words, words, words
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If I begin to detail myself here, will you understand?
P. I am me
Q. I don't always know exactly who that is
R. I am Quaker
S. I like words and playing with them
T. I like genmaicha tea
U. I like the word napkin more than most others
V. I spend time walking my neighborhood
W. I cook rice often
X. I sleep well most every night
Y. I eat large amounts of fruit and vegetables
Z. I munch, sleep, write, create, cook, bike, watch, walk, listen, hope, learn, drink, live, breathe, touch, know, question, taste, copy, read, stare, carry, talk, dance, finger, try.
raisin@gmail.com
albums:
Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs
Erasure: I Say, I Say, I Say
Depeche Mode: Black Celebration
The Beach Boys: Pet Sounds
Marvin Gaye: What's Going On?
David Bowie: Hunky Dory
George Michael: Listen without Prejudice
George Gershwin: Porgy and Bess
Yo La Tengo: And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
songs:
Wild is the Wind: Nina Simone
Come Undone: Duran Duran
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini: Rachmaninov
My Funny Valentine: Chet Baker
Feeling Yourself Disintegrate: The Flaming Lips
This Must Be the Place: The Talking Heads
Hyperballad: Bjork
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Wednesday, April 28, 2004
You read the onion, don't you? it's always funny, but there are some weeks when the humor is hardly laughable. they seem to be on a political mission this week, nailing the Bush administration for it's laziness and stupidity. The headlines,
This week's guest president: Tom Hanks (because George Bush is on vacation again), or Sept 11 Could Not Have Been Prevented Without Accruing a lot of Overtime read with too much truth in them. There's even a story about Bush trying to take back his "Bring it On" comment. I don't remember the Onion ever being this sharp, but it's certainly a good thing. I wonder what other people who read it will think. One thing I can't grasp about politics is the mind of the average American. They seem so dense to anything new, so slow to grasp what's going on, and wildly attracted to what doesn't matter. When my friends in the Air Force read this week's issue, will they get what's going on, willl they understand? i don't know. i can't laugh this week, the irony is too obvious, too cruel.
12:18 PM
Monday, April 26, 2004
Last night, I celebrated my one year out of the Air Force, with a dream that I was still waiting to be discharged. I can't say i thought a whole lot about it yesterday - i knew it was the day that i signed out of the base, turned in my i.d. card, and became a civilian after nine years of military life. i remember. yes, it's something worth celebrating, but my mind is too caught up in what i have or haven't done since then. The dream though, reminded me that it's a good in itself that i'm free, that nobody can bring me back into the military, no matter what.
and i have done some things since then. i've relaxed, enjoyed myself, let my hair down, slept a ton, met new friends, made plans for the future, taught myself that i don't need much money at all to survive. the things i enjoy the most don't cost much at all, if anything.
is it enough? i can't describe enough for you. i imagine when i look back at this year i'll marvel that i didn't allow myself to enjoy it as much as i should have. so much of my life has concentrated on disciplining myself, it's hard to break that habit. is success knowing how to live on just a little money? is it reading as many books as you can? is it knowing that as long as you are improving yourself, you're doing a good job?
I don't know. but i know i'm out of the Air Force. I know that I am happy to be free of their rules and restrictions, the fear in my belly of the condescension, the so many things i would just rather not discuss. it can be too difficult at times. i'm free, let me focus on that.
4:15 PM
Thursday, April 22, 2004
oh the news today. sickening, all the reports of death and planned destruction. no i don't want to link to all of it, just read google news, it's all over the page.
what i remember though is last summer, knowing for positive sure that we were going to war against iraq. somehow, most people missed it - the media only carried smaller stories, many of my friends figured it was all bluster, that they were just frontin. not in the air force. we knew it was real. the reports are coming out now that planning was going on the whole time; they were readying for it long before they 'made their decision' whether in march or january. we were ready to go long long before.
i needed that time, though. i needed the time to gather myself, to find what strength i had to stand against it. if i hadn't known for sure we were going, i might not have gotten out, i might have coasted along.
i left the air force a year ago, just a few days from now. one year's worth of hair growth. hmm, i have a lot to think about. this was one of the happiest weeks of my life, a year ago. learning i was gonna be out on the 17th, getting out a week later. i remember standing up in front of the quaker meeting telling them i was due to get out. well, that's too much to go over right now. all that emotion is still inside of me, unsure what to do, where to go.
1:33 PM
Saturday, April 17, 2004
it's the last ten seconds of techno songs that i hate. the part where the vocals and the harmonies have faded away into the beat, the crass, loud, and monotonous beat. that's what i was just enjoying? those are the bones underneath? how was i so fooled? how could i not have noticed the simplicity, the lack of creativity?
one of my favorite depeche mode songs, stripped, talks about taking you, his lover, away to the woods for an hour, no television telling what you to do, to wear, to think. no apartment telling you to clean it, no clothes, no makeup, just you, the incredibly interesting and unendingly complicated you.
when i am old, and only have a few seconds left to play on my track, i hope i'm more than just the basic beat of my heart, hope that i'm still full of mystery and intrigue, full of layers and experience. then people will know i was not just a show, not someone who took in what role models gave me but who gathered life up myself, braided it into my life, so that stripped, i am more me than i ever could have been.
2:20 PM
Friday, April 16, 2004
ah, my first cold bath of the season. so it's not really summer yet, but it's 75 in my apartment, and the easiest way to get to sleep is to slip into a cold cold bath to lower my skin's temperature. and then not really dry off so the fan keeps my wet skin cool. it's kind of torturous and yet feels good. this is why i must leave st louis. i don't make enough money to keep my apt cooled to 68, and it's already too hot in the middle of april. go north! go north!
still, there's something wonderful about cooling off so dramatically, just like in the winter when i warm up in a hot bath. the water around you, like a womb, enveloping and affecting you so deeply.
11:37 PM
I have to confess my problem with controlling myself too deeply. i learned it from my mother, saving the good things for later, forcing yourself to eat the peas first so you can enjoy the mashed potatoes without the dread of having to eat the peas. but it's also about denial, not letting yourself do the things you love so you can save them for the best of times. it's a bad trait for the most part. i should simply let myself enjoy what i have, right? i'm learning, i can do that with sleep, and, well, maybe that's it. boy, i need some work with denial.
where i really notice it is with my music. because my computer (iTunes) tracks what songs i listen to the most, i can see my top 100 played songs. instead of letting that list grow on its own, and just glance at it, i've started to obsess over it, and have stopped listening to the songs i really like because i don't want t hem to be over-played. i've always done this, but never quite to this extent. on one hand, it's good that it forces me to listen to all of my other music, so i'm hearing more of my collection, but it's sad that i really don't let myself listen to what i want to. of course, when i do, it's that much sweeter, but i don't like how controlling i am. (this is also why i think i would make a terrible parent, just like my mother has). i've started to force myself to listen to the music that i want to - which is so backwards. i have some issues with letting go obviously. and i am working on it, but man, it's tough when i've spent my whole life doing this.
if you're curious, here's how my top 20 shapes up (actually it's gotten a little out of hand because there are several skott freedman songs in there, so i'm proud of myself):
Faithful - Me'Shell NdegeOcello
The District Sleeps Alone Tonight - The Postal Service
Out In Waves - Skott Freedman
Comin' from Where I'm From - Anthony Hamilton
Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler) - Marvin Gaye
The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face - Roberta Flack
Anyone Who Had A Heart - Dionne Warwick
The Man Comes Around - Johnny Cash
Obsoléte - MC Solaar
Eye - Smashing Pumpkins
Don't Give Up On Me - Solomon Burke
Mysteries - Beth Gibbons & Rustin' Man
Shine - Depeche Mode
Only When I Lose Myself - Depeche Mode
Confesion - King Chango
No One Will Ever Love You - The Magnetic Fields
Henry Darger - Natalie Merchant
It's a Fire - Portishead
Dominoes - Skott Freedman
Not Enough Ways - Skott Freedman
12:12 AM
Thursday, April 15, 2004
i took my first bike ride on my yellow racing bike since, well, november or something. the gears on it were really messed up, and i finally got it to the shop for repairs. i've been biking all winter, but on my cheap street bike, just moseying around town. oh, the difference. imagine driving an old chevy for a while, adjusting to its quirks and speeds, the way it turns, etc. and then, hopping in a souped-up BMW that drives like a dream. that was the feeling i had on my racing bike today - it's so smooth, so fast, so comfortable; it's perfect.
i grew up biking - my dad toted us around in a little bugger - a two seater car - trailing behind his bike before we could ride. as soon as i was big enough, i was cycling, up in the mountains of colorado. my dad would come beside me and put his hand on my seat to help push me up the hills when i couldn't make it with my three speed. when we moved to oklahoma, our biking slowed down, but not before we trained for the freewheel, a ride across the state in a week. my dad and i did it on a tandem bike (double seater) when i was eleven, cycling about 70 miles a day for seven days, camping outside at night. my brother rode his own bike at 13. my first time in spandex . . .
it wasn't until I moved back to colorado that I picked up cycling again. once I quit the track team (i couldn't get the hang of the hammer throw and hated my teammates), my dad let me use one of his nice bikes. i started riding it around quite a bit, mostly on the academy roads (18,000 acres fall within the grounds). I even met up with the cycling club for a while and rode with them. i learned that cyclists are mostly difficult, aggressive people i didn't want to be around. but i also learned some nice routes of where to bike and such. the hills, oh the hills around there were murderous. like a roller coaster, up and down so hard. it was a thrill to go down them, who knows how fast - i didn't have a bike computer then. I got into an accident while biking up in Frisco (small mountain town near where i grew up) - a car pulled to the right and parked in front of me, so i slammed into it, flipped over the car, destroyed the bike. i was fine, fortunately. and even more fortunately, my dad bought me a new bike.
i had never had my own bike before. i had always used the several my dad had while growing up. oh, but this one. this one, the same i have now, was bright yellow, with a black seat. it was so smooth riding around outside the shop; it moved underneath you, like it was just made to go so fast. one revolution of the pedal and you flew. i rode that bike hard while at the academy. in the snow, after the snow, in the rain, in the hundred mile an hour winds, up all the hills, loving it. it was my only way to escape the academy and my dorm room (we weren't allowed to drive during the week most of the time). i would ride off base, up into the hills, through neighborhoods of non-military people, of houses. you don't know what four years living in a military dorm will do to you. these things were amazing to me.
when I moved to Sacramento, the bike was one of the first things I pulled out of the U-Haul to use. I learned the suburbs on that bike. found bike trails, bike lanes on the sides of streets even! I saw very few other bikers, but i got hooted and hollered at by women driving by. I learned to really ride in Sacramento - when i moved into the city, I was a mile and a half from the bike trail, which i would hop on and could go 30 miles one way. that trail and my bike were my closest friends - I rode at least a hundred miles a week, up and down that trail, watching the seasons change and the trees bloom - things i had never bothered to notice before. i noticed the time change, the days getting shorter, the bother of daylight savings time, stealing even more time from the day. why do you learn some things so late? i suppose we can't pay attention to every thing, and finally, i was paying attention to things around me. i used to sing all the time on my bike, go through all the beach boys songs i could remember, whatever came into my head - loudly. i did full centuries (100 mile rides), metric centuries, triathlons, so many bike rides through the foothills of the Sierra's, Mark Twain's eventual home. Around Tahoe and Donner Pass, and all through sacramento. I even biked to work, eleven miles one way, a few times. i wasn't even that good of a cyclist, really. i never tried to be all that fast, didn't spend hours a day like other cyclists i met at races. but it still took up a lot of time, focused my energy. i get excited, just writing about it.
I stopped when I moved to St Louis. the roads were so bad, the cars were so angry towards cyclists. when a cop almost ran me over, i gave up. i finally pulled my bike out two years later, last summer, to ride it around some. it felt good then, too. but awkward - i was so out of practice. i rode it a fair amount last summer, but what i really got used to was riding my street bike, just tooling around town, relaxing. maybe i needed that break, couldn't jump onto the fast bike for a while. this past year has been so strange - i've felt like i just needed to do nothing. and so i have, mostly. but i did spend some time on my bike. so riding today was like a welcome home celebration. i'm in better shape than i expected; i'm so excited about biking, seeing what comes of it. i started laughing again - biking and laughing has always gone hand in hand for me. something comes up from the energy inside me - it's like my body tries to get me ready for the exercise, but goes overboard, and i have to laugh the energy off. so yeah, i ride around, cracking up - not the whole time of course, but for a good five, ten minutes, because everything is so wonderful, somehow, all the bad fades away, and all I can see are the incredible parts of life, and this hearty laugh bellows out like a buffoon, i don't care who hears me, i can't stop anyhow.
It's been almost a year now - Saturday will mark the day i put my uniform on after my month-long leave, while the war in Iraq began. Saturday will also mark the day I received approval for my conscientious objection request, and that I was to be discharged a week later. I've been at a standstill since then, necessarily so, to shrug off all of that trash I gathered during the nine years i was in the Air Force. I don't know that's it all off of me. probably will take many more years. but it's time to stand up and move again. i'm not sure what that means, but my energy level is high right now, for the first time in quite a while. something about endorphins released while exercising and laughing. i hope it continues.
3:42 PM
Saturday, April 10, 2004
There's a new twist on spam that i've noticed lately, and i love it! The subject lines seem to come from a random generator, excellently almost poetic in their obfuscation of thought.
try:
whereupon global agate insure lachesis oncology hello persistent snakebird odium bilayer conductance ombudsperson melodious spain theretofore timon coquina clank cup clan trim
or:
receipt myth pork sled construe combinate alabamian applicant phonetic gecko seance cybernetics pee chlorophyll brush avogadro woodard colonel banach thrifty arcsin boise
is this an english major's dream? oh the hours i could spend interpreting such big words combined so effortlessly! From whose mind do these connections emerge? is this the new legal terminology? stereo instructions? who is my "alabamian applicant" standing next to the "phonetic gecko seance?" "hello persistent snakebird!" this is too good! where do they find these words? oh, excellence of randomness!
1:41 PM
Friday, April 09, 2004
we like the moon!
this is my favorite kind of humor. um, it's good good silliness.
3:38 PM
Thursday, April 08, 2004
all these heavy thoughts have actually added a bit of bounce to me lately. i think just expressing some of the thoughts and troubles i've had the past couple of months has allowed me to focus on better parts of life. hooray for melodramatic writing! when i start to over-emphasize my troubles, it helps to realize how small they are, and how much i can enjoy life. even if i do wonder if it might be better to not have to live. that's a weird thought, i suppose, wondering if life is worthwhile. wouldn't it be so much easier if we didn't have to live? maybe it's hope that keeps us going. but hope in what? a better future? fun times? or is it just a sense of responsibility, of taking care of those around you, not disappointing them, etc.
some people say that teenagers emote more with music than any other age-group. maybe i never left those teenage years. music matters more to me than anybody in my life. it's stayed with me longer and been more available than anyone i've ever known. people always fade away, and i've lost too many friends to distance and change. sex really isn't that great, and too many books that i read anymore disappoint me, but the same songs are still there, plus i find more music all the time, adding to the cumulative emotion. of the few things i find worth living for, music is easily the most important to me.
i'm not sure how to look at that. i hope i can develop more trust in people, but i have no expectations that i will keep any friends that i currently have. i suppose moving around so much has done a number on me. and yet, i certainly appreciate the friends i have, even knowing that i will lose them someday. just because a meal doesn't last forever doesn't mean that it isn't good while you have it.
i've also noticed that when i eat chips and salsa, i get progressively faster, as if the food is going to go away if i dont' hurry up and grab it.
11:34 PM
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Ex-gay. The Guardian published an excellent article about the ex-gay movement, detailing a day at the Love Won Out conference. i call it a bad cover-up, an obvious scam and dismiss it. And sure, to most people, it doesn't matter. but it's the young young guys whose parents drag them there to 'cure' them that hurts me. They're the ones who have to choose. and yes, it's all a choice. sure, we may be born with one sexual attraction or another, but it's a choice on how you're going to live your life. just as religion and pursuit of money are choices and mean that you have to swallow the losses of what you could have otherwise, choosing to live as a gay man means (for these young men) you won't have the full love of your family, you will feel their guilt and their pain.
i would like to stop anyone from preaching that gay-ness can be cured. but then, what would that solve? people preach crazy things every day, and we don't believe them. i would like high schools to stop preaching about how good the military is and how we all have our freedoms only because the military is willing to fight for them while the rest of you slackers enjoy yourselves. i would like kids to know that a committement to abstinence won't control your lust. unfortunately, young people have to sort out this terrible life for themselves. if they're lucky, they'll have some guidance, from their parents, a good teacher, or some random mentor they've picked out. if they're not, they're gonna just struggle alone.
ugh, i don't know where to go with this. there will always be people yelling at those who choose to live as they see fit. but all people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, right?
5:47 PM
daffodils and plenty of rain. it's a happy time, right? well, just as soon as i finish my taxes. then it'll be fine. then everything will be fine, right?
10:36 AM
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