You know what I miss?

That unclear blue-white-gray color, hazy and tense, that smogs the crystal air's surface during dusk in a wintry time. It floats above the snow on the ground, a dull electric gossamer perimeter for a sky.

---

Is a joke still a joke if nobody understands it?

one side of a two-sided story

I can't be positive but I think I was repeatedly cock-blocked tonight by my female coworker who is/was attracted to me.

There is nothing worse than being attracted to the bartender. She had sleeve tattoos, chin-length black hair and she was gorgeous. Hitting on the bartender is the impossible move. So I simply sank admirably into her beauty. I didn't want to take my eyes off her.

An older man who was clearly clutching and tapping on his dick as he sat next to me, which I pointed out to my friend, told me he didn't care for being made fun of and "... unless you wanna taste the back of my elbow..." I assured him I didn't, and was only pointing out his rather lurid gesture.
I guess he thought I'd be intimidated. He just changed seats.

Anyway.
This is the best sentence, among many great ones, that I overheard tonight: "Why fight when you can eat ass and pussy all day?"

One other thing...

In Portland, I found the way to happiness.

Literally.

"Sometimes I live in the country,
sometimes I live in the town.
Sometimes I have a great notion
I'm gonna jump in the river and drown.

Irene, goodnight.
Irene, goodnight.
Goodnight, Irene.
Goodnight, Irene.
I'll see you in my dreams."

here's what i would like to do...

drink until i sink into the ocean at midnight.

joseph campbell.

He died eight months after i was born.

but i think he was me.

when I googled "Is suicide a sin"

"Since you did not get your salvation by what you did, you can not lose it by what you do."

no, it isn't lionel richie.

it's Creflo A. Dollar, an evangelist preacher.


The A stands for asshole...
This guy is a fat asshole.

My So-Called Mid-Life Crisis

I am grateful to life for its fleeting memories of affection.
I am grateful to the ocean for its haunting, forever aimless stretch.
I am grateful to its waves and it depths and its creatures and its colors and its fanciful fantasies that it carries on its crests, fantasies of floating effortlessly to the shores of a distant island, uninhabited, that I might blanket myself with its sun and sand and green dark sylvan shade.
Grateful to the waterfall that pounds its life persistently into the stone and ash of eons, as if fighting back.
Grateful to Ireland for being a land of water, of green vast rolling plains with veins of liquid crystal coursing.
My veins course only with dirt. Dirt comes from me and it spills as mud from my wet tongue when I speak to no one and anyone.
To regret every word you speak is a burden.
I am a sensitive pile of brush and dirt that the slightest display of affection ignites.
And I am ashamed.
Ashamed to be so grateful.
I am grateful for every smile, every joke, every drink of water, every cloud and every sunray, every hand and finger and every breath breathed upon or near me. Grateful for it all.
"If it rained an ocean, I'd drink it dry and lay me down dissatisfied."
I'm ashamed to be so grateful.
To the point that all I am grateful for I am also bitter towards.

I don't think I should exist. This type of thing should not exist.

---

"Down at the bottom of that dirty old river,
down where the reeds and the catfish play,
there lies a dream as soft as the water,
there lies a bluebird that's flown away.

To meet is like springtime and to love's like the summer.
Her brown eyes shone for nobody but me.
In autumn forever, the fool come a-fallin',
and the rain turned to freezin' inside of me.

I'll kindle my fires with the words I can't send you
and the roads I can't follow and the songs I can't sing.
I'll wander alone on the sleigh bells of winter
with the stars for a diamond and the world for a ring.

All you young ladies who dream of tomorrow,
while you're listenin' these words will I say:
Cling to today with its joy and its sorrow,
you'll need all your memories when youth melts away.

The angel of springtime, he rides down the south wind.
The angel of summer, he does just the same.
The angel of autumn, she's blue and she's golden.
The angel of winter won't remember your name.

Down at the bottom of that dirty old river,

down where the reeds and the catfish play,

there lies a dream as soft as the water,

there lies a bluebird that's flown away."

"All the way from Oregon."

I can guarantee what Percy R Kelly said after he laid this . . .

"You are my number one hit!"

"Yes I received your letter yesterday,
about the time the door knob broke.
When you asked me how I was doing,
was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention,
yes I know them, they're quite lame.
I had to rearrange their faces
and give them all another name.
Right now I can't read too good,
don't send me no more letters, no.
Not unless you mail them from
desolation row."

Downloading Jeff Buckley's work.

It was the right time.

"Ribbons of love
please keep me true sane
until I reach home on the morrow.
Never, never to wander again,
I’m weak and I’m weary of sorrow.

London to Dublin,
Australia to Perth.
I gazed at your sky,
I tasted your earth.
Sung out my heart
for what it was worth.
Never again shall I ramble.

There’s nowhere left
in this world where to go.
My arms, my legs they’re a-tremblin’.
Thoughts both clouded and blue as the sky,
not even worth the remembrin’.

Now as I stumble
and reel to my bed,
all that I’ve done
all that I’ve said
means nothin’ to me
I’d soon as be dead,
all of this world be forgotten.

No words of comfort
No words of advice.
Nothin’ to offer a stranger.
Gone the love, gone the spite.
It just doesn’t matter no longer.

My sky’s getting far,
the ground’s gettin’ close.
My self goin’ crazy
the way that it does.
I’ll lie on my pillow
and sleep if I must.
Too late to wish I’d been stronger.
Too late to wish I’d been stronger ."

The Guy That Died And, More Importantly, The Things He Saw Before His Death

I saw Leo Tolstoy in downtown Portland, Oregon.

I saw myself driving through the thick forest country and recognized that ambition has deserted me. It stirred in me the need for a torrential cry, and the water has been amassed along my dull eyes since then, refusing to fall. I desired to cry and I couldn't. Just as I desired to come and I couldn't.

I see in every gesture and hear in every word of every person the secret wailings of their heart that they themselves sometimes cannot. I wish I were a bandage the size of a human heart and not a person. Then perhaps I might be useful.

I see what Townes Van Zandt saw. I see what Salinger saw.

I saw lightness of spirit in a person so entangled in unlove and I saw how lightness gets strangled out so acutely. I saw my own entanglements like seaweed dragging behind my sailboat.

I have been everywhere and I have felt everything.

I saw a poor heart, as I have seen in few others, deserving and desirous of a place to stand and commune with the universe and with the heart of another. A heart trampled by the beguilement of others who hold no true sense of communion. But a heart beguiled, like a cascading waterfall, is unclimbable. I see selfless people existing in a selfish world and feel sickness.

I see too much. I see so much that I see things that are not there.

I saw a friend. I saw goodbye like a death sentence.

I caught a disease in Oregon. Not Giardia, but Rex's blues.

I saw Leo Tolstoy in downtown Portland, Oregon standing somewhere between the street corner and the fourth plane, and I prayed to join him, but felt quite harshly the impossibility of that.

I saw the problem.

I saw that the problem is that I was not built to last.

Perhaps I was not built at all.

On the plane ride home I sat next to a little girl named Hope.  She spoke to me of her cats and her brothers and her deep sea search for her gum in her purse. She searched all the purse's pockets to no avail and then turned the purse round and round, this time only sniffing the pockets for traces of her peppermint gum. I wondered deeply, "Does this have any significance?"

Sitting next to hope, I mean.

---

"Sorrow and solitude;

these are the precious things.

And the only words

that are worth remembrin'."

"Brother flower, are you listening?
Let me sing a song for you.
Brother flower, petals glistening
in the bashful morning's dew.
Brother flower, when the sun shines
and the dew has flown away,
if you don’t mind weak and wrong rhymes,
brother flower, may I stay?

Brother flower, you ain’t lonely
for you’ve always been alone.
But I haven’t been so lucky
I had love and now it’s gone.
I have arms to hold another,
never to hold her again.
I have life to give a lover,
you have life to give the wind.

Brother flower, when the snow flies
and you lay your beauty down,
brother flower, are you sleeping
there upon the cold, cold ground?
Brother flower, please awaken,
show the sky your face of blue.
Let me know I ain’t forsaken.
Seems like all I have is you."

-TVZ

Horrible Moments In 21st Century History

"Marriage can be between any two people, any four people, any ten people. It could be any kind of relationship, and we can call it marriage. But it doesn't make it marriage. I can call this napkin a paper towel. But it is a napkin. Why? Because it is what it is." - Rick Santorum

I wish the devil would come in his eyes with semen hotter than lava.

The Anecdote

I approached the security desk to drop off my badge as I exited the building. The security officer was reading the Bible, and in particular was highlighting a passage in the book of Revelations. He accepted the badge from me and as he placed it in a drawer I inquired, "Good book?"

Great Moments In 21st Century Film

"You lost your wife. You lost your mom. I lost my nut."

Great Moments In 21st Century Music

"Niggas is jealous, but really I could care less.

I'm in hell's kitchen with an apron and a hairnet."

"What goes around comes around like a hula hoop.

Karma is a bitch? Well just make sure that bitch is beautiful."

 - Lil Wayne

---

Apparently we live in a world where it's necessary for someone to point out that "care less" and "hairnet" don't rhyme... What a world.

Great Moments In 20th Century Film

"I hired you people to try to get a little track laid. Not to jump around like a buncha Kansas City faggots!"

Señorita Spanish Rose

A coworker and I penned a Spanish love song for Carolina, the most beautiful woman in our office.
Please forgive the lack of accents.


ENCANTADO, MI AMOR

Encantado, mi amor
Soy lluvia, eres un flor
Te encontre en mi trabajo y me dio mucho calor
Se que tienes novio pero soy mejor

Gusto en conocerte, mi corazon
Quiero ser tu amante, no patron
Vamos a mi canton
podremos bailar un danzon

Oye mami, no me ignores, por favor
No me causes dolor
Aceptame y veras un resplandor
Sin ti mi vida no tiene valor

Encantado, mi amor

Great Moments In 21st Century Music

Dreams seem to exist to make sure that I never get to a place too far on the right side of fine.

"Those birthdays! I told you they're relationship killers. If a relationship is having any problems whatsoever, a birthday will always bring it out." - George Costanza

Ode To Salinger

I designed what might be my favorite t-shirt ever:

"I'd Have Sex With My Wife In A Stairwell" And Other Things Seen Today

I became part of a group admiring the display of a man and woman having sex in a public stairwell. We stood on the other side of the glass as the two copulated on the concrete floor of the stairwell, the woman supine and the man mounted. An admirer banged on the window to catch their attention, and the man looked to his audience in recognition and began making comedically emphatic gestures with his head and torso, embellishing the act of intercourse that he was engaged in. It was clear he felt like a rock star. The people that stood for it were amused and those walking past were disgusted. I yelled to the crowd, in earnestness soaked in sarcasm, "What we're witnessing here is a beautiful expression of love between two people." A guy closer up turned to the crowd and said, "Now that's a fuckin' skank." I told my friend who was shocked by what we were witnessing, partially in jest, "C'mon now. Maybe they're married." She joked that no married man would say to his wife that they should have sex in a stairwell. My reply was, "I'd have sex with my wife in a stairwell."

I also saw someone drew a penis on the wall of the public library.

And now to more appropriately utilize the title "Jesus Harold Christ On A Fucking Rubber Crutch"

Actual headline from January 28th, 2008: "Will Ferrell Receives James Joyce Award"

Future headline as my only option is now suicide:

What a world.

The Drawing

So I sent Rocco a drawing depicting a stick-figure version of himself standing in what I labeled on the page a pile of dog poop. When I spoke with him yesterday and asked him if he'd received my letter he said, somehow both genuinely and sarcastically, "Yes. It was delightful."

My own male psyche is something incomprehensible.

One minute it's longing for the intimacy associated with the warmth and revelation provided by the female being. The next minute it's only desire is a painful, nostalgic longing for the best Mario Brothers installment, Super Mario World made for Super Nintendo.