my mind was calm, but my body had long since gone into semi-spastic do-or-die overdrive. legs slowly release their death-grip around his midsection and i rasp, "..."

all three of us laugh.

fade to black as i lose consciousness and




wake up.

...

it's in my blood. too much time spent away from a dojo. i've got to get back to it. advantage? i'm stronger and smarter now than i've ever been.

should be interesting this time around, maybe moreso than last time.

audio: aaliyah . hot like fire