necessary pause

sometimes you need a break.
sometimes you need someone to pat you on the back and say:
"well done... good job"

and sometimes you just need to take a moment and hold the walls up

sometimes you can just feel the rhythm.
sometimes you can be dancing and it feels like you are moving at a different pace than anyone else in the world.
you feel time crawling across your being, and you like it





sometimes you have to give props.
sometimes you feel it in your chest.
sometimes, on the dance floor, you have to flex your muscles





sometimes you have to show your friends that you feel the same way





and sometimes, you have to count to eight




twas a good evening tonight

wash

i think i need a new shampoo.

first of all. i think they could have could have come up with a better name for something you use to wash your hair... sham poo

in layman's terms: something that is purported to be poo, but is not.

i would argue that this is not a good name. likely that it was invented by the same guy that thought the Chevy Nova had a good enough name to market in latin america... never realizing that 'No va' means... does no go. i'm not even sure what is worse: the fact that it is purported to be poo in the first place? or that it is falsely advertised as poo, when it isnt?

i'm losing you here. i can tell.

but i digress... back to my sham poo and why i need to switch brands: i'm dissatisfied with the product. i believe that it is defective, because it doesn't seem to work.

why? because i see the commercials. i know what it is supposed to look like when you wash your hair. you're supposed to have a huge smile on your face. you're supposed to be standing underneath a showerhead that most definitely is not limited to 2.5 gallons per minute, and you are supposed to lather your head into a rich crown of bubbles as your eyes close, and the water decelerates to slow motion as it effortlessly rinses every remnant of the poo away. it's not supposed to get in your eyes... and you should never have to lather, rinse, and repeat. i mean, have you seen the size of the lather on TV? that should be good enough the first time around.

although, i'd have to say, if taking a shower was really that much fun... i would probably lather all day long.

but it isn't... and i don't... it has to be faulty sham poo.

checkers

the album of the day is The Digital Chronicles by Trentemoller.

it's what is going through my ears as i write this... not a bad little mesh of inner head sounds to rattle around. i came across it today in my meanderings and i thought i'd check it out. it is kind of an electronic version of Japancakes... sort of... but not really... ok, they don't resemble each other at all.

and for something completely unrelated, there is www.themoth.org

it is a gathering place of sorts, probably more correctly referred to as a venue, for storytelling. normal people with their stories... of the varieties made famous by campfires, and salons. you can check out the website as easily as i can explain it. there is an option to listen to a cross-section of them, and i would recommend it, assuming you have a few minutes and assuming you enjoy that kind of thing. perhaps you don't.

it is a cleaning day today. i've lived in a state of clutter for too long in this place, and since a low drag life was my resolution, i decided i had lived with drag for quite long enough.

i put away laundry. i cleaned dishes. i went though mail and filed papers. i went back over my taxes to make sure i didn't forget anything. i cleaned off my desk and actually threw things away instead of just shoving them into a drawer. i feel like i squeezed a whole can of shaving cream into my hands, rubbed it over my entire apartment, and shaved it smooth with a razor.

i even went back once more and went against the grain, lightly, and rubbed it over with my fingertips to see if i had missed any spots.

then there was the steaming hot washcloth to pull everything out and wash it all away.

my space feels clean again; soft and comfortable.

so my apartment gets a little stubbly from time to time... it happens. it is the breathing in and out of my space. it is the yin and the yang. it is the ebb and the flow. nevertheless, it is probably no surprise that i absolutely loved the bar where we ended up last night.

for one, it was down a dark alley:

EVERY good bar belongs on a dark alley, away from the hustle and bustle, and known only to the unassumingly hip.

second of all, it was full of stacks of old CDs... mixes and albums, both store-bought and burned. it seemed like a forgotten cemetary of mix tapes, left over from middle school crushes... once lost behind the couch or discarded, they slowly began the endless march around the world towards this bar... DeepIn. one by one they have arrived over the course of decades.

one might wonder what it is that calls to me in that place. it is simply my favorite kind of bar: small, dark, lots of wood, and filled with the handmarks of patrons past. the bar itself wasn't polished to a glossy sheen, it had the matte worn grain of wood that has held up ten thousand pints, hundreds of games of cribbage, and the occasional game of solitaire.

soft conversations were going on at each table and people took their time. there was no raging dance party. there were no waitresses on roller skates. there was no meat market.

there were people leaning into each other, with a beer in one hand, and a story in the other... like moths lean into the flame.

green door

apparently i haven’t been much of a writer lately.

so what have i been up to, you might ask? good question. both lots and little.

i am reminded of family dinners long past... the seven or eight of us gathered around the dinner table... dad had just come home from a trip... all he wanted was to catch up on the current events of the household. there was the inevitable question. it wasn’t a difficult one, and yet for some reason, i could never really think of a suitable answer:

‘so patrick, what did you learn in school today?’

‘nothin’

this was of course a source of endless frustration for my father, because ‘nothing’ was not an acceptable answer. it did not even come close to the intent of the question. of course, at the time, my mind was truly obscured with the fog of puberty, and my world extended approximately to my fingertips in all directions around me. i did not realize that a more suitable answer would have been:

‘you know dad? at my current phase of development, i am mostly overwhelmed by the unstable social foundations inherent in the hormone-saturated environment of my high school, and that tends to take the majority of my daily focus. instead of daily homework and class discussions, my concentration floats more around whether or not it is too revealing to sit next to a certain girl that i may (or may not) be interested in. then, if i do decide to sit next to her, i have to try to use my highest order of problem solving skills and non-verbal cue recognition to determine whether or not she thinks i’m making an ass of myself and whether i should be more overt or more covert in my emotionally charged yet highly directionless undertaking. so while you are most likely referring to what stage of modern world history my test is on tomorrow, realistically, i have no clue... because i gave her a note after lunch and have yet to receive a reply.’

instead... i would say:

‘nothin’

and focus dilligently on my mashed potatoes and chicken breast... hoping the question would go away or be passed on to the next person down the line. it never worked.

but WHY? you might ask... WHY did you just sit there when all of that was running through your head?

like i said; fog and friction. those were confusing days, and besides, those battlefield decisions were such an everyday fact of life that they seemed trivial... both unworthy of discussion and embarrasingly raw at the same time.

which brings us to today. what have i been up to?

nothin