i'm just bad at it. really terrible. when i'm alone i just become shy, nervous, and avoidant. it's really frustrating. i know when i'm relaxed and confident, i can be very charming and magnetic and fun to be around, but i never feel that way anymore. i'm always on edge somehow.

i don't really have people to go out with, either. the people i know are mostly set and comfortable with their social scene. (translation: i don't know anyone else who wants to meet women, and i just suck at doing it alone.) i really don't know how to meet people. i can't meet anyone by myself. and it makes me angry that i can see something is not right in my head, and that i feel completely incapable of doing anything about it.

you slept
cattycorner from the highway
(in his arms of course)

while i
took a rifle out back
nowhere in particular

lined up my sights
at cans and limes

exploded little things
for kicks

nothing living

then i retired to my room
and tried not to think about you

little explosions
help me forget

I leave tomorrow. I'm mired here. Life is dull and uninteresting. I find myself thinking about things, buried in my own past. Things I don't need to be thinking about.

Oh yeah: I talked to her again the day of the funeral. Had a long talk. I said a few things I'd needed to say. And I felt so much better afterward. Just being honest with her and myself and not carrying that around anymore. Telling her how I really felt-- about her in the first place, about how she'd treated me, and standing up for myself a little, that I wasn't going to take this anymore. It was a great weight from my shoulders.

...Back when, I said I had things to say but it didn't matter who I said it to. I was wrong. Maybe a therapist would have worked, but maybe it wouldn't have. It would have taken much longer, that's for sure. Talking to her, once, just being honest for once, with my feelings, with the person I felt them for... did me so much good.

I'm sorry, I'm just a person of my passions, not a clinical one. Even if I never see her again, I know I'm better off for having finally said something.

Let the dead bury their dead. We carry the light within us.

i'm dealing with death right now and it's killing me.
the last thing i need is heartbreak, too.

so i can't deal with all this.

i need to leave it behind.

let the dead bury their dead. and fuck their dead.

fuck you both. fuck you all.

if it takes complete disconnection to ever have a glimmer of hope that real love will find its way to me again,
then complete disconnection it is.

because real love is all i care about.
and i cannot stand to spend another night like this.

i beat the game on the easy setting,
now i have to beat it on the hard.

every game has a second quest,
every trilogy an ending.

an old bull and a young bull were grazing at the top of a hill. they see a group of cows at the bottom.
young bull says, "i'm gonna run down there and fuck me a cow!"
old bull looks at him, looks at the cows, looks at him and says, "i'm gonna walk down there, and fuck 'em all."

the first time i met her i was immediately attracted to her, and i didn't know why, and my feeble communication skills with the opposite sex weren't really sufficient to woo her, but it was just there, that feeling of WOW i've finally found someone i can be my true self with. and then you notice it's mutual, and for a while you mirror each other, and you can't help it, and it just seems like you're going to explode with joy, and time stops, and nothing matters, it's just the ultimate moment, the moment whose buzz can keep you floating for lifetimes, the one that makes you stop caring about the rest of your stupid world, your problems that don't matter, the minutiae you've organized to give yourself the illusion of control, you don't care about that, you don't care about control, you don't care about defining yourself through your misery, you just care about this moment, the way she lights you on fire, turns on every circuit in your body, makes herself something you cannot stay away from, something you must experience, be near, see, touch, smell, hold, love even though you don't really know what love is and never did, but you know that this is it, this is now, and if you stayed there, you could live forever, in peace, bliss, and without a care in the world, just in this moment of perfect love.

and you know, those moments are great, just electric, but moments fade, and then you're left with the reality of another person, and another person has problems, and doesn't really know what they're doing, and sometimes the spark of the moments doesn't mesh well with the person they are the rest of the time, and hey, sometimes you have to work to get those moments back, but the problem is, you always want to be in those moments, and it's not sustainable that way, and you're so charged up for them that you don't realize what the fuck is going on the rest of the time, and it falls apart before your very eyes and you can't even form a proper fucking sentence to describe why, and she sure as shit won't tell you, and why should she? she's got her own shit to deal with without helping you stumble-fuck your way through an attempt at a reconcile, because she's got a life, she's moved on, she has to deal with her own shit, she doesn't want to know or care how you feel, what you're going through, because that would only make this harder, and yeah, you have a life too, but now it seems dull, now you don't give a fuck about it so much, now so many things fade in comparison to that moment, and you want it back, but it dawns on you that it's never coming back, and you fill your time with things, pursuits of merit or intellect or even pure pleasure, but you know it's all hollow, all an empty cycle designed to make you forget, and you start to wonder what the point was of all of this, if it was just to show you the promise of something you could never have, and maybe you even have the good sense to try to approximate that moment, and maybe you even come close a few times in your life, but mostly the intensity leaves you burned out, leaves you a wreck, leaves you missing the same spark, and that's really why you don't care, because you can't feel it anymore, you've dulled your pain sufficiently, now lie back and relax while the whole operation comes crashing down around you.

and I still want to find a way to express it but I'm not sure how.
but it feels good. one of the bright spots in a bad run of cards.

anyway, there were some other thoughts I had in my head... i wrote them down earlier this morning.

"

I sometimes lie so as not to disappoint. Honesty with myself and others is the only real way to anything true and meaningful. In attempting not to disappoint, we only set ourselves up to disappoint.

Be true and disappointments and failures will fade away.

* * *

I haven't been writing as much lately because I'm having a harder time with that honesty, with exposing myself. I make excuses and stay inactive. I've had enough of this and find it unfulfilling.

What's wrong with writing about what you really think and feel? Who cares what people think of it?

"

i feel on the verge of something revelatory. something to be unveiled. some big steps in things.

i will write more later, because that state which leads to revelations does not lead to the words for them.

so i finally got in touch with one of the girls i wanted to see. one of the ones i really like. unfortunately, i couldn't shed the guys. one of our friends didn't take a hint, although he is friends with her, so i think there's a real chance he consciously or subconsciously was trying to prevent that from happening. so i tried to get someone over to distract him, and they all ended up invited a bunch of guys. so it was me, her, and six guys or so.

awesome. and she seemed like she wanted to hang out longer, but the guys were all like "uhh hey, can you bring me back home?" fucking a. i don't fuck with their shit.

i did talk to her at the end of the night and told her i wanted to do something this weekend, with her, that wasn't just "go out and get drunk with other people and kind of hang out". she seems receptive.

oh, and our other friend, after he wanted to be left at this party earlier in the evening, called me to pick him up, didn't come downstairs for fifteen minutes, invited me back upstairs, then wandered around and eventually off with some people. i decided 'fuck this' and went to the hotel.

ugh. time to take some control of things.

once again i'm staying here a couple days longer than intended. mostly in pursuit of a couple girls. but not entirely; it's just so much fucking fun.

but i have this one girl who keeps saying she wants to see me, then not making it out, then saying "please stay another day" or some such. you'd think this would really go somewhere, but i feel like i'm being led on.

as always.

uh, on another note, andy and i seemed to lock down something tomorrow with a couple of other girls-- one of whom is one of the (many) roommates with said girl from earlier. who knows what will happen. who the fuck knows anything. when the fuck will i ever close something.

In my brief time in Louisiana I've already found out I enjoy being around my friends way more than my machines. And it's only been three hours.

Maybe I should just go to bed. It's almost sunrise. Get out of the house tomorrow, see people, meet people.

I mean the Internet is kind of a boring waste of time when you stop to think about it. Use the time better. Be with the people you love. Find people and things that challenge you to be better. Never stop learning or loving.

I won't be writing some of the stuff I thought I was going to write here. Most of it's an explosion of personal neuroses, anyway, and not that interesting to other people. I'd rather write in the moment...

...Smoking now and I realize I get higher better with other people around. It's like I thrive on the energy, the way they vibe inside... here I just have a machine. No vibing. Just stimulation.

On another note, there's a window unit in my room now, inexplicably (since the house has central air). It's like, consciously or not, they want to make it easier for me to smoke!

put together a great playlist while i was driving to louisiana. had some fun thoughts too, narrated a little to myself. i'll write about them later; i always say that, but i need to just relax now.

some of them are just the madness particular to me; some of them are real and tangible about real things. and some of them were for a song i'm writing so i won't share them with you until it's done.

i haven't written much here lately. but i haven't written much anywhere lately. haven't had a lot new or interesting to say.

i was sick for a few days, which sucked. mostly because it left me laid up. i haven't been to the gym in five days. this is making it hard to get back in shape. and i'm about to hit the road again, too.

i need to do this because i'm getting noticably overweight and i'm not happy with it. it started in vegas, and just never went away. i eat too much and don't do enough. i was doing well in december, but a month on the road threw that off again. i really need to focus on this, and i'm really bad at it.

i had an idea: thinking about takin a couple days completely away from the computer. just doing other things instead. doing any writing with pen and paper. hell, if it goes well enough, maybe a couple days away from the tv and cell phone, too.

i'll keep you posted when this happens and how it goes.

i was awake very early this morning. i wasn't sure what to do with myself... i got coffee and breakfast then i ended up spending most of the morning watching futurama with my niece.

i worried a little for a while, because i felt like i'd wasted the day doing that; here i was, awake and alive, and i did nothing, accomplished nothing, just sat back and got overstimulated.

then i realized: you know, i don't really HAVE to do anything. i am at this point under no obligation in life. i can spend my time as I please, following my own pursuits, doing whatever I feel is the right thing to do. so, it's not a big deal. i took the day off from working out because i'd been to the gym a few days in a row and was pretty sore. probably could have used a yoga session but whatever, i was pretty tired and not feeling up for it when the class rolled around.

one thing i did do in the evening when i was feeling a little more clear-headed was put in a session of poker. i've been moving away from tournaments and into cash games; i decided i wanted a more stable source of income and i was tired of the frustrations of tournaments. and i actually find that when i'm focused, i can fire up four or five tables and play well, at attention. it's very zen-like; my mind isn't bored or wandering, just making each decision as it comes. in tournaments so much about the dynamic is changing that your play significantly falls off when you enter too many; in cash games, you're never adjusting to a whole new table or adjusting for dynamics in changing stack sizes; the game "conditions" are pretty consistent which allows you to focus on individual hands and ignore some information that isn't relevant.

still i got tired eventually and now my mind is wandering again. and wondering. what i should be doing.

it feels like everything now is just time and patience. as you may know, i'm a terribly impatient person. the problem is now that the things i want to focus on my life are going to take a lot of time and patience, and i just have to go through with them. it can be frustrating. all my days are free... why can't i just cram 3 months of diet and exercise into a compressed period and get healthier that much sooner? doesn't work that way. what about guitar? doesn't work that way either. so again, we return to balance. and the need for patience in a routine... i hate routines and i hate being patient. but it's necessary right now.

at least i got some good pot while i'm up here. it makes my mind wander even more and occasionally weird shit happens but it also keeps me from overeating and doing other stupid and unhealthy shit. and it helps me truly take it easy, which is something else i've had a hell of a time doing these last 18 months or so.

1)as mentioned did my personal grooming run-thru. a pic just for you:



2)procured a source of good weed. no pics of the weed.

3)yesterday headed up to chittenango falls. pics of the trip there and the falls themselves:











ok, back to life. i spent all morning baked and watching futurama dvds with my niece. i think i suffered futurama overload.

( don't click if you don't want to see the amount of money )

Just checking. I feel like a lot of people have been ignoring me lately.

for my friend Jason, who just needed to be exposed to more good music:

Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash - "440 Horses"
Uncle Tupelo - "Whiskey Bottle"
Neko Case - "Star Witness"
Wilco - "Forget the Flowers"
Big Star - "Way Out West"
Neutral Milk Hotel - "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"
Billy Bragg & Wilco - "Airline to Heaven"
Lyle Lovett - "That's Right (You're Not from Texas)"
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - "Timorous Me"
The Replacements - "Kiss Me on the Bus"
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! - "In This Home on Ice"
The Hold Steady - "Stuck Between Stations"
The Only Ones - "Another Girl, Another Planet"
Death from Above 1979 - "Black History Month" (Alan Braxe & Fred Falke remix)
Olivia Tremor Control - "The Opera House"
Of Montreal - "Requiem for O.M.M.2"
Peter Bjorn and John - "Let's Call It Off"
Lily Allen - "Smile"
Bjork - "Big Time Sensuality"
Boards of Canada - "The Color of the Fire"
My Morning Jacket - "Master Plan"

holla.