Time and Love

The pocket of time that love creates
Unlike that of any other phenomenon,

That moment when the seconds synch
with the beats of your heart, racing

faster

faster

and faster

Even though the moment has stood still.


That entrancing contradiction where time stands still

yet races.


That bubble of time where all else fades away and the two of you sit inside

The rest of the world moves on around you

The world spins on its axis and you both stand still
simultaneously racing through time while the world races around you

Leaving you both trapped inside a blissful separation from which neither cares to escape


That impossible moment

when the two of you find each other

and time stands still.

then you look at the clock

and realize time's moved faster than it ever has.

People who go to the Gym at 5 A.M.

We all take ourselves too seriously. I prefer willing myself into a state of delusion for comedic effect.

I went to the gym today. For the first time in probably two months. I used to go every single day at the same time. But when I went this morning all the attractive women weren't there! I asked my buddy who had been going much more consistently than I have what happened. He said they kinda stopped going. About two months ago.

So naturally my reaction was: "So you are telling me I stopped going to the gym and then allllll the good looking girls just stopped going, eh?" I said this with a pretty big grin on my face.

Anywho, there used to people I knew, the regulars at that time.

Obsessive compulsive slob (the guy who does the exact same unwavering routine everyday...in the exact same clothes)

Overly intense Redhead (the hot girl whose legs are so muscular they look like they could break a high school lunch tray in half...and I'm not complaining)

Woo guy (the guy who yells to psych himself up)

Weird looking intense girl (the girl who rolls out of bed and works out in her pajamas)

Overly cosmetic gay guy (the guy who has no functional strength but looks really strong in the smallest tank top he can find at Baby Gap)

Self-conscious cute girl (the girl that does her make-up before coming into the gym to squat against the wall for a couple minutes and then leave)

Really really really really ridiculously good at the jump-rope girl (seriously, she does like hand-stands and stuff at breakneck speeds, I just sit and watch when she is there and I don't care if anyone thinks it is creepy, its spectacular how good she is....and I'm not complaining)

The Look-a-likes (a guy who looks eerily like Mike Krzyzewski and either works out with his sister or dates a girl that looks entirely too much like himself)

The inappropriate stretching girl (a girl who stretches in ridiculously provocative poses on a stability ball just a little too close to people and happens to be in their lines of sight....and I'm not complaining)

aaand Finally...

The You'll-think I'm making this up Guy (no kidding, this is a 6'1" 230-pound [no muscle] 54-year-old white guy probably livung in his mother's basement. He has a Jew-Fro, wire-rim glasses, 80's style short shorts aaaaand a belly shirt.....that comes off.....completely off, while running on the treadmill......with so much sweat flying off the fro that the three treadmills on either side become vacant...you are welcome for that image......and yes, I am complaining)

Pride

Pride is a funny thing. In my experience, It just seems to get in the way of human interaction more than anything else. People are too proud of who they are, what they think they are, what they think they should be to deign themselves to talk to someone "beneath them". It works in the other direction too, when people are too proud of who they are to talk to someone because they think the other person is "above them".

Pride screws with your head. It tells you that you are supposed to be something better than you are.

Guess what? You aren't.

No one is.

We are all pitiful, pathetic, beautiful, amazing, incredibly frustrating, stupid, brilliant human beings. Nothing more.

But you have that whisper in the back of your head. No, no. You are special, you are different from everyone else. You are smarter, faster, stronger, better than other people.

Guess what? You aren't.

No one is.

You are still living down here with everyone else.

Pride sticks in between you and other people. Your friends, your family, strangers, acquaintances. It's subtle and it makes people lie and obfuscate the truth and dance around things, even with people they know, people they are close to, and especially people they want to be close to.

It's that arch in your back, it's that little voice in the back of your head, it's that little turn up of your nose, that little hesitation when you want to say something, put yourself out on a limb and say what you really want to say or do...and then you don't. That's pride.

We're all the same. Why don't we act like it?

Pride.

Prove Me Wrong Please.

People don't generally think this about me. They think I'm stubborn. They think I'll argue to the bitter end because I hate being wrong.

The truth is, I love being proven wrong. Its distinctly the reason I argue so heatedly about things I think. I love it when someone proves me wrong. When they fire back with a passion that equals mine, with a rationality that defeats my own. That is why I travel, it is why I live, it is why I talk to people. To prove what I think I know wrong. To always be learning. To think something new. To learn that my long-held idea that the earth is flat is ridiculous, that it is round, and then to learn that that isn't right either, the earth is an oblate spheroid, what will it be next?

It is the simplest form of pain in history; the pain of change. A change in what you thought was right, a change in the way you thought the universe worked, a change in how you liked your world to work. But the pain of change always leads to something different, a new adventure born. The day you know everything, you might as well stop.

Prove me wrong.
Teach me something new.
Show me a new way.
Start a new adventure.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

What I've learned about Texas in my short time here:

1. Texas drivers are infuriatingly awful. My number one pet peeve is that they all seem like they went to the same driving school and the instructor didn't know how to make a turn without coming to a full stop.

2. Texas has terrible pizza. Seriously, it isn't even passable. A Texan trying to make a pizza is like a Chinese person trying to pronounce the letter L.

3. Texas makes up for it by having outrageously good Hamburgers.

4. Texas is full of Stunningly beautiful tall blonde women (even if they aren't really blonde, they still count)

5. Texas' dating scene is ridiculously bourgeois.

6. Texas people have no idea how to handle snow, as can be seen through 2 people trying to clean their cars off with a spatula and a blanket, respectively.

7. Texas is really sprawled out. You can meet someone you work with and find out that they live an hour and a half drive away from you.

8. Dallas Cowboys fans hate Tony Romo as much if not more so than non-Cowboys fans.

9. 75 degree weather is apparently too cold for going to the pool.

10. Drinking and Driving is not driving while drunk. Driving while drunk isn't tolerated, but drinking a beer while driving is simply "road soda"

11. Drinking and Working are the two mainstays of life. If a Texan isn't doing one, he/she is doing both.

12. Lightning Storms are spectacular.

A Dream Within a Dream

Why do dreams have such a drastic effect on our waking life? One little dream skews your whole day. A good dream can make your whole day so much brighter, even if it happens to be the worst day you've had in a month. A bad dream casts a pall over a good day and makes it seem dreadful.

Dreams don't even really mean anything. The most random of thoughts congeal into chaotic ramblings your brain doesn't even have control over.

You dream about a friend of yours that screws you over and the next day you have an irrational distrust of them.

You dream about a girl you know and for the next week, you think you have a crush on her.

You dream about a girl you do have a crush on and you hate her for a week because you dreamt about her dating someone you dislike.

You dream about someone you haven't thought about for a decade and you can't get them out of your head for the next month.

You dream about your job, you dream about your home, you dream about the gym, you dream about that girl, you dream about a girl, you dream about some girl, you dream about snow, you dream about sun, you dream about trees, you dream about bees, you dream about wheels, you dream about seals, you dream about water, you dream about rain, you dream about dreams, you dream about yourself.

They don't mean anything.
But somehow they mean everything.

The Culture of Stupidity

There is a pervasive attitude I find infuriating about American culture: We herald stupidity.

More than any other country I've been to, America holds up stupidity in the highest regard. There are aspects I admire as well, such as the culture of heralding creativity more than any other culture I've been to as well, but I just can't get over how Americans seem to hold up stupidity as the golden standard.

It has nothing to do with actual intelligence. I have known plenty of smart, interesting people that just have no interest in being intellectual at all. It is completely the attitude that the country engenders. It transcends race, but it can sometimes be enhanced by it, as well. I've heard way too many stories of a black child who is intelligent being told his whole life that he isn't "black" and is acting "white" by being intelligent and getting good grades for me to think that this issue is immune to race, but white trash areas, hispanic, Italian, etc etc still ostracize children for being smarter than they are. So what happens is that smart people start acting stupid to fit in with their peers. They learn to appreciate stupid things, and revel in stupidity.

It goes back to British humour and why hardly any Americans understand it. British people seem to value intelligence. I think that's why Americans find them pompous. In addition to the "properness" of the British, but I think that is just outward appearance and the underlying attitude is that of a culture that values intelligence and critical thought. They aren't the only ones, but we grew out of Britain originally, so they incur our collective teenage angst backlash.

If you put the concept of absurdist British humour inside the frame of a culture that values intelligence and people who look for meaning in things, who think critically about what things mean, who actively participate in the thought of what is going on around them; all of a sudden, British humour starts to make sense, because if you take that culture and insert something that sort of makes sense a little bit, and throw in 10 things that make absolutely no sense at all, the psychology of British humor and its absurdity starts to become clear.

America will never get it though, because they are too busy paying football players to go to college and not go to class rather than pay for an inner city genius to get his degree and become the next Leonardo Da Vinci.

We'll just continue to sit on our couches until we are too stupid to remember how to grow food and start pouring Gatorade on the fields instead of water because they market it well and otherwise we would have to think logically. But hey, at least we are still the best in the world at throwing a ball.

Lumberjackitude

With this semi-new workout routine transforming my body in a way I've never seen before

in tandem with my impromptu decision to grow a beard like I've never had before.

I looked in the mirror today as I was washing my hands and realized I'm looking more and more like the lumberjack I've always wanted to be.

Might need to go buy some flannel shirts tomorrow.

Tears in Rain II

Sometimes I want to see you cry.


Maybe that

is because


the shimmer


those tears create
is the only thing


I can think

that might


make your eyes
even more beautiful


than the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

Tears in Rain

The day eventually comes when you realize life is nothing more than the measurements of time between tears shed. The true despair in life is when the tears don't flow anymore. Then you realize nothing has made you happy enough to cry for its loss.

I'm Weird and I Like it

I call people Weird a decent amount. Most of the time, they take it as a mild insult, when in fact, I'm basically giving them the highest praise I have ever thought of. Weird to me means you are more different than most people in the world...more than one standard deviation away from the average person. And in the words of the immortal George Carlin, "Think about how stupid the average person is!" Weird, to me, means you are inherently interesting. Think about how boring the same thing is. Look at a row of black dots.



Which one drew your eye? The WEIRD one, that's which one. The WEIRD dot is specifically red because this post turned out to be about a couple of red-heads; one i know and one I'd like to.

I weed people out based on this WEIRD criteria. You might call it judging or persecution, but we all do it, we discern people who make us feel happy about ourselves and we call them our friends. One of my favorite, usually unconscious, tactics for this is saying something off the wall when I first meet someone. If they run with it, they are probably a kindred spirit. If they look at me like I have 4 heads...we probably aren't going to get along. Speaking of that, wouldn't it be really cool if I had 4 heads?!

I met one of my favorite people in the world that way. She's an energetic little Red-headed actress who used to live next door to me. I sat next to her on the bus one day and tried to think about what to say to her. Give me a break, I get nervous about what I say to stunningly beautiful women. My friend, who happened to be her roommate as well, happened to have left me a voicemail I hadn't checked yet, and, as I listened to it, a thought occurred to me. (since the roommate herself was, shall we say, WEIRD)

I turned to her as the voicemail ended and blinked twice and promptly asked her "Is your roommate on crack?!" She burst out into a laugh that, although hearing it for the first time, I automatically knew I would grow to absolutely love hearing (at one point, I likened it to a dying hyena and it stuck) and that this girl was a kindred spirit in this world.

The other red-head is someone I want to know. We frequent the same gym. Being that we are both very intense when we work out, we haven't really talked at all even though we have been there at the same time probably over 20 times. Which also leads me to another issue...

Headphones are the death of conversation; especially at the gym! How are we supposed to have simple human interaction (with anyone, not just the opposite sex) when everyone at the gym has headphones stuffed in their ears?! It's enough to drive you crazy.

Anyway, while we've traded smiles, said hello, traded all that non-distinct human interaction that has replaced small talk in our culture of iPhones, iPads, iPods, iPlanes, iPranks, iPizza, and iPeople. But after my shoulders and legs workout this morning, my roommate and I added what I like to call Nightmare Cardio to the routine, which is a nightmarish combination of timed running, timed pushups, and timed abs. It kills you. I could barely stand after it. I was hoping I saw her leaving, because if I had, I would have been able to say one of my patented weirdo lines I thought of this morning.

"Do you, by any chance, have a katana I could borrow?" After gauging her reaction, I would have explained that I wanted to kill myself, but I always told myself that if I committed suicide, I'd have to do it in a flashy way, so that people could make fun of me and have a laugh after I'm dead. I figure if someone can't take that kind of oddity and run with the joke, they probably won't enjoy my company and vice versa. Alas, I didn't see her as I left. But there's always next week. And when it comes to me, always another weird, rambling, nonsensical thought to verbalize.

Backwards and Forwards...Everything You Know is Wrong

I never really claim to know anything. This might sound weird to anyone who knows me, because I speak very confidently, even on topics that I am just conjecturing about. It makes people think I am absolutely sure of what I am saying. In reality, I just speak extemporaneously with a great deal of vigor. I get excited when I philosophize. In any case, I actively try to refrain from being absolutely sure of anything.

There is a great reason for this and it ties in to one of my favorite pastimes: Thinking about the things we absolutely "know" at this point in history as a human race and guessing which ones our descendents will laugh hysterically at us for believing in such an obvious falsehood. What is the current equivalent of our ancestors believing that the Earth was flat? How about the equivalent of our ancestors believing disease passed from person to person by smell?

That is the Forward example of that kind of philosophy. What I'm currently thinking about is how it applies Backward. It makes me think about history and what we "know" about what happened in our past. We take the stories we've heard in books as gospel, but in all honesty, there is no way that any of that actually happened.

The way I think about it is simple: with the advent of the internet, we have a ridiculous amount of angles and media of events that happen live...and yet, we still can't figure out what actually happened! If you talk to five different people, that were all present at the event, then watched video coverage of the event, followed by 2 hours of analysis by experts and viewers' reactions...then asked them to recount what happened, guess how many variations of that simple event you would get.

Now picture 200 years ago, and history being written. Just try and tell me that what they wrote was anywhere near what actually happened. It makes me wonder what actually happened, and some of the funniest things I've ever thought of have been alternative realities to historically famous events.

A Battle with Nature

As I workout in the gym, I realize that there are machines that just don't let men win. It makes me understand the concept of "Curves" the gym only for women so that they don't feel like they are being stared at while working out. The worst part of it is when it is not an isolated incident either. I go to the gym at the same time every single weekday morning, so I see the exact same people every day. I don't want to be a creep; I try not to look. I generally succeed in this venture, I'm there to work out, not make women feel uncomfortable. But sometimes, the situation just isn't gonna let men win. As evidenced by the situation I found myself in as I ranted to my friend on the way back from the gym one morning.

"I try not to look! But man, when I finish the mason twists on the inclined bench, my eyes are pretty much rolling around inside my head and I walk (see: stagger) around to recover before the next set. My eyes fly around the gym in exhaustion. When they come across a girl that is doing certain exercises, they just naturally stop."

"C'mon! I'm trying not to look, but that is simply a war against nature! And man, a battle against nature is simply one I'm not going to win!"

Patience

There is an idea in this country that everything has to happen "Now".

"He who hesitates is lost."
"We are a puny folk. Avarice, hesitation and following are our diseases."
"Audacity augments courage; hesitation fear."
"On the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions, who, at the dawn of decision, sat down to wait, and waiting died."

Hesitation on the dawn of decision is never a good thing, but the lack of patience is quite another. The culture of humanity is speeding along on a runaway track of perpetual motion. Standing still is abhorred. If you aren't going forward, you are going backward. There is no time to just stop and appreciate anything.

There are ups and downs in life. The biggest thing is that there is nothing wrong with having a "flaccid moment in your personal history" as my favorite author outside of Joyce put it. It's a struggle especially if there were much more exciting parts of your life, to let things slow down around you.

Humans and Elitism

I think everyone needs to feel some sense of superiority over other human beings. In most ways, this manifests as a need to see the inferiority of others somehow. Putting others in an inferior position is something else entirely and shouldn't be tolerated. But I'm talking about observing people in inferior situations to remind us that we all are lowly human beings and no one is a perfect celestial being.

My outlet is reading sports forums. They annoy me to no end, but I get endless entertainment out of how stupid people can be. I have known people who are obsessed with celebrity gossip for just the same reason. Others compare themselves to everyone they see on the street. Others compare themselves to everyone they work with. Who knows what other options there are? I'd go so far as to say that everyone has some method of looking down their nose at someone just to pick themselves up a bit. The human ego seems to need it every once in a while.

I've toyed with posting in the forums themselves, but I tend to be too verbose and I always have the feeling I used to have when I tried to briefly join a debate club in my youth: argumentation with strict rules based on the media used is never about the content but about the method. Argument obfuscation rules the day rather than logic. So I've gone back to simply reading them. Even though I get astounded and frustrated at most of the content, I still get enjoyment out of the stupidity of the majority of people posting. I understand it is simply because I feel superior to stupid people writing meaningless forum posts. There might have been a time I felt guilty about that, but I simply accept it now as part of my humanity. It also helps me accept it when I see it in others as well.

Rusty Faucet: Part III

He reaches below his chair and feels for his pipe. He pulls the ancient-looking bowl from its hiding place and holds it in his lap. He turns it over in his hands, slowly inspecting its curves and crannies. He draws his fingers along the myriad of bumps and digs time has carved into the mahogany-colored wood As always, his gnarled knuckle finds its way to the only artificially made nooks for the finale of its tour. Niall’s eyes wince close as the wrinkled pad crosses over the inscribed lines. His bottom lip drops ever so slightly and quivers once before he opens his eyes and quickly reaches for his pouch of tobacco.

Niall methodically rocks back and forth as he packs the pipe full of dried tobacco leaf. He coughs twice before lighting the leaf with a long, wooden match. The tobacco draws a clear line of aromatic smoke and dances into the misty morning air.

Rusty Faucet: Part II

Niall crosses the room to the shower. He turns the spicket with a grunt. Brown water sputters out angrily for a few seconds before becoming a solid clear trickle. He stands under the ice cold water letting it run over his skin. Goosebumps pop sporadically from the pockets of his skin that still have the wherewithal. He doesn’t bother taking his glasses off. He hears the children from down the street laughing outside as they pass by on their way to the river. Niall turns off the water and pats himself dry with the rag next to the sink.

His eyes reluctantly roll over the turned down picture frame as he shuffles over to his closet. He pulls his white blazer out of the mothballs in the back. As he pulls his tie tight, he flicks his eyes to the mirror in the corner and looks away as quickly as a butterfly flaps its wings. He picks up the rotted coffee mug and pushes open the dilapidated screen door to his porch. The sun blazes with the early morning brilliance of a subdued fury.

Niall squints as he utters a low moan of irritation or grogginess. It doesn’t matter which it is anymore. He puts the mug down on the card table and sits in the rocking chair beside it. The rooster crows again. Niall draws in a long, slow breath and a nettled cough rattles out of his throat in lieu of an exhale.

Necessities of Dwelling

There is a certain understated luxury to living in an apartment or house with more than simply a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen.

Rusty Faucet: Part I

The early morning sun sheds through the fraying curtains like a mole burrowing through tilled soil. The room is again lit by the sepia hue that the faded red of the curtains produces every morning. The cot in the corner of the room creaks as the man turns over restlessly at the new sunrise. His eyes open slowly allowing the light into his faded corneas. A sigh escapes his chapped lips and quickly turns into a nettled cough.

Niall rolls over and slides under the mosquito net hanging over his cot. As he rolls up the net, his eyes pass over the picture frame turned down on the nightstand. He brushes one gnarled finger over it and pulls it away with a fresh coating of dust. He blows it off his finger and picks up the pair of glasses next to the frame. The glasses settle unevenly on the bridge of his nose and he blinks the world back into semi-clarity.

A rooster crows down the street as Niall scrapes the last of the coffee grounds from the rusted can. The cabinet is empty without the pitted can inside it. The steam rises out from the coffee pot. He looks down into the pot and sees a couple flakes of rust swimming in the tepid tan liquid. His reflection drifts back at him through the ripples. He slides the coffee mug across the counter away from him.

R.I.P. My Computer

Blog updates have become few and far between. There is good reason for the scarcity of the literary ideas being published in this medium. My computer decided to die. Two weeks out of its warranty, my hard drive decided to take a metaphorical leap off a tall building with its prescribed destination being the hard pavement below it. I have much of my data backed up, but I'm sure I've lost quite a bit. The brighter side of this is that I'm not exactly sure what I've lost and I don't even particularly care. I'm loathe to buy a new computer. I have access to my roommate's when he isn't using it so I'm not completely devoid of a digital presence. I find that this restricted access is not only sufficient but I find myself extremely amenable to my current lack of a computer.

Every once in a while, I do actually walk around and think that I could use a computer at the moment to quell some boredom. To my pleasant surprise, these are the moments of spare time in which I decide to do something much more productive than surf the internet. I wasn't even spending an inordinate amount of time on my computer when it worked, but now that it's gone, I'm spending even less and I don't miss it. Instead, I'll pick up a book and read even more often than I did before. I'll solve some puzzles, be they crossword or logic. I'll work on an actual puzzle. I'll go sit at the pool and swim laps in the sun. My current favorite though is punishing my body at the gym with my workout buddies/roommate Joe and surrogate personal trainer Joey. (In answer to your question: yes, the names get confusing.) The latter promises to find some way of motivating me through pissing me off with his trash talk, but he has yet to do it without me laughing instead. What can I say? I can't take anything a Ginger says seriously.

I've come to the conclusion that computers sap the life out of life. That being said though, I think I'm going to make a concerted effort to transfer the writings that make it into my numerous composition notebooks floating around my apartment into Joe's computer and subsequently onto this blog more often. If not for any of you reading this, then for myself when my notebooks die as unexpectedly as my hard drive. Don't laugh, it's happened before. Ask the one with a couple of chapters of Memoria in it that looks like a blue and white Rorschach test from having a Jameson bottle spilled on it.