Frayed Day

No, I haven't grown a ponytail. These hair ties have been wrapped around my doorknob since we moved in. Strange, considering every other inch of this house had been renovated, refurbished, repainted. I guess they must be left over from whoever lived in this room last. A woman? Maybe the same one who subscribed to all the clothing catalogs we now receive.

This week was particularly marked by seclusion. Tuesday night was interesting; I met a couple new people at Chet's film night, and had a satisfying conversation with Joe. He's swinging back into my life in a big way, it seems, a year after I met him in a Greyhound station. The fact that he gets drunk and rambles at me on a regular basis, as well as the fact that we live around the corner from each other, probably helps.

Summer's fading. You can tell by the color of the sunlight. I can wear my jackets again. It's been raining for two days, causing my bike to skid out from under me when I braked for a red light today. No big deal. Apologies to Craig Finn, but this hasn't exactly been a constructive summer--I've been staying in far too much. Some people just weren't made for mass movements and camaraderie, but at least I'm slowly beginning to accept myself as such.

Ascetic August

Life:

Talking Baby Lizards

Last night's dream was over a dozen people crowded onto every available piece of furniture in Chet's apartment, drinking wine from glasses and mugs and jars, watching Werner Herzog's Lessons of Darkness as projected onto the room's white wall, a bedsheet nailed up over the drape-less window to block the light from the streetlamp outside. A Czech astrophysics student declared the occasion not a "movie night" but a "film salon," printed copies of an essay about Herzog and handed them out to those assembled. After the movie, we sat around Chet's floor to and wrote an exquisite corpse-type story about a badminton-playing dog with thumb implants. Then we climbed through Chet's roommate's window, up five stories of fire escape stairs, which were missing many rungs, and a ladder which slanted precariously away from the side of the brick building, to a vertiginous rooftop where I sat on a ledge with kids whom I'd only met hours before for a long-exposure group photo with the Mt. Vernon Methodist steeple in the background and the city's ember ocean below. It's alright, this drifting in and out of people's lives, meeting people on a regular basis but only barely remembering them, making reserved, minimal, but hopefully positive, conversation, and excusing myself early, after running out of the few things I have to say, before everyone gets too drunk and self-involved.

Actually, no, all that actually happened. What I really dreamt last night was that I was on acid. The trees all changed color. Maybe it was a metaphor for autumn. Autumn has, traditionally, been hope, as I told Maria today when I called to wish her a happy birthday.

An Addendum to the Previous

Or maybe it's just, in the absence of other things going for me at the moment, I've decided to turn myself into a "project."

It wouldn't be the first time.

Something That Needs Nothing

Last week I bought Miranda July's short stories collection, No One Belongs Here More Than You. Since then, all I've been reading is that. And all I've been listening to is The Smiths, but that's a different story--well, OK, it's really part of the same story. Which you can figure out yourself, I'm sure. I'll give a hint: both are fairly inspirational for a person who stays at home all day and cannot muster any motivation to do otherwise.

The book. It's the best book I've read in a long time. I think I like July's short stories as much as Haruki Murakami's, which, considering Murakami has been my favorite short story writer for nearly a decade, is a serious statement. If Murakami's stories are about people who have lost themselves, July's stories are about people who have lost the world. July's writing has an unmistakable innocent-yet-ageless plainess, and the oft-absurd characters and plots somehow become vessels for truths that transcend mere realism. Yes, many--all--of the stories are sad, at least in some ways, but it feels like a melancholy that comes from understanding what good and happiness truly are.

(Don't believe me?)

My ad hoc lit-crit origami hat aside, another one of the reasons I like this book so much is flawless relative timing, like the summer of 2002--that draining summer that whittled us all down to the bones--when I suddenly decided I really wanted to hear an R.E.M. album, bought New Adventures in Hi-Fi on the way home and finally "got" the band. I'd flipped through the book a month or two ago, probably because Jess had mentioned July's name at some point, but something made me jump on my bike and sprint down to the bookstore to bring it home. I've endured a frustration or two recently that I'd rather have avoided, it's true, but at least they made me think.

For example: about how I should be more selective about when, where, and how I interact with people. Repeatedly, it seems the times when I'm least able to be nice to people are the times I'm least prepared or motivated to interact with them, yet somehow find myself doing so anyway. Like when my mother calls on Sunday morning (damn 12 hour time difference) and I'm not quite ready mentally or physically to get out of bed, much less explain why I'm still asleep at 11AM--something easy to explain to everyone except my mother--yet attempt to do so anyway, and it always ends up with me saying, no, I don't want to talk about my week right now, no, nothing happened (whether that be the case or not), please let me go back to bed. Or when I asked for a ride from Sam and Mary-Beth, two kids I halfway know, to a Beach House show on a night when I really shouldn't have been around anyone; I spent half the evening standing around thinking about how I couldn't bear to look at all those people anymore (though seeing the homeboys and homegirl of Beach House did cheer me up a little, by the end). In such times, I imagine I must act in a way that suggests to people around me I dislike them very much, even though that is almost never the case; in the first case, for example, I eventually did get out of bed, and several hours later as I biked down the Jones Falls trail to the Hexagon everything was fine. But when I can't, I can't, and as I'm realizing, probably shouldn't.

I used to complain that people only talked to me when they needed advice, when they needed me to be sympathetic and wise. When they needed something from me, in other words. Now I think maybe that is the best possible scenario, since sympathetic and wise is all I want to be to people anyway, and it allows me to avoid dealing with people involuntarily except when I am on my best behavior. The more I have a clear idea of what I want to be and how I want to act, the more I realize the effort it would take to do it all the time. What I would like is for people in my presence to not have to worry about any of the things I'd rather not worry about myself. Things like strange girls who shove their phone numbers into your hands unbidden and then don't return your calls, for example. Of course, they're probably going to worry anyway, and even if they don't, they'll get into the worrying scene again as soon as we part--whatever, all I ask is they don't drag me along. Call it a non-invasive (but very much evasive) enforcement of personal space.

I imagine these all seem like bewildering, purposefully naive ramblings. But the thing is, complicated things and upsetting things happen anyway, whether we intentionally make them happen or not. We don't need to lift a finger in order to frustrate others or to put wry faces on ourselves. But making things more comfortable, conversely, takes effort. As Morrissey noted, "it takes strength to be gentle and kind." I'm starting to see the logic behind twee...

Of course, when I feel functional, I'll keep going out and doing whatever (meeting fetish models at the Hexagon and listening to them talk about their iPhones, etc.). I've confidence that I'm at least decent at doing such things, at least some of the time. I just need to draw the line a little clearer.

It's something to preoccupy myself with, anyway. An experiment of sorts. Of course, knowing me, I'll probably find myself at some ill-advised outing trying to fold myself into the shadow of a Boh bottle before long.

Perish Later,

Publish now!

Though to be honest, everyone else made so many edits, someone else (probably Mikhail) probably should've gotten first author.

On a Desolate Shore a Shadow Passes By

(from Garfield Minus Garfield)

The Feds, who did not process my change of address application that I filed a month ago, do not help. My phone, which does not ring, does not help. I try not to think too hard on it and all it implies--or all that it would imply in my Gordian brain--because I know if I do, I will almost certainly have a breakdown.

It's Getting Kind Of Quiet In My City Head

Thursday night John and Maura showed up at my place to crash. Which is hardly a new phenomenon; however, they unexpectedly brought along Colin, John's DJ friend from Indiana who was spinning with him at the Hexagon that night. Now, our living room has a futon and a sofa, and quite easily sleeps at least three people, so the practicality of it was no issue; but all the same, for a moment I was actually somewhat irritated that John had brought a total stranger--decent guy as it turns out, but still a total stranger at that point--to crash in my house with zero notice. Which is surprising, because I usually enjoy it immensely when people crash at my place.

Which leads me to believe that I am truly getting old and slow in the brain. I am not much for this ceaseless socializing anymore. My roommate's falling in with some new friends who are still in college, and even though they seem like decent guys who ride bikes and play guitars, something rubs me the wrong way about them--like how they talk about smoking up, or repeatedly use the utterances "sheeit" (a la The Wire) and "chron," or one of those nigh-imperceptible things. I'm also getting tired of the dance scene where producers slice up any quiet, ethereal song and slip the same 4-on-the-floor beat and sawtooth bassline under it. Like that Liars remix John spun on Thursday night. Everyone must dance. Everyone must get down and drink cheap hipster beer and party and I just want to say leave me alone. Leave me to my sun-baked afternoons holing up at my laptop editing distorted ambient lullabyes. That's my element. I hope my music never leaves the bedroom.

[EDIT: I wandered down to Sonar tonight, made a couple new friends, and saw a DJ by the alias of Emily Rabbit spin Black Flag's "Rise Above" and Burma's "That's When I Reach For My Revolver" consecutively. Maybe there is hope for me yet.]

The Machines Of The Machines Of

I got a new cell phone. In case you think this is part of some continuing material trip of mine, let me point out that 1. my previous phone, which came free with my service, endured 5 years of being rained on, crushed, and generally abused (never misplaced) until the "Yes" and "Option" buttons stopped working (appropriately, the only option left to me was "No"), and held a 3-day charge until the end 2. this new phone was also free.

In any case, I performed the unenviable task of entering my entire phone book into my new phone manually. I probably have far fewer contacts than most people, but still there were too many, and I felt compelled to drop some along the way. Shed the dead weight. Many strange numbers in there, some that I kept out of sheer novelty--high school acquaintances I haven't spoken to since graduation, the girl I met at last year's Pitchfork Festival, etc. It was a bit of a pain. I started thinking that maybe I shouldn't have this many contacts; as with moving house, everything's just easier when you carry less.

But what is this talk? Since when have I ever been one to fear attachments and connections? I mean, come on. I'm the one who's been spieling for years about how kids tread too lightly and dissipate with the wind. I don't want to drag along what I don't have to, but I also don't want to fall victim to transience and triviality.

It's getting cooler. I'm sleeping with the windows open tonight. Summer's on its way out. I'm looking forward to autumn--colder temperatures are my element. There's something anticipatory about the shivers of the first drafts, as I walk down the street late at night, suddenly thinking that having a jacket might be nice, but it's probably just a trick of my mind. Seasons cycle and before I know it everyone's in for another slow summer burn without anything having really changed. The revelations don't come quite as often now that I'm not in high school anymore. Or maybe they do, and I'm just more hesitant to accept them as such.

Flannery and Becca are in town for the weekend. If I'm going to be an honorary B----, I had better start playing the part. It might be an interesting couple of days. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned coming back from Golden West with two unexpected things. I wrote about one, but as for the other...I made a phone call. I got one in return. I've been told to expect another. Who knows, maybe things can still change for one such as me.

On My 22nd Birthday

My true loves gave to me:

2 friends on acid
1 phone call from Jess
1 handmade card from Sarah T.
2 beers at Brewer's
1 Mitra at the mic at The Hexagon grand opening announcing it was my birthday
4 surprise slices of cake
1 candle
1 wish, which I forgot to make in my utterly stunned state

and pretty much everything else a boy could ask for, birds in trees notwithstanding.