mise en scene

the sky and the ground and the point where they both meet were what i wanted to see, and its there everyday. but when i see it, it assures me that it's always been there. it's always been there. it's comforting. do you remember when you met someone new and they said interesting things and you guys hit the slow mo button on the "goodbye portion" of the proceedings, like allowing the opportunity to ask them out was being handed to you in an obvious subtle way. and you notice how endearing their handwriting is? it's as comforting as that, to be honest with you.

pshaw

pretty (ugly before)

Sunshine
Been keeping me up for days
There is no nightime
It's only a passing phase
And I feel pretty
Pretty enough for you
I felt so ugly before
I didn't know what to do

Sometimes
Is all I feel up to now
But it's not worth it to you
Because you got to get high somehow
Is it destruction
That you're required to feel?
Like somebody wants you
Someone that's more for real

Sunshine
Been keeping me up for days
There is no nightime
Only a passing phase
And I'll feel pretty
Another hour or two
I felt so ugly before
I didn't know what to do
Ugly before
Send "Pretty (Ugly Before)" Ringtone to your Cell

-Goethe

“I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming.”

heh

  It used to be if a woman wanted something she'd have to get it from her dad or a guy she was sleeping with. We were ALL like Persian women!-Natasha Leggero on Twitter.

neither here nor there, pt whenever again

“if you desire love in your life, cultivate it in yourself, in your own dreams and desires, in the mark you want to make during your brief span here, in the lessons learned, in the smiles as much as the scars. fill yourself up with love, rather than waiting for someone to do it for you.”-anonymous

“I want to beg of you much as I can to be patient
toward all that’s unsolved in your heart,
and learn to love the questions themselves,
like locked rooms, or like books that are
written in a very foreign tongue.
Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you,
because you would not be able to live them,
and the point is to live everything.
Live the question now,
perhaps you will then, gradually, without noticing it,
live along some distant day into the answer
-Rainer Maria Rilke

i'm going crazy

and i'm ahead of schedule and the music at the office is driving me to dangerously existentiali levels.

blowing off steam at my twitter, updating the office radio station playlist with my thoughts and bon mots

http://twitter.com/finethanksokay

i'm a gambling man:

i'm a gambling man:
i've got my mind
on my money
and my money on me.

source: albert einstein

“Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources”

it's 5:30 pm and my sanctuary is an alleyway

it's 5:30 pm and my sanctuary is an alleyway
behind the building where i work.
there are trees, five feet away from each other,
singly making their residence on
archipelagic islands of soil bordered by concrete and
separated by a sea of pavement
littered with crushed dead leaves, cigarette butts
and empty liquor bottles.
they are not so much trees but indicators of
where to parallel park.

on the other side of a fence that looks like it's pretending to be a wall,
there are more trees: more colorful, bigger, healthier,
they are a gang bunched together while
mine are separated and isolated by gray rubble
and i can't help
but feel protective and defensive (so much so)
that when a bird pirouettes towards us and
nests with us (as opposed to them) there is a
sense of pride and i say to myself
"there's nothing wrong with us, and where
we are and who we are and why we are
why we are." we share the same sky,

and for christ's sake,

when i look up there is a crescent moon
patiently waiting for the sun to make its exit.
i close one eye and outstretch my right arm upwards
hoping i can grab a hold of a cloud gingerly coiffed
against a blue canvas, wondering if i can grip the sky
and gently split it open like lips &
i will hear something like "FFFFFT"
and hopefully i can see dark matter or
clusters of dense stars that form in the shape
of the fibonacci sequence. hopefully i can
find the sky's very own third eye watching me.

when i fail to do so, i go back inside and
when i go back inside i felt a sense of pride
being in on a secret with the alleyway,
as if we were the only mexicans
in a crowded elevator speaking spanish to each other.


i sat down and this was when i was excited to hear from you.
when you asked me how i was doing i said "fine" but
what i really meant to say was "i wish i can show you
something that i felt today" -- but don't get me wrong
because i really was fine, my ears burning biblically
at the idea of the trees finding each other's roots
and holding onto each other tight in the earth's crust.
and when you said "i'm glad", my foundation was sturdy yet
floating, like the atmosphere (for a second) thought it was water.

journal entries (relevant to the nature of this blog and its impending demise and rebirth)

Whereas I have been so committed to moving forward and making moves and have been restless with the fear of idle action as a realistic (fucking ridiculous) idea, I have not taken a step back. This month is all about taking a step back, and so I scoured my old journals and found two things that hold dear relevance to my situation, my optimism (mistaken for pessimism), my cynicism (mistaken for pessimism), my pessimism (which fuels my optimism and cynicism) and the hope that isn't bottled and marketed for it is free when I see a kid that waves at me in line at a grocery store.

(Warning: This is mad self-aggrandizing but it's my blog and I'm not getting paid for it. For those that came here to continue the serial narrative of my untitled novel project, I've stopped posting chapters after I think Ch. 6 but it doesn't mean I'm stagnant. It means if you like it you can wait and the process is too private for me to let you in just yet.)
---

June 5, 2008
i think i've earned one of those stupid introspective posts after a bevy of dumb poems and cheap laugh pictures i've posted.

i check my facebook page, the section of "People You May Know" so that you can add more friends. And all I see are names and faces of people I actually "may" know. People I would never actively seek out, people I've shared time with but have never actually made time for. It's kind of funny, thinking the world as just this fleeting spinning ball with fleeting faces abruptly interrupting the infinity that spirals out your creation.
But then, Karl Marx was the dude who said that philosophy is to real life as masturbation is to sex. people discredit smart people's sense of humor sometimes to search for some value and meaning and heavy-handedness. All I'm saying is Marx probably would have been a chill dude to have a beer with inbetween his quest for utopia.

i think i'm purposefully not trying to be linear about this, making it more esoteric than necessary. some say that's awfully pretentious, but fuck it i am pretentious in my core.

i've kind of discovered that my ears are less enthusiastic about loud noises. i appreciate arrangements and melody more than noise. when i would play with the radio when my grandpa would pick me up, he would call my music "jumping music". i think i'm veering towards his visceral spectrum. he really liked the fugees version of "killing me softly". god rest his soul. but then something like the minutemen come onto my random music player and i remember how exciting noise was. maybe i should stop making statements because if you stand by your statements you're standing by your past.

i've used the process of elimination to decide what i don't want, what i don't like, who i don't like to be and now that i'm nearing the ghastly spectre of 30 i find that all that skimming and separating of chaff from the wheat has proved kind and worthwhile. i see myself finding things that i do want, actively pursuing things i do like, and seeing the person who i do want to be like. it's like when you have a real good friend when you were six years old and now you sit back and think about how you thought they were going to be there for you all your life. it's not sad or depressing in the least. it makes what you have now all the more important.
when karl marx said that, i think he meant that people are content with complaining rather than doing something about it. finding that right balance between action and theory. the one who acts before thinking is as foolish as the one who thinks without acting. we live between fine lines, making sure to make sense. stop making sense.

in the last year, there are now two marriages and three engagements. that's a whopping ten of my friends taking that leap. for what it's worth, i am very proud of them although i'm not there yet. it's easier to say you want to get married when you find the right person. if you don't, it's kind of like saying you want a million dollars without working. i used to say i'd make a great uncle. i think i now would make a tremendous dad if given the chance, but i'm thinking too far ahead. i have to master the art of filling a class one cavity between then and now.

i think people underestimate how much of a dick i am and i kind of take advantage of that. i think people take advantage of my niceness and i let them because i am not nice to be a decent dude or because i have to. i am nice because i want to be. eliminate the martyrdom.

i picked my nose in front of a girl i liked yesterday. i think it's a nice little litmus test because c'mon like if you can pick your nose with someone after hella years why should picking your nose be a reason not to be interested in someone. i am making a statement. my name is pierre bautista and i pick my nose with reckless abandon.


i'm back in the business of getting busy, i'm letting things get to me when they should just be potholes i'd run over without a second thought, or unsuspecting detours that make my destination that much longer. i had a friend who once asked me why are things you get but don't earn so bad. i answered with a nod. i was busy eating mushrooms.

all i'm saying is that i'm a tired kind of happy right now, awaiting tumult and hard-work, awaiting the results that come afterward, but not expecting anything other what's in front of my nose. i'm in love with everything and it's better i kept it a secret.
---


Sept. 21, 2008
i'm not sure but i think it was norman mailer who said that the closest thing a man can get to the feeling of childbirth is writing a novel. delillo and dave eggers continued to extrapolate on that, discussing writing like being your baby and you see its flaws and its beautiful grotesqueness and when you show it to other people the only thing you hope for is that they see its beauty in the manner that you see it as well. of course, i'm just kind of going on memory and excuse me if i misattributed any of these concepts to the wrong people.

career specialist melanie trunk has reasons why you should stop toying with the idea that one should even write a novel, in fact she has FIVE. reason number four is that you make more money per hour flipping burgers that publishing a novel to which most writers i know would respond with "um of course".

david foster wallace, rest in peace, even talked about writing in a salon.com interview hella years ago:

Part of it has to do with living in an era when there's so much entertainment available, genuine entertainment, and figuring out how fiction is going to stake out its territory in that sort of era. You can try to confront what it is that makes fiction magical in a way that other kinds of art and entertainment aren't. And to figure out how fiction can engage a reader, much of whose sensibility has been formed by pop culture, without simply becoming more shit in the pop culture machine. It's unbelievably difficult and confusing and scary, but it's neat. There's so much mass commercial entertainment that's so good and so slick, this is something that I don't think any other generation has confronted. That's what it's like to be a writer now. I think it's the best time to be alive ever and it's probably the best time to be a writer. I'm not sure it's the easiest time.

i didn't leave the dying industry of journalism because it was dying, or because we are currently at an impasse where the immediacy of blogs and the concept of print media are at a crossroads that print media is losing so badly that it is making a white flag to wave while they set up their servers for the web edition of their publication.

i left because one day i would like to have a family, you know that whole wife and kids thing. i am as much of a crass consumer as anyone as well, so i'll be damned if i don't get season tickets to the niners or a hi-def plasma tv. the endless deadline, overworked, underpaid aspect of writing about the local synchronized swimmer going to the national championship seemed insufficient to what i actually wanted. i won't say that i didn't love it because i did. so i came up with a plan to find a way to be fiscally safe while continuing my passion.

dfw's passing was a big surprise to me. he was a man who i admired and looked up to, someone who can see the world in a way that is both intimidating and comfortable and write about it in a similar manner. reading his essays was like someone showing you a rubik's cube and instead of telling you how to beat the rubik's cube he tells you it's concepts, it's mathematical possibilities, it's ability to allow people to concede to it. he gave you an apple and showed you its pulp, it's seeds, it's stem, it's thin skin. he was a master mechanic, not so much in love with repairing but in determining why things need to be repaired or why things don't, why we need what we need. because life, after all, is not a car that can easily be given an oil change every 2,000 miles. i've disagreed in a civil manner to people i respect that life is not simple, and maybe i am wrong. maybe i don't want it to be simple.

sure, deciding to simplify things that don't need to be complicated is crucial in keeping your sanity. i'm not saying overly deconstruct things that are unecessary and minute and unimportant, i'm just saying that when i see a tree then i can see a random space of land obstructing my view or a plant that gives me oxygen or even see a tree that had probably seen my native people struggle or celebrate and maybe kept a little kid shelter when all he wanted was his parents to understand him. there is no wrong answer... and i'm digressing i'm sorry.

i have built a respectable ouvre of contrived poetry and prose, some i even like and am proud of (go figger!). the most widely-circulated published stuff i've written was for the money and so they were not something to hang my hat on but i'll tell you this i do not treat writing hacky shit as a chore but as a challenge. that said, i'd rather no one ever read it.

what i was trying to say about david foster wallace is that his death actually resonates with me. here is another excerpt of his essay regarding kafka that i found over at marginalia.org:

[T]he horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home. … [E]nvision us approaching and pounding on this door, increasingly hard, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it; we don’t know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and ramming and kicking. That, finally, the door opens…and it opens outward — we’ve been inside what we wanted all along. Das ist komisch.

it's actually weird to think he committed suicide because his despair was always approached at a very very analytical standpoint. it was never full-blown out there like, say, sylvia plath or kurt cobain or anyone else who were brilliant little assholes who made shit that will of course be indelible and crucial to the world at-large when they unearth our skeletons after the next ice age.

david foster wallace was a genius, the chillest dude in school that was approachable but i couldn't talk to anyways because what he said would go over my head.
but david foster wallace has given me strength now. i might not be the greatest writer ever and that doesn't matter. i always wanted to write a novel to challenge myself, document the world as i see it and share something to a world that has shared so much to me.

so thank you very much and goodbye mr. wallace. thank you very much, i'm ready to share:

i have chapter five posted up and im working on chapter six right now.

Ham on Rye

“The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little bit more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole god-damned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidates who reminded them most of themselves. I had no interests. I had no interest in anything. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn’t understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.”-Henry Chinaski.

a lil sumthin sumthin

“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and the sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”

—	Ernest Hemingway in Esquire, December 1934

the dumbest girl i ever touched

the dumbest girl i ever touched
felt like velvet and smelled like
what a perfect sunday morning
can only wish to smell like.

she was exotic, despised narcotics
but indulged me as much as i
wished to patronize her and her words
and her dress that was inches too short.

and when i slept in her bed
she would hold me so tight
she never got the chance to
feel me like i felt us climax.

and when she would wash the dishes
i would read her shelley and i would
sing her t-pain and she would hum along
when she moved onto ironing my pants.

to her i was a pharaoh and to me she was
my countrymen and we both believed
in our hearts we were frauds and tricksters,
constantly trying to remember our own lies.

today the sky is as blue as dorian gray's eyes
and the smell of sunday morning is as faded
as the painting of dorian gray's eyes and my
father's hands are calloused; this is my

inheritance.

she would question her thoughts,
and when i corrected her she would
laugh like a thief getting caught. we
would argue and she was always right.

when i hugged the dumbest girl
who ever touched me, she smartened
up. her grip loosened. her eyes glistened,
she smiled and i'm sure the revelation
felt like childbirth; she felt me for the first time

and
the dumbest boy who ever touched her
had nothing to say.

the universe is intended to be discovered

I hugged my pillow to sleep
and the scent of your hair was nowhere.
The universe currently exists between
my sigh and when
you close your eyes.

I am not asking to be Columbus
and you the New World.
You are not territory
and I have no sovereignty
to place a flag on your landscape.

I just ask you understand
that looking into your eyes
and listening to your thoughts,
amidst your vulnerabilities
and your insecurities and your
strength and resilience

I have discovered a world
unique, a world beautiful from
the inside out. I have laid eyes
not on a world flat -- one which
I was scared existed -- but
a world in which my stars satellite
with gentle illumination.

self portrait on Aug. 17, 2009

dream song 34 by john berryman

My mother has your shotgun. One man, wide
in the mind, and tendoned like a grizzly, pried
to his trigger-digit, pal.
He should not have done that, but, I guess,
he didn't feel the best, Sister,—felt less
and more about less than us . . . ?

Now—tell me, my love, if you recall
the dove light after dawn at the island and all—
here is the story, Jack:
he verbed for forty years, very enough,
& shot & buckt—and, baby, there was of
schist but small there (some).

Why should I tell a truth? when in the crack
of the dooming & emptying news I did hold back—
in the taxi too, sick—
silent—it's so I broke down here, in his mind
whose sire as mine one same way—I refuse,
hoping the guy go home.

Danse Russe by William Carlos Wiliams

If I when my wife is sleeping
and the baby and Kathleen
are sleeping
and the sun is a flame-white disc
in silken mists
above shining trees,—
if I in my north room
dance naked, grotesquely
before my mirror
waving my shirt round my head
and singing softly to myself:
“I am lonely, lonely.
I was born to be lonely,
I am best so!”
If I admire my arms, my face,
my shoulders, flanks, buttocks
again the yellow drawn shades,—

Who shall say I am not
the happy genius of my household?

about waiting

there is no destiny,
only hope.
there is no sadness,
only time.
pull back the curtains,
there is no prophet.
there is no loss,
only faith.

so i'll continue shooting arrows in a fishing pond,
doesn't ever matter if my arrows are gone,
i've got hands and eyes and sense of mind
to know what's in it is sublime.

mother's day

written may 13, 2007

before the weight of the world
saw your ideals unfit
you read books
making sure
i'd make it in this world
and now
the the weight of the world
is just a an article of clothing
you tell me
that i'm going to make it in this world

once upon a time you were beautiful
and men would promise you the
stars and the moon

and now you sleep alone
waiting for the world
to give you a respite
from the stars and the moon

i want you to know
you are beautiful
and if i could,
i'd give you the stars and the moon

but you're too smart
for promises unreachable
that doesn't mean
you can't reach for
what you once thought
was for fools.

because it's coming to you.

the more loving one by w.h. auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

about awareness #3

written feb. 17, 2008

hello dystopia,
i am the archbishop of afterthoughts after long afternoons.
i can tell when they're angry,
can
they tell
when i'm blue?

the nimrods build buildings
to worship pantaloons,
while i hide under blankets
like a makeshift cocoon.

i eye eyes
like a diary,
with secrets that shouldn't be told
i like our jejune mornings like a dog likes it's belly
on a pavement that's cold

can forever
ever be forever
(,possibly)
or
does the severed rhetoric allow it not to be

for the afterthoughts after aftershocks
tremble like tremors rrrrrrrr
rrrrattle hang-dry socks

and lovers lips lock
like their hearts are on the clock
an urgent declaration to untie stomach's knots
(and not before long, they undo button tops)

i can sleep on my own.
i am fully grown.
i cook my own meals
then i sit on my throne.
and our eyes realize before we feel inside,
(inaction is drastic when you have the insight)

so i'll answer your call
if you answer mine
but if you're still not inclined
i'll still leave on the light

a "love" poem

written march 13, 2008

you: inconvenience
incapacitating
all that makes me
me.
come back.

i touched myself
thinking of nothing important
and the days i take a
ride on public roads
are the days that
i yearn for sleep.

a monk by design,
i indulge in my dreams.
finding interests in the
insipid, fingers crossed
we agree.
i want "you" more
than i want
you,
as if ideas are more important
than the pleasant view.
love should never be an abstract thought,
it should be bedsheets messy.

COMMUNITY CENTER b/w OTHER MINOR REQUESTS

Community Center

it was i who he not me
probably
say we
be invisible:
breathing out the cold,
precipitation out our throats.

and it was they who maybe we
who fell apart at the seams
at the sketches of their dreams

sometimes he gets down on his knees
and says please please please
but feels guilty of his pleas

so he will breathe and breathe and
breathe and breathe and
breathe (please) breathe (please) breath
(please) breath please heed no retreat

for
it's not defeat it's
the sound of bustling feet

it's the need it's
the need.

and they who can be us who
wants them to understand we
who wants to be we, be it him
or her and you and us is us is us
is us is it is it (it is).

Other Minor Requests

I wish I had eaten
a gumdrop once in my life
so I can know how sweet
"sweet as a gumdrop" means

or imagine Thoreau's
quote ("marching to the
beat of a different drummer")
that the beats all like
bmPbmPtch-- BmPBmPtch da tss..!

I imagine sleeping and controlling
my dreams before they decide
to dictate today
because today can not suck
and can't I just hope to root
for the good guys (the real good nice guys
not this "nice guys finish last" heresy

because if you are concerned about the
concept of last place then your niceness would
not exist in a perfect world) for I hope
that each other is what we are, that everytime
we nod, we nod in stereo.

-Robert Heinlen

“Jealousy is a disease, love is a healthy condition. The immature mind often mistakes one for the other, or assumes that the greater the love, the greater the jealousy — in fact, they’re almost incompatible; one emotion hardly leaves room for the other. Both at once can produce unbearable turmoil…”

a minor request

if the world will eat me alive,
may i have the decency
to devour it whole.

we enter the planet as orgasms,
so may i leave it on a climax.

w/ dignity

every night from age 12 to infinity,
he would pray to someone (he
wasn't too sure who) and ask
"please, let me die with dignity".

maybe he had days that moved transcendentally
and maybe he had days that
would suck the marrow out of his joy
but the request was posed consistently.

and sometimes he would sleep in his bed
or sleep in a stranger's bed though one
time he woke up in an elevator and even
when he awoke he prayed he wasn't dead (not yet)

though oftentimes he was okay and sometimes
he was afraid he wasn't but if you asked
anyone around him they'd beg to differ but
what do they know about him aside from his asides.

and whenever he thought about you he thought about
more than you he thought about more than death
he thought about the way the world should work
he stopped thinking about himself and his doubt.

and whenever he saw you he thought about how
he wished he knew how to make sure you could
feel the way he feels when he was around you, the
way everyone should feel between before, then, and now.

now his prayer's the same but his definition of dignity
has changed (for better or worse) and the idea
of waking up weightless might be naive but
the idea of dignity is a boy who feels relieved.

there will be days when he will be too busy to have thunk
because he needs to make money and because he
is scared if he stops moving he will die and if he stops
thinking he will be worse than death, he will wake up sunk.

"and if you do not see how beautiful, wise, confident and strong
you really are then shame on you because it's not hard
to do things before you die for someone that makes you feel
the way you make him feel" is what he said before he prayed (hard and long).

there is no nothing -- no thing -- noting that there is everything (everyday)
inside (that nothing), that emptiness, that space between now and later
(that he hopes he savors) and now and then (that he only now comprehends)
so he will lie down tonight, knowing everyday he's not okay (and that observation
makes him okay) and that he's dying every day (though he's dying in his own stupid ideal way)

watching ghosts at 2:30 am

FFWD>> to 4:32

more misawa via herb

The most vivid scene of the night was Saito, 43, who had to be talked out of announcing his retirement that day, getting on his hands and knees to a large framed photo of Misawa, crying and being apologetic. It was actually at that point when fans realized that Misawa died directly related to the move, as opposed to the possibility it was a heart attack suffered in the heat of battle.
There have been an endless number of high profile pro wrestler deaths over the past 25 years. There were the drug deaths, the accidents in and out of the ring, and even a high profile murder. Many were the result of the lifestyle of being a high profile pro wrestling star and falling to the easy temptations. Some, like Eddy Guerrero, may have been, as Dusty Rhodes said right after his death, that he died trying to be a main eventer, essentially steroids and Growth Hormone to try and overcompensate for his small stature that was the only thing holding him from that status. Misawa was the first to die not from trying to be a champion, nor from the lifestyle of the spoils from that success, but because of being the champion.

moarrrrr quotes

“Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on.”-Henry Rollins

.

“You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.”-James Baldwin

“If you’re losing your soul and you know it, then you’ve still got a soul left to lose” -Charles Bukowski

Happy anniversary, Dubliners

Today is the 95th anniversary of the original publishing of Dubliners. The publishers were concerned of the contents of his short stories and this was his response:

“It is not my fault that the odour of ashpits and old weeds and offal hangs round my stories. I seriously believe that you will retard the course of civilization in Ireland by preventing the Irish people from having one good look at themselves in my nicely polished looking-glass.”

FRANK

Frank just got promoted at his job. He is my neighbor, probably the best neighbor I ever had. When he moved in, my last neighbors were Archie and Marianne. They were originally the best neighbors I ever had, so you figure the bar was set idiotically high when Frank moved in.

When I get new neighbors my only hope is that they're not too loud and mindful and when you run through enough neighborhoods to actually accumulate a favorite neighbors list then you kind of realize that simple wish is not that simple.

Archie and Marianne knew when to ask the right questions, to invite me at the right time, to insist when they should, to concede when they should. They apologized in advance vis-a-vis when to expect noise if guests are over. They were present but never overbearing nor bored.

Frank is actually the opposite: really intrusive, oft-times belligerent, says the wrong thing at the wrong time. I've woken up to enough people having sex very loudly to last me a lifetime and Frank is responsible for about 99% of them (the other 1% involved "Love To Love Ya" by Timabaland and Magoo on repeat and man I will kill on command if that song ever comes on again).

Frank would walk in and, because my name is Noah, call me "The Biblical Nigga" (he's not black). He would say incomprehensible dickfaced things to any girl I was seeing at any time (One time he walked up to Jody and said that if he squinted his eyes then she'd have the most symmetrical breasts he'd ever seen through a blouse and it's a shame her breasts are probably similar in symmetry to his testicles). He knocked on my door at 4am one night to tell me that Badlands was on.

Frank would also call me "The Biblical Nigga" when I was always looking like a downer. He said that dickfaced thing to her when, unbeknownst to me, she came onto his co-worker at one of his parties. He knew my favorite movie is Badlands.

So he got this promotion and is moving in with his girlfriend of the month, Allison. He dated Allison after meeting her at a Cuddling party. A cuddling party is a party where people organize a party where strangers introduce themselve to the other person and just cuddle each other. He was very into the idea of feeling like a 13 year-old, "afraid of the power of my boner" (his words).

They hung out, didn't cuddle at all but got each other's numbers. And now he's got this promotion and he's dating her and now they're living together and Allison even calls me "The Biblical Nigga".

It's not that I'm not happy for him and that he's like 45 years-old and twice divorced and honestly our greatest moments involved two lonely people being lonely together and so I'm happy for him. He got this promotion and he bought me a Swiss army knife. I asked him why he said "You're an eagle scout now, bitch."

And I guess I am. I too have gotten a promotion in a job I hate in a city I despise in a planet gone bonkers. I'm not jealous he's settled down, or worried that I'll never see him again. Because that's not true, I just won't see him as much as I used to and most of those times I was too busy seething to even render any moments as sentimental. I think I'll miss the uncertainty the most.

His goodbye party starts in five minutes and I'm looking at myself through the reflection of my window. An unfamiliar eye would see me looking at the city lights, but tonight my vanity wins: a portrait of me (transparent) in front of a city (concrete) and wondering if my next neighbor has a vagina and very nice thighs.

One minute later, I'm eating a weed rice krispy treat. Two minutes later, I call Brenda to tell her that I'm going to the party early and to call me when she's on her way so I can wait for her at my place. Three minutes later, I start looking for a new job. Thirty minutes later, Brenda knocks on the door. One hour later I'm looking at Frank like he's a ghost, inert, separated from me and how we're all separated from everybody and how much a miracle it is to connect with anybody anywhere at all in this world. Well, my next neighbor has been issued a challenge.

THE ADVENTURES OF HONEY B. FLY

So I was kind of like at this party right, like having a little sizz-nye-ip of those margaritas and like damn near tore a hole into the carpet with how I danced motherfucker did I dance. I remember like hanging out with Freda and we were talking about the difference between the red skin potatoes and the russett potatoes (the red skin isnt for mashing, the russetts are) and all of a sudden Billy walks up to me.

He says "what the deal, Honey."

"Unwinding from a long day, Billy."

"That's cool," Billy interrupts. Using enough energy to muster up a "that's cool" in the same way a bellhop wishes you to have a good day. He was at least 6'1 and was the host, all on the hobnobbing tip saying what's up and how are you's like a fucking game show. Like "Ask how everyone's doing 800 times and win a fucking Mazda" and I didn't like how he stepped up to me, because I knew he only talked when he wants something.

"Is it cool if you can get some ice," Billy asked, assuming I'd say yes.

Cause you see Billy knows that I have the power of teleportation. I can close my eyes and go from here to there to wherever and ever. To like eating Mexican food at the Mission or go to Kentucky and get some Old Pappy Winkle's Family Reserve 23 years aged. If someone holds onto me while I teleport they go too, so I've been super helpful with the community, taking kids out of burning buildings and whatnot so sometimes it's weird that I'm known for this one thing and it's like hey look its that person that does this one thing. I mean it's awesome you know, and all that type of unwanted attention is worth it to be blessed with such a power.

But the one thing I hate motherfuckers doing is like being so dense in not knowing that it's obvious we wouldn't talk if you didn't know I can teleport.

So I said yes, of course Billy. On one condition if you go with me to the store. Billy was very gung ho and we took a shot of Jack before I closed my eyes and teleported to the store. My rollerblades are orange and purple and people wonder why I wear them but then they've never seen me have to fling forward when I teleport from point A to point B. It's part of the landing part of this power.

So I roll into front of the market because it's cocky to slide into the actual store and be like "No harm, my fellow citizens of Somewhere Where I Live it is just Honey B. Fly teleporting to get some ice."

Billy was sort of upset that didn't happen and it was very obvious, him asking if we could teleport one more time into the store. He let me into the store first and started his way into the ice chest area. He grabbed 2 bags of ice and put it in a cart, one on top of the other.

I decided since I was here I'd get some batteries for my universal remote so I headed in that direction of the store. When we met up in the front, he was reading Us Weekly talking about the Flintstones having a rocky relationship right now. I put my batteries into the supermarket converyor belt and he added his ice. He looked into his pockets and there was no wallet. He apologized and asked if he could borrow money for the ice. I looked right at him and rolled my eyes. Andre 3000 is in the background, blaring in the speakers. He was asking for all the Beyonces and Lucy Liu's to get on the floor.

I looked at him and I said "Alright."

So I paid for him, an obvious calculated move he had planned. Who doesn't bring their wallet with them to buy ice? Assholes do, that's who.

The register guy gave me a receipt and told me to have a good day. Of note, the guy telling me to have a good day was far more sincere than Billy saying anything. So Yeah, I'm grabbing the bags and I give it to him.

"Thanks a lot, Honey," He said.

"No problem," I responded. "Now get your ass your own ride you stupid ass vampire."

And so I closed my eyes and went back to my room. That'll teach Billy.

in hopes of killing this

writer's block for my novel i will be writing a short story every day for the month of june.

dapat ginawa ko noon pa, february pa, 2008 pa. nagdecide wala ng dates sa story (i.e. march 2006) kasi kailangan ko magawang timeless at universal. nagwa-whittle ko ng titles para sa personal journey ni clark pero self conscious pa ako, takot kung sobrang pretentious ng whole idea of creator,createe,roles of humans, etc kasi wala kong masters degree para sa philosophy pero sabi ng dad ko pilosipo pa rin ako. maynila miss kita, especially the long walks.

can i be homesick for multiple homes, one that i am staying in, one that i have stayed in and am going to plus the intangible homes that have once rested comfortable between me and the world? it is so possible it's like looking at an empty row of toilet stalls when all i need to do is just pee.

first story will be up by the end of the day, if it doesnt then i'll do two stories in one day. i just need to write and learn and work on patients and patience ya feels?

I talked to my therapist and he says if possible for me to stay here as long as possible. This has definitely thrown a kink into the plans but I guess I have to take his suggestion to heart so we'll see we'll cross our fingers and we will fly.

Q: where and what

Neither Here Nor There

The charm of air-guitar is the irrational-yet-logical transitions one can accomplish. From rhythm guitar, then to the bassline, then a drum fill, then back to rhythm guitar to lead-in drums to the chorus where you are lead singer back to the bridge with the bass until you hit the lead guitar doing a solo. It is a private moment that involves more heart than picking someone up at a bar but less balls. It is the thrill of someone waiting for 6pm to ticktock its way into the past.

I spent my lunch break feeding ducks, but I soon realized they were all Pavlovian and circling me like wagons to a wild-west villain when they saw me as the owner of free shit. I briskly left the scene and found shelter underneath a tree. Watching the ducks from afar, viewing families and cliques and the daily routine of domesticated serenity made me feel like the enemy, their enabler. I will return tommorrow with a new plan of attack: come when they're not so fucking hungry.

Tonight is Bluegrass night at Mission Pizza, the locale of one of the most existential crises of my life and probably the determining factor of how and why I took that flight to the Philippines. I will repay my thanks with a curious ear and a tall glass of Boddington's. For now, my heart sweats like a candle, from a fragile flame that can be easily vanquished with no blame, no rhyme, no reason, no depression, no heaven; just the way I like it.




"Doing dirt on sex, it is the crime of our times, because what we need is tenderness towards the body, towards sex, we need tenderhearted fucking."
-D.H. Lawrence


-Kenneth Koch

"He walked out of a party one night because somebody used the word 'creampuff,' it seemed maliciously, in his hearing. The man was a refugee Hungarian pastry cook talking shop, but there was your Mucho: thin-skinned."
-Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

pastiche

http://bringtheruckuss.tumblr.com/post/107292269

hell of to fruition

[x] continue forward progress on novel
[x] compile and edit previous short stories and poems
[x] save up money to self-publish
[x] purchase domain name and host server
[x] finish dental projects
[x] keep up/pace with dental plan trajectory
[x] diminish anxiety of seeing patients
[ ] accept proposition to spoon
[x] keep self composed
[x] dream with feet on the ground
---------------------------------------------------

Because he is a genius and I am a poser, here is a stolen premise for I am a hideous man.

Q:
A: Even a real good book is like half a year. For me at least, it's either anecdotal or fleeting. Like when taking a walk in a park and the kid in front of me kicks a rock back to other rocks, like there is no necessity to sit him down and ask him why did what he did. There is no meaning and there is no necessary analyzation or deconstruction and sometimes I get lost in thinking to dive deeper is to find meaning but right now I feel like the beauty of something so innocuous is its innocuousness.

Q:
A: Yeah, I'm sure that's the case.

Q:
A: Once upon a time.

Q:
A: Well, you know. I remember thinking to myself that the rhythm section in "Careless Whisper" had to have been one of the most underrated and most, like, fucking amazing things like I wish someone can build a monument to that. But unless I'm really not caught up in myself, like when I'm drunk or something, I can't muster up the courage to say something so stupid. And then I kind of let it pass. But if someone else had thoughts along those lines and their actions where parallel to mine I wouldn't treat it as a dumb little inane moment. It would be admirable to me, I would wish someone would erect a monument for something that personal. That's why I can't hate people.

Q:
A: Yes, what about her?

Q:
A: Oh yeah, I hear she works at Macy's or something. It's weird how someone who made a significant impact on my life a decade ago can be so moot and unimportant to my present... but at the same time the reverberations have been felt. It's like time kind of heals all wounds, but more importantly it creates these little battle scars that makes you feel accomplished, no matter how many flashbacks you get.

Adam 2009 trailer

in defense of being a f_cking idiot.

You don't have to look around to know that things are happening. We were never little children and we will always be little children. I never in my wildest dreams thought that reality could surpass my wildest dreams. Now, the likelihood of attaining such unrestrained joy can stare me right in the face and all I can do is dream.

My lack of a killer instinct is highly equalized by my ability to not exist. My ego is a slut who's afraid of being a slut. My ego is the Madonna/Whore complex. I feel like maybe one day I will be on a porch, drinking lemonade and smiling for no reason in particular. This is my hope and when it comes I will look at the person beside me and we will freely admit that, hey, that moment in time that we shared a long long time ago was when we knew everything was going to be alright.

You know how people say "I love you" to other people before they leave? The reasoning usually because you like to remind them that you love them just in case, as in "just in case" you never see each other again or "just in case he/she was unaware". That is very rational, those are pretty good reasons. Sometimes, saying "I love you" is said so much it is said out of habit and the best times "I love you" can pop in is when you mean it and you want them to know right then and there, and those are usually never said as the last words.

I love you.

I walked across the street to buy lunch and saw nothing but us, tiny little complicated beings, and the sky above. If you are willing to let us keep at it, no matter how stupid and selfish and isolated we are, I promise that there is a reason for this bullshit and one day we might be bored out of our minds just enough to let it sink in.

happy new years

i have about 3 meta essays about the state of everything regarding me (very self aggrandizing but hopefully earnest) that i'll eventually post, as well as the ch. 7 which i cant confidently post but for now...

the best song of 2008 and possibly the decade? A song so perfect that I've been trying to find the right words to use when doing my annual year-end song frenzy. i've only been able to conjure up a few words:

"As disco instrumentals go, Aeroplane concocted one of the awesomest grooves. But with Kathy Diamond's longing effortless vocals; every bassline, every synthline and every high-hat has meaning far beyond just a component of one of the most fucking facemelting songs of the year, but adds a gravitas of vulnerability that puts this song over the top."

How gay was that?

anyways, here's the link:

Aeroplane - Whispers (f. Kathy Diamond)

p.s. long time no see