Dark and Daring Deeds

Part of me really likes the Olsen twins. Not in a "ooo, they're hot" way, cuz, uh no, but in a "hey, you look like you're gonna pull out of this child star business and do something w/ your life and one of you was hilarious (if a little blank-faced) in Weeds" kind of way.


Also, this picture is amazing. Hey, outdoor weddings, you're lovely/too stressful to contemplate. Plus, the high contrast is bitchin'.


Waiting to board a plane. I will NOT eat this bag full of cookies on the plane. I will NOT.

Studying on a Great Green Getaway

Somewhere, a couple rows of the calender away, is lurking the beginning of a new semester at BC. Learning about smart, dead philosophers. Applying to PHD programs all over the place. Re-taking the GRE. Co-organizing your Readers Series, you comps-laden Masters students. New boss in the IT office, who looks to be a by-the-booker. Oh, how exhausting you by-the-bookers are. Another office job for that there Lonergan Institute.

Those and a few other concerns have been weighing on me. I haven't had the courage...or faith, maybe, to start writing fiction again since I finished and submitted my Esquire shorts story. Been baking a lot though. I'm quietly hoping to cook more, but we'll see if anything actually comes of that.

But FIRST: a trip to Chicago.

I'm hoping to find in that little jaunt a little reboot and the opportunity to come back to responsible, structured life with a fresh start.

Now: a number of other things and associations.
Whaddya say we find a place to sit and relax, you and me?


Or something more unique to hide out in, floating amongst the trees.

Or bring some little hiding world amongst our day to day, glinting green on our desks.

Oooo...Pretty. Pretty TERRIBLE, that is.

Also, Hurray for terrible looking movies with super hot chicks in them:
Exhibit A: (WARNING: Fox's torso may cause overheating)

Exhibit B: (WARNING: both gory and WAY too long)


I do kind of trust Diablo Cody w/ Jennifer's Body, though it looks ridiculous. Whiteout, on the other hand, cannot be defended.

OK, Ready For Fall Now

American Apparel Windbreaker...

Meet Icon of Cool:


I'm hoping that putting some thought (and money) into my wardrobe will bear some fruit. I don't want to have to give up...I dunno, the expressiveness of trendier clothes, but I do want to start dressing a touch more adult. So, here goes.

Take. Your. Time.

So, I’ve been a little sad lately. My buddy John is off to Carbondale to get his phenomenology-of-religion on and I knew it was going to be hard to see him go, but its been a rough couple of days. John is a good man. Though he’s an introvert, which I find mysterious and questionable, we connected on an obscure-sub-culture-reference-humor level pretty much instantaneously and have spent many hours of the last year nerding out together. If that last part confuses you, read his entry on nerdery. I’m very happy for him to be on his way to professoriality and finally tack “Dr.” in front of that already imposing, imperialist-sounding name of his.

One of these days I’m going to go through all of the links at the side of Mari’s blog. Also, her description of this blog is so fantastic and spot-on, I can’t help but buy her lunch when I go to Chicago. It just CANNOT be helped.

Speaking of Mari, she quoted me in her other blog about being Zen. I’d forgotten my zen-ness. However the description of zen I gave needs a corollary. Sometimes, “Yep. That’s a feeling. Now do a thing.” can become a kind of frantic fleeing from some serious underlying stuff. So, we have to find a balance between wallowing and feeding our crazy with inaction and hours of facebook stalking AND running around trying not to feel our feelings. In fact, maybe it is all there in that definition, I was just paying attention to the wrong part. You have to acknowledge the feelings before you do a thing.

You have to say “Yep” to your feeling.

In any case, I’m letting go of my frantic-ness and just taking my time. Being a little lazy and selfish. Or at least, as lazy and selfish as my protestant up-bringing will allow. Which is not very.

I baked cookies yesterday. Who wants some? Chocolate chip, dude.

And now, some stuff I like:

I want a house that looks like its about to be dismantled by sentient plant life.

I want a concrete wall and a funny vinyl decal for my light switch.

I don’t want a cat, but this is fucking hilarious.

I might have to figure out how to incorporate these guys into my next tattoo. They’re fabulous.

Also, I’m finally buying a TV. I hope it doesn’t ruin my life…

Bare-able Lightness of Burdens

Sol Star: I'm sensing you've done things today you wish you could amend, Seth.

Seth Bullock: What kind of man have I become, Sol?

Sol Star: I don't know. The day ain't fucking over.

- - - - -

I wonder often times about the ways in which we are both victims and perpetrators of our lives. Of ourselves. The ways the weight of the past presses us ahead into these places where we feel both at home and ill at rest. And yet the ways in which it is only ever just me making these choices, responsible for these actions. These recurrent actions. These steps and stumblings forward and backward and not at all. No one is their source but myself.

I know some people who are awful. Abrasive, unkind, inconsiderate, uncouth people. People who are messy. People who are inappropriate and ill-equipped for civilized life. And, some of them I really love, though obviously not on their merits. So, why?

Because the ones I love bear (and only occasionally, bare), beneath their scratchy exteriority, a hurt which makes them child-like and worthy of being cared for. Nurtured, even. Certainly treated with kindness.

There are lurking ancient hurts in their souls. Ugly divorces. Naked mistreatment. The ways in which life breaks promises to us that it claims it never made. And probably didn’t. Still, it seems to wantonly allow us to imagine that it did.

And so it is my pleasure to endure their abuse and inconsiderateness and abrasive comportments. Because what greater joy than to communicate to someone, though not necessarily with words (but not necessarily WITHOUT words either) that, though you may push away so fiercely, I will not abandon you.

And that’s what that stuff is all about, anyways. People who’ve been abandoned so many times because after all, they imagine, they are the piece of shit at the center of the universe. People who will push you away before you can leave in disgust at what an intolerable shit-bird of a person they suspect they really are at the core.

But they usually aren’t.

Except. Except the more the outside prickles and spines against the fickle affections that could tear away another wound, the more they make themselves the kind of person they are behaving like. The more that child dwindles and hides and becomes unreachable to compassion. Incapable of bearing the imposition of kindness. The terrifying risk of love.

And in a way, as they persist in their fearful self protection, in their wild swipings at the world, they become much more the perpetrator of their own unhappiness and much less the victim of it. They begin to wreck themselves. To dissolve themselves into bile and grit.

And while its not only their fault, it becomes over time more and more their own fault.

And that is not just a moral failure. Its also a failure of hope and courage and creativity.

It’s a failure to remember that tomorrow is another day and if we can find a moments rest, we might wake with the strength and courage to be the person of abundant kindness and love that we might have been as children.

And that is why I offer my (nearly) unconditional regard when I can. Because everyone needs a place and person where they can rest from the work of scaring off the imagined hurts of the world.

But do I let others be that rest for me? Not without some significant portion of undermining guilt.

What kind of man have I become, Sol? The kind I’ve been made and continue to make, I suppose. Just like everyone.