a hitchhiker told me i don't talk a lot... made me feel fine... made me quiet

i recently found a band that i like: Blind Pilot

sometimes music just speaks to you, and sometimes it doesn't.

i won't go on to say that these musicians speak to my soul. i won't say that they found a voice to my inner monologue. i won't say that they capture the energy of my inner day, each and every day.

i won't say that i've listened to their album 4o times in the last week and a half

i imagine they are a few guys with a guitar and a simple drum. i imagine they feel good about the music they make. i imagine they like sharing it with the world and they would appreciate it if a few people sat down and listened to it.

i think there are moments in our lives when we are receptive to certain paths... when we want to see things presented to ourselves in a distinct way. i find it curious that the music that speaks to me comes from a band called Blind Pilot...

me being a pilot and all

not a bad image. a pilot being someone who is in control. who has possession of his world... someone who is skilled and trained to guide his being through all dimensions... but he's blind. flying on faith. or memory. or trust. or hope.

i've always been in control, or striving for it. i've always been driving, or at least i thought i have been. i suppose the first part of healing is admitting there is a problem

i'm not necessarily sure where i'm going. i'm not really sure what i'll find when i get there.

there... step one... now what?

Wax Poetic

i wish i could remember what i was looking for.

it mustn't have been too large... smaller than a breadbox... and yet too big to put in my pocket. that's always how it is with important things... nebulous.

i think i felt it once in my hand. small and weighty, i could almost close my hands around it, two at a time, but not quite. i wish i had taken a better look, instead of just feeling it along my fingers and thinking i had it squared away... dicked... settled.

looking back, i never should have closed my eyes. i should have opened them, looked down, taken it all in. i should have held it up to my lips and breathed it in. i should have curled in a ball around it. i should have.

but i didn't, and i lost it

i must have put it down somewhere, thinking i'd come back for it... thinking i'd pick it up again... never figuring that it wouldn't be there when i finally reached for it...

you should have seen the look on my face... the fool... the sap... the imbecile.
the one who knew finally and too late

it is easy to forget sometimes... the value of what is in your hand. it is easy to look at what is on the horizon and forget that precious weight in your hand. i cannot explain what it feels like to have felt it and lost it... to have misplaced it... to have misprioritized... to have misfocused... to be awakened into your own personal incomplete reality.

time will heal. time always heals.
whatever that means

it means time helps you forget. time helps you move on. time helps you put distance between you and your mistakes. time makes it easier to distract yourself with the immediate pressing matters of the present and disremember the past... to let it fall out of focus.

so there it is, over my shoulder and out of focus... behind me.... possibly in front of me... but i can no longer remember the weight or shape in my hand. i can't even trust that i'd remember it if it's mass settled into my palm... or on my chest... or my heart... or my mind. so there is a trust, a blind faith, that it will all will be just fine...

surely i'll know. surely i'll recognize it.

surely i won't put it down on the piano, as i have before, and walk away to focus on other things. seemingly more pressing things. things on the horizon. things just beyond my grasp.

surely not.

truffula trees

to reminisce

this weekend i made gloriously soft homemade pretzels.
i made a spectacular curry from scratch.
i cooked a traditional hungarian goulash.
i created strawberry apple pancakes from thin air.
i pan-fried a steak medium rare and placed it on a bed of ginger sweet potatoes, green onions, red peppers, and asparagus.

and i washed it down with belgian beer

this weekend i cleaned my apartment... sort of.

this weekend i watched a vampire movie.

i watched the only football game that i've seen all year, i rooted for the underdog, and then didn't mind when they lost because i won the pot for the third and fourth quarters anyway.

this weekend i went looking for star anise, lemon grass, and galangal and came home sorely disappointed and empty handed... i had to substitute ginger for galangal, lime juice for lemongrass, and cinnimon for star anise... it's not the same people.

this weekend i ordered a 3-cup granite mortar and pestle and a 20-inch cast iron griddle.

this weekend i dropped off my car to get the suspension realigned after i kind of drove sideways into a curb on one particularly rambunctious day in the snow about three weeks ago.

this weekend i wore my flip flops even though it was 35 degrees outside.

this weekend i ordered an album called Push the Heart from a band called Devics because i stumbled across them and liked them.

this weekend i caught up with a handful of old friends on skype, that magical window into your loved one's homes halfway around the world.

this weekend i took a shower on saturday and on sunday but not today, because i had to get up right away to cook the pancakes.

this weekend i went with some friends who are about to get married to a lake in the nearby city and we walked around and i took pictures of the two of them looking oh-so-much in love.

this weekend i almost got guilted into playing pictionary.

this weekend will never happen again, but it was wonderful while it lasted.
love
p

trusted

sometimes we find ourselves with a lack of trusted individuals... you know?

I know

now... i have to preface this... i have the kind of job where i need to be able to trust my LIFE with the person next to me... but that doesn't mean i need to trust my life with them... if you know what i mean...

quite literally, there are people that i would trust to defend me from those forces out in the world that would love to do me physical harm... and yet, i wouldn't share my personal life with them...

why is that? i mean... that's kind of fucked up... isn't it?

not really.

now, don't get me wrong, i love the guys i work with... i would even put myself in imminent danger on a regular basis if it meant that it would increase the chances that the guy next to me would get home safely...

but...

at the same time, i feel that my personal life is mine alone, and not one to be monitored or recorded or interpreted by any people other than those with whom i entrust it...

and that number is very small.

after all... we only NEED a small audience... above that and people are likely only looking for drama... for the most part, we only need a sounding board... above that and we lose control over what we wish to be out in the open.

strange though, isn't it? that i entrust those around me more with my cardiovascular and neurological state (read biological survival) than with my mental, cognitive, interpretive, and personal manifestations.

fucked up world it is sometimes.

i like to spend my time thinking about things sometimes

my life sometimes feels a little bit... what's the word... amorphous.

nebulous... lacking clarity perhaps... for example: i like cottage cheese and wheat thins. i mean i really like it. i might even say that i love it, and those who know me might say, "yes, that is quite true, that guy loves his cottage cheese and wheat thins."

so, i thought, maybe that's a problem... MAYBE, i shouldn't like it so much. MAYBE i should vary my diet somewhat. MAYBE i shouldn't have two extra boxes of wheat thins my cabinet and two extra containers of cottage cheese in my fridge just to make sure i don't run out.

and so i went cold turkey.

this was a while ago, back when i lived in italia... about a year and a half ago.

i made a conscious decision to buy NEITHER cottage cheese NOR wheat thins (both of them being gateway foods you see... leading unwaveringly towards each other), and i survived. i varied my diet. i was happy.

and yet something happened and i can't quite explain it. something subtle and with a scheming laugh crawled through my mind and waited until just the right moment when i was walking down the cracker aisle... it waited until i was kind of distracted with some other tidbit of my life and it casually mentioned that maybe i might want to get a box of wheat thins for my self... just wheat thins. no harm in that really.

i mean, so what if i had a tub of cottage cheese already in my cart. it was purely a coincidence.

everyone knows that cottage cheese, when added to whisked eggs, makes the fluffiest scrambled eggs on earth... and i had been planning on eating the fluffiest scrambled eggs for a while. right?

"totally," said the subtle and scheming laugh

i'm not sure what happened afterwards, because it all seems like a blur now, but the next thing i remember is waking up on my floor with an empty box of wheat thins and a empty tub of cottage cheese with the realization that i was not as strong as i once believed.

friends complain that i don't call anymore. they say i never write them back.

when they come by i casually open my fridge and cabinets, in an offhand way, to reveal a total absence of wheat thins and cottage cheese... little do they know that the wheat thins are hidden in an unappetizing box of pancake mix and the cottage cheese is in an old yogurt tub.

some people may call it a problem, but i don't think i'm hurting anyone. i mean, i can handle myself.

but seriously... i was talking about amorphousness... nebulousness

pause

once again, i haven't written in a while.

i suppose there is some kind of reason why it has fallen to the wayside. i was doing so well for a while. kind of like going to the gym... i'm not really that much of a gym-goer these days... ALTHOUGH, i did just get my new bike in the mail:


i replaced the white seat with a black leather Brooks saddle, but other than that, it's the same. i'm quite excited about it. it's a fixed gear, which means that there is only one gear and no derailers. the rear gear is fixed to the rear wheel so if the wheels turn, the pedals turn. there is no freewheeling on this guy.

when i first got him in the mail from the folks at Mission Bicycles in San Francisco, i put it together and jumped on to ride over to the bike store and doublecheck the tire pressure, which ended up being fine. on the way back to the dorms, i noticed i was riding right past the running/cycling track that runs around the perimeter of the base and couldn't resist taking it for a little spin...

so around the base i went, about 5-6 miles.

the first thing i noticed is what an entirely different experience riding a fixed gear bicycle is. because the legs are always moving, there is no period where one can rest one's legs, so i found myself getting into a groove with the motion. i also noticed quite quickly that i'm rather accustomed to coasting in a semi-standing position as i approach a bump... that doesn't quite work on this bike... you pedal over everything, whether you want to or not.

you also can't take corners quite as aggressively as you can on a freewheeling bike, as the pedal will hit the ground eventually.

i also noticed rather quickly how asymmetric my pedaling mechanics are. i've heard that fixed geared bikes were good at streamlining your pedaling form, but about mile 4, when my legs were a little fatigued, was when i really noticed how much i was favoring one leg. so strange.

the bottom line though: i forgot to wear gloves and it was below freezing, but even though my fingers were purple and felt like they were on fire for 20 minutes after i got home, i have been wearing a big smile on my face ever since.

hope you all had a happy holiday
happy new year

crastination

it's only 4am.

i have two more hours to kill before i roll into bed... i'm on the night train and i like it.

there is something peaceful about being up in the middle of the night when everyone else is in bed. i preferred it when i was in school, and i think i still prefer it now. as much as i like to socialize, i like to have my time to myself as well. i'm not sure if everyone i work with could understand that. most of them seem addicted to peer attention and social interaction. i guess i'm just not as much of a social animal... as much.

i'll admit, i like company just as much as the next person, but i rarely crave it in the way that some people around here do.

i'm listening to Amon Tobin's album Permutation. i just bought it today... i think i may be officially addicted to iTunes. they should seriously have a mileage program (or something) with their accounts... i'd have a free round-trip ticket to anywhere in the continental United States by now... anyways, the album rocks. me gusta... as them native spanish speakers say.

and, as i said that, i just bought Venetian Snares' album Rossz Csillag Alatt Szuletatt... somebody stop me... no more iTunes.

i put some more photos up on Flickr today. it has also been a while since i had done that... since early September, right after i got back from Mongolia. i figure it was about time... besides, i am working on a little project that got me refocused again.

i LOVE projects... capital L

now it's 05:30am... time for sleep i suppose... lest the sun rise and throw my clock off.
good night.

As-Salāmu Aleykum

myself: it has... once again... been awhile... welcome back me.

me: thanks, it's good to be back myself

myself: where have you been, i must ask?

me: apparently i have been waylaid by the distractions.

myself: the distractions, eh? do explain.

me: well, you see... the distractions are those little things that distract us... me, myself, and I... and depending on the current, the distractions can be more or less effective.

myself: what current might this be?

me: the current is the flow of daily life... it's tied into the larger flow of the week... and then again into the months and years that make up the current of our lives... it requires that there be a positive charge and a grounded element to create the motion, direction, and flow... IF one of those two elements is missing, the flow can slow, stop, or even reverse. THAT's when the distractions come in... they act as resistors to flow... they act to diffuse the current and to dilute it, creating a loss of focus and perspective.

myself: that sounds pretty cosmic amigo.

me: well, it is friend... quite cosmic indeed.

myself: so what has changed? i assume the current had stalled... and now it's flowing again?

me: good way to think of it i suppose... current can only go one way at a time. if it tries to go in to many directions at once, it'll stall every time, especially if there is no ground... and i had been missing a ground for quite some time.

myself: i would say so. it's been since July first, but better late than never i suppose. it's just good to see you writing again. it feels pretty cleansing doesn't it?

me: yes sir it does; quite cleansing. i can't even imagine at this point what would have made me put down the pen for so long... that's four long months.

myself: yeah, but you were pretty busy that whole time. you were getting ready to spend a month bouncing around between a week in Florida and two weeks in Mongolia... then you were back home for two weeks, then you were off again to Montgomery, Alabamba for five weeks. so now this is the longest you've been home in 4 months.

me: yeah, i suppose, AND i'm leaving again next weekend for Ubergirlelijah's wedding.

myself: TOTALLY looking forward to THAT!

me: indeed.

myself: so you're good? back in one piece?

me: i'm good. focusing on getting the current back on track... trying to keep it focused and not spread out in too many directions.

myself: Insha'allah.

me: indeed.

slightly watered down

a dilution of sorts

where the thoughts in my mind are translucent but i still just can't grasp them

i'm listening to kate nash. it's tuesday night and my cider is almost empty. my stomach is poking me in the ribs and whining, but i have yet to make a move towards the fridge...

soon, dear stomach, soon

i've gotten into a bad habit lately of procrastinating with my feedings in the evening. i wait and wait instead of just sucking it up and cooking something. then, when i can't stand it anymore, i fix something quickly... or i eat chips and salsa... the dinner for last night.

it's not exactly the most fulfilling meal in the world, but it is spicy.

a friend recently pointed out that perhaps i am too passive in my approach to life. perhaps i allow other people to take the reigns too often, they said. perhaps i should stand up for what i would like to pursue. i am truly thankful for this flavor of insight.

this is a wonderful idea, all i have to do is figure out what exactly it is that i wish to pursue. that, however, is where all the complicated bits come into play:

i want it all. i want everything.

i want experiences that no one else has. i want security. i want a chance to test my mettle. i want to be recognized for my abilities. i want to be anonymous. i want to risk and be rewarded. i want a slower pace of life. i want to draw my friends closer. i want to excel. i want to blow it off. i want to inspire and be inspired. i want to chase down my fears at a full sprint and tackle them to the dirt, laughing and tugging at their hair. i want simplicity. i want minimalism. i want clarity. i want freedom to say what i think and stand behind my words.

i want to know what my words would mean if i said them aloud
and to the people they are meant for

......

i would agree with my friend: i am passive in many aspects of my life. i do go with the flow to see where it will take me. as much as people think i stand waist deep in the current and dig my heels in... as much as people think i swim upstream... i think most of the time i'm floating on my back with my toes in the air and my eyes closed.

i'm making it up as i go along. isn't everyone?