un pic

For Whom the Break Tolls

I had to get out.

My roommate and I were like two atoms randomly bouncing around a room. The first, next, and last time we would hit would cause an explosion of unknown substance and quantity. He treaded on that invisible bubble that one has around one's daily actions that is neither consciously constructed or subconsciously dwelled within. I looked at the temperature outside to remind me there was a further universe whose denizens I felt all too unattatched from. Even the cab driver's awkward monologue on the highway that wound through the bare, black trees did not lengthen my shortening path towards the terminal that would terminate my first 4 months in Connecticut. I boarded the plane and left my outer layer of skin behind me to freeze in the cold.

I exited the plane in San Diego much as I did three weeks earlier during the Thanksgiving break: sagging eyes, a hitched back and an uneasiness about my appearance. What was there upon my disembarkation at Thanksgiving that wasn't there as I disembarked for winter break was the internal itching to be back in my original environment, to see familiar faces, to be comfortable. And I was.

My feelings for winter break were similar, if not weaker. It had only been three weeks since I slept in my own bed and saw my grandparents, for whom asking me to spend time with them is like me asking a girl for a date, and saw the few people for whom my existance meant more than another school on their facebook profile (cursed thing). Now that I've been home more than a week, I remember why I was so adamant on leaving this place.

I'm now stuck in the inescapable bubble that was my summer life here, post-Japan to be specific. So far it's been a string of lunches and dinners, coffee houses and un-returned voice mail messages. I wonder if I have really grown. If the four months so far away really did anything. I still feel like I'm a spectator to everyone else my age growing up. What is it that I think I am? I still have no girl to be excited about, no up-and-coming project that people want to talk to me about. No major trips anywhere on the horizon. I sat in a car with someone last night as we called 12 people. We left 11 messages. The 12th was going to dinner with friends. We weren't enough in each other's company.

I am not enough in this city's company. Nothing changes except its size and expense. My family dinners are in near silence. I am further frustrated with my parents' inability to be socially exciting every day, perhaps because they're showing me where my social ineptitude comes from. I want so badly for them to go out, to be with people. They hardly leave. I asked if they had plans for New Years. "Nothing special. It'll be pretty quiet." That could have been their answer for any of 1,000 questions I could have asked.

Instead of reading I've been playing my new video game. This is my own fault.

I won't be making new relationships while I am home. Let me rephrase that. I haven't made new relationships since I came home. And these relationships weren't enough for me before. So there's no way, with my newly academic mind, that they will be enough now. I'm just rehashing old threads, coloring over things that were already not outside the lines, and continuing to avoid a certain old one, but that's another story.

I'm a silhouette of my old self; only, for now, it is the silhouette who is living, talking, hanging out. My real self is stuck as a shadow angled onto a wall, forever hungry and gasping for air.

analogous

pants on a hot day

shorts on a cold day

nothing on an everything day

everything on a nothing day



that's what it feels like

a treatise

the guy at Jorge's calls everyone "my friend".

merry?

i think my right foot is bigger than my left foot.

shorts

c(apitalist)hristmas

heel

fish burritos

steel plates

biking over a bridge upon a dry river

a photo of a camera

to keep and remember, uttered as one.

a yo

a yo,

and her name is

g

l

o

r


iiiiii

gloria


well, i'm back at old 279 Horizon, and, to quote the Kings of Convenience, "i'm homesick, because i no longer know where home is."

do with it what you will.

"So..." Sammy said. "So..."
"So that is not the question," Joe prompted.
"That's what I"m saying."
"Continue."
They kept walking.
"How? is not the question. What? is not the question," Sammy said.
"The question is why."
"The question is why."
"Why," Joe repeated.
"Why is he doing it?"
"Doing what?"
"Dressing up like a monkey or an ice cube or a can of fucking corn."
"To fight the crime, isn't it?"
"Well, yes, to fight crime. To fight evil. But that's all any of these guys are doing. That's as far as they ever go. They just...you know, it's the right thing to do, so they do it. How interesting is that?"
"I see."
"Only Batman, you know...see, yeah, that's good. that's what makes Batman good, and not dull at all, even though he's just a guy who dresses up like a bat and beats people up."
"What is the reason for Batman? The why?"
"His parents were killed, see? In cold blood. Right in front of his eyes, when he was a kid. By a robber."
"It's revenge."
"That's interesting," Sammy said. "See?"
"And he was driven mad."
"Well..."
"And that's why he puts on the bat's clothes."
"Actually, they don't go so far as to say that," Sammy said. "But I guess it's there between the lines."

The end and the beginning

Sou, yeah, i guess i'm going home on saturday, for a bit. i have a feeling i'll be completely bored after a week. and its not that i don't want to go home, its just... i hate being stagnant, not moving, not growing somehow, i guess you could say, and i don't want to be here either, i mean, its great, but i need a break. so i dont want to be there or here. where does that leave me? someplace, uh, somewhere.

can you dig half a hole?

so i've been able to learn a whole new set of weather terms now that i kind of live somewhere where there actaully is weather that is worth measuring, and i've come across two new favorites recently:

Freezing Rain

and, my new favorite,

Wintry Mix, which i guess is a storm with rain AND snow in it. does that not sound like something martha stewart might make to decorate the living room? some kind of concoction for a pot luck dinner? a new flavor of gum? a granola bar for polar bears?

FUN FUN FUN OK!

Post Office

I normally don't "post" this often, so i was wondering to what i owe this sudden surge of postage in this here public diary. And i thought about it for, approximately 7 seconds before I kind of figured it out. This being finals week, there is a lot of writing that someone such as myself, who loads up on the humanities courses, must do. and most of it is not a fruit of passion or an extension of something that i had been thinking about that morning or what not. basically, it mostly consists of things i don't care about or that i am more worried about how it will look to someone else (professor) than what it means to me and what its content is. so, naturally, i feel the need to balance it out with writing of my own, in order to keep my literary sanity. and therefore, you, my loyal 3 readers, get way more than you paid for when you signed up for membership to this here blog.

here's a list of things, not sure how they're connected...

short people walking with tall people
hearing two people speak in a language you don't know
the honeymoon period when you get a new album and you listen to it 8 times in 2 days.
seeing your breath even when you breathe out of your nose
English teacher from high school inviting you to talk to "talented and motivated" ninth graders
finding the booklists for your classes next semester
forgetting
remembering

Chapter 2

The money that Diane and Ron Morrison had lent their son in order for him to keep his apartment did not put them in such a situation that they had to abstain from going to their weekly Italian dinner Tuesday nights or hiring Julita, the unassuming, quiet Hispanic woman to come clean their home twice a week. Indeed, they were perfectly well off financially and, although their son was well into his twenties and, in their opinion, should be able to support himself by now, did not think twice about helping their only son when they found out he needed it. He did not tell them he needed it, of course, because he was not the type to do so – however difficult it was, he tried to pay for his rent by himself. But after Kurt had changed apartments three times in five months, they began to be suspicious, and when he told them, through violent tears, that he had been kicked out of his previous two rooms for not paying the rent on time, they decided it was time that they stepped in. He initially refused, but gave in when his emotions died down and he realized he really did need the help.

He had managed to hold down this job at the real estate agency for a solid two months, and his parents had had to pay less of his rent than they had before he had found this job. The owner of the company was a friend of his father’s, and while he did not have much (any) experience in the business, the friend had promised to show Kurt the ropes and get him involved, working and helping with other agents. Kurt’s father, a doctor, had cured this man’s son’s sinus problems, when they had been told by every other doctor that they were in fact incurable. So, while Kurt was not always the most reliable, friendly, or diligent employee, the owner was forced to softly bite his tongue as he woke up less and less in the middle of the night to the sound of his son wheezing. He despised the sound immensely.

When, the week before, Kurt had been assigned to analyze an area with Sheila, two years his senior and owner of a real estate license, he had been ecstatic. He noticed her out of the mess of faces he saw on his first day, and after meeting her had furtively snuck glances at her soft features and shoulder length black hair for a few weeks before gathering the courage to ask her how she liked working there. The report, which was to be presented to the city council that Monday afternoon, was soon the object of dreams, drawings, thoughts, and everything else that Kurt had on his mind since he started looking at houses with Sheila. He imagined them picking one out as their own. He imagined walking into one to see her in bed in a soft satin outfit she had gotten for his birthday. He had been so infatuated that he had offered to finish the report himself, despite his not having completed one up until that point, or, as it would turn out, after that point as well. He swore to her that he had books on how to write reports, that his father was a real estate agent, that she could put all of his trust in him and he would pull through with flying colors.

Of course, he did not end up finishing the report. He had started, and intended to finish it, but got quickly agitated. As had been a pattern of late for him, he lost his temper. He was unhappy with the way it sounded, could not get the computer to do the font he wanted, and, as he was trying to do too many functions at once, the machine, much to his chagrin, slowed down. He responded by kicking the machine violently, then threw the keyboard across the room, and threw a punch at the monitor. The screen went limp and black, and Kurt sat in the dead quiet of his apartment surrounded by lifeless parts of a computer, the only audible sound being his heavy, damp breathing.

He wobbled into the kitchen and opened a drawer looking for any alcohol he had left. There was nothing in the fridge or the pantry, so he opened a number of other drawers before coming across the medicine his parents had told him to get, and, when he didn’t go to the pharmacy to get it, they had delivered it to him themselves: Fixitall. His stance on the pills was simple and radical: there was no way they were going to enter his body. It was his life, and he could deal with it. His parents, not wanting to argue with him, simply left quietly and wondered if it would be in the garbage disposal by the time they had driven home.

He decided that that particular time would be as good as any to try Fixitall, and he dryly downed a handful of pills, not bothering to read the label. He felt a cold hand grasp his heart and his pugnacious bloodstream slow to a calm, soothing stream. He started for his bed but fell halfway there, mouth half-open and the bottle of Fixitall held weakly in his right hand.
He awoke the next morning twenty minutes before work with a hideous headache, threw on the shirt from the middle of the laundry pile, and left without seeing the computer in pieces in the other room.

After a furiously paced fifteen minute walk home, Kurt threw open his door and looked quickly around his room, which lay the same as when he left it that morning. He ran into the office room, saw the pieces of black plastic strewn about the room, and screamed “Piece of SHIT!” at the top of his lungs. He kicked the monitor, which lay sideways on the floor, once more for good measure, and went back into the main area of his apartment. Fuming, he threw his jacket on the floor. Next to the spot it landed was the small bottle of Fixitall he had taken with him the night before, until he had collapsed before making it to his bed. He picked it up, looked around, and said “Fixitall, huh? Let’s see if you can,” downed the rest of the pills like they were the remaining soda wading at the bottom of a can, and waited for the icy hand to grasp his heart again.
He sat down and waited. He began to think about Sheila’s body again, about removing her shirt, slipping off her jeans…
It hit him. He grasped his left side with his right hand, groaned, and fell to the floor with a thud, which was soon enveloped by the thick silence of his apartment.

Phinulz

news & notes:

1. i don't get rap. I just don't. it seems like the most idiotic, unintellectual, repetetive, socially paralyzing music. do those idiots inspire kids to be anything but a pimp or someone who worships money and sex over anything else? maybe there's something i don't understand. i hate it.

2. ive spent a 3 or so hours in the library and done nothing. i need a thesis for this paper about a novel and it just didn't come to me. then i send an idea for my thesis to my professor and she says she thinks it "came ready-made from the website." that's just teriffic. ugh. im fucked.

3. i think the fantasy football gods hate me.

4. i have a headache because i put on my headphones so loud to block out "FUCK THE BITCH MUTHAFUCKA NIGGA SLAP THE HOE" that i think my ear drum exploded.

5. FUN FUN FUN OK!

6. dad's getting tickets to the world baseball classic. that's one thing about the femmes on the east coast, many of them know their sports really well. one of them could account for the collective knowledge of every female i ever met who was my age in california.

7. did i mention i need a thesis

Chapter 1

The Tuesday and Wednesday of the second to last week in November were passed through as per usual by most people that year. For Kurt Morrison, however, they were unusually awful; so bad, in fact, that in a convenience store early on Thanksgiving morning, when the sullen cashier wished him a monotone “Happy Thanksgiving,” instead of wishing him a “you, too,” he laughed out loud, zipped up his tattered jacket and walked out into the light snow.

While Tuesday and Wednesday were indeed difficult, to say that Monday was an easy day would be saying that the earth was flat, or that if you pricked your finger on something sharp it would not bleed. Kurt had had another trying day at his work, even with the long weekend just two days away. Back in his apartment his pile of laundry was slowly crawling its way up the wall, and although he knew it had to be done as soon as he looked at it all of the energy in his legs suddenly hid behind his bones and muscles. When he woke up Monday morning and realized he was out of clean white button-down shirts, he grabbed one from the middle of the pile and put it on over his undershirt. Suffice to say, he felt uncomfortable in his own skin all day. He felt as if everyone around him was able to tell how uncomfortable he was, too, and that this was the reason everyone, it seemed to him, was avoiding him. Especially Sheila.

Kurt had had his eye on Sheila ever since he started working for Whirlwind Real Estate, so-called because it was on Whirlwind Drive, and, beyond that, made for a catchy name. Throughout the city their signs were instantly recognizable, thanks to the anthropomorphised tornado that adorned it. Kurt had had a few moments with Sheila, such as when they toured houses and he thought he could sense some mutual interest, or when they worked together on a report about the rising cost of living in the area they specialized in.

“Shit,” thought Kurt suddenly. “That report…fuck.” Among the consequences that filled his head at that moment were, in order, a loss of Sheila’s trust and (perhaps) admiration, loss of his job (this is not the first time he had forgotten assignments recently), and lack of funds, due to the loss of the job, to pay his rent. Every object on his desk suddenly became a weapon once he saw the back of Sheila’s black ponytail waving from behind her head from her desk across the office. He wanted to pound his desk with his stapler, hurl all of his papers upwards into a white hurricane, snap his keyboard in half over his leg. Sheila got up from her desk to walk over; he ground his teeth so hard he thought they would turn to powder.
Her dark eyes made him simultaneously embarrassed of himself and overwhelmed by his animal urges; he thought of how lucky the thick threads of her light green sweater were to be able to touch her all day; how privileged the man who she bought her morning coffee from was to be able to talk to her – could they not see she was such a heavenly creature?

“Did you get a chance to work on it?” she asked in her slightly sour alto voice. Kurt wanted to slam his fist against the gray plastic of his desk; “How fucking stupid can one man be?” he roared in his head, wanting to be the one to sentence him for his crime.
“Ah, shit, you’re not going to believe this,” he started, immediately regretting saying ‘shit’ to her, “but I, uh, left it back at my place.”
“Oh,” she said, slightly cocking her head, “doesn’t it have to be in by today?”
“Ya,” he said with a short sigh.
“Could you maybe go home and get it?”
“I suppose I could, I don’t know though,” he said. Kurt averted his eyes from her chest, which was at his eye level. His dreams of passionately running home with her after work and making quiet love with her slowly evaporated and was replaced by a pure, red rage at everything around him.
“Well, it is due to-”
“I know, Sheila. I know.” He hated the way her name came out of his mouth – it sounded like he had been wanting to say it out loud for a long time but couldn’t, like he had put too much emphasis on it and tried too hard to make it poetic. “You know what, I’ll go get it. I’ll see you later.”
By the time he had said “later”, his coat already was around his left arm and his back was facing Sheila, who was completely oblivious to the one-sided war being waged within Kurt’s mind.

Of course, Kurt knew that he did not have the report finished, nor did he plan on finishing it. He decided he needed to go home anyway, much to the quiet concern to his co-workers whom he pushed out of the way as he stormed silently like a human hurricane to the automatic doors, which opened for Kurt just as patiently and emotionlessly as it had for everyone else.

The non-effeminate, non-pushover kind of Yuki

yes, victoria. there is winter.

A roadblock of sorts

Social Contract theory is considered revolutionary in its prioritization of the individual and consequently the ideas of individual freedom and equality. However, in the last part of the class we have studied authors who have attempted to show that the modern democratic state (the theoretical foundation of which is the social contract) includes, perpetuates, or creates various methods of coercion and thus inhibits individual freedom.

Explain and discuss the ideas and various arguments through which the author challenges the accepted idea, generated through the social contact, that individual freedom is a "given" in the modern democratic political state. Does the author challenge the very plausibility of social contract theory itself? Why or Why not? (GIVE AN ARGUMENT)

What does the author contribute to your understanding of how freedom, individuality, or equality works or does not work in the real world? What do you think the author would say it would take for us to be truly free in our society? (!!!Make sure you show and explain sections of the texts that would justify your interpretation!!!)

Cholula!

well, it seems my quill hasn't graced the thin rice-paper of my little public diary here for a while and....

well, in the immortal words of Lewis Black, "mm, I don't give a shit."

I do, really. But. I do.

It snowed yesterday, before I went to New York. As predicted, it was really cool for a few minutes, then a pain in the ass because we had to drive to New Haven in it.

This is by no means a cry for response, but it is kind of a letdown when you put a lot of thought and energy into one of these entry contraptions and then get no response (comments, if you will.). Cause, y'know, when you do a diary or something, then you know it should be private, but with one of these things, there's a reson anyone can access it, and when nobody does, you kind of are left out to dry, a one-man show with no audience, kind-of-thing.

and by no means, my 3 loyal readers, respond because you feel obligated. continue as if you hadn't read that...just thought i'd put it out there, as this is supposed to be a medium for expression of emotions.

Anyway, the new Rebbi at my congregation does these Etanu thingies every week, a synposis of the torah portion as it might relate to us vulnerable, newly-independent college students. this week he talked about the changing of the Encinitas Holiday parade to the encinitas christmas parade.

My response:

This is an issue that frustrates me greatly. While I am of course in
favor of being all-inclusive and non-denominational when it comes to
all of the events which recently have become "holiday events" as
opposed to "christmas events", I really think that in this area the
Jewish community has become too stubborn. Yes, it is true that we
should raise an objection towards events which we pay for that are
focused towards the Christmas-observing population.

However, this is my issue (and this is something I see in the jewish
community everywhere which agigates me): I think that Jews have a hard
time telling themselves that they are not the majority (not even
close, as statistics point out). The fact is that, even though we are
proportionally way ahead in terms of academics and leadership of some
other religions, giving us the perception that perhaps we number more
than we do, we still live in a Christian society. the Jewish community
has this odd obsession with identifying ourselves as being a
legitimate part of society (what else could explain our fascination
with telling people which celebrities are jewish?) even though it's been centuries since we were outcasts from society, and "even in the
21st century, it's still us against the world".

Is it that big a crisis if it is called the Christmas parade?
Honestly, I think this is where some angst towards our community
begins: that we force them to take down the Christmas and put up the
holiday. Our only way out of being labeled perverse is to point to the
rarely-celebrated (at least in my experience in Encinitas) Kwanzaa,
and to say that they deserve equal treatment during the holiday season
as well. I personally do not think this argument holds water at all.

If, in the holiday parade, Jewish participants were refused, then of
course I would have a problem. But the reality is it that Christmas
dominates the landscape. Even through this I remember Jerry Falwell
saying that there has been a kind of war waged upon Christmas, who
"took the Christ out of Christmas. Unfortunately for
him, most of this war probably comes from within his own constituency, as
the main driving symbol of Christmas has been shifted from the birth
of Jesus to the almighty dollar. Even Jewish children are caught by
the magical nature of the tree, Santa, and the presents by their
friends at school. Is this a religious message? absolutely not. Should
they be sheltered from it? That's a parent's decision, I think.

But who are we to force equal treatment? The holidays rarely fall
during the same period and have very little else to do with each
other, sans time of the year. I think the Jewish community has the
maturity to say that we understand the world we live in and can accept
that - I would hope that it also has the beitzim (huevos) to tell the
congregations as well.