Fall's Fortunate Foretelling

I sit here staring at a sun flower that grins a rich yellow from above my laptop screen, perched as it is in a narrow necked, fat bottomed bottle atop my desk. It's been a week or more since as kind a friend as I know in Boston bought it for a me still sick and behind and despairing. Its only curling a bit about the petals, but otherwise looking chipper and cheerful as any displaced plant ought in early October. And I admit, I find myself relating.

I would welcome a little escape, I admit. Just a little one. I read about these tear-drop trailers and thought of the desert in the Fall and longed to climb rocks, hike about, eat hearty, hot foods in the twilight. Just be present in the stuff of stuff. Be far from books and bars and burdens.

mewithoutYou has been helping me remember the meaning of the stuff of Stuff. Sleeping At Last too.

"a fumbling reply, an awkward rigid laugh
I'm carried helpless by my floating basket raft
your flavor in my mind swings back and forth between
sweeter than any wine and as bitter as mustard greens
light and dark as honeydew and pumpernickel bread
the trap I set for you seems to have caught my leg instead"

(Side note: my external hard drive with all my music: clicking. I think its gonna fail. Fuck.)

"We'll lift up the ground to see
The system of roots beneath.
Gears turn, endlessly,
To bring the world back to life
Like clockwork, when it dies.

The cadence of beating hearts,
The click of its moving parts
Grows louder and louder
From this restless earth...

Future gardens wait patiently below
somehow we smell them
blossom through the snow."

The nesting instinct is a fine thing and well enough. I don't think it a pure vanity to desire one's life is full of beauty, natural or creative. But its to be shared. This place would be a fine setting for a life-together-ed. Otherwise its all just a museum to lifeless artifice. Artifactualities.

Well, tomorrow is just the sort of day from which I need to retreat. Too full, too busy, too much. I'll face it all the better with a full night's sleep and further blogging serves that purpose not at all.

A little more Sleeping At Last before I'm sleeping, at last.

"We'll pray for heaven's floor to break
Pour the brightest white on blackest space
Come bleeding gloriously through
the clouds

and the blue

Forcing one place from two.
Killing formulaic views.

Only loves proves to be the Truth."

Gifts You Get to Gander

This was built for a soapbox derby race in Portland, Ore.


"Look Upon Thy Death" is a pretty bad-ass tattoo. And Shakespearean nonetheless!

This makes no sense, and yet I feel like I should be their friend.

Especially if they serve these:

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…

Pushing @ Alpha

Eventually, I'm going to need to get a mathematics education.
(Thanks to Steve for showing this to Emily. Thanks to Emily for showing this to me.)