Advice on what to listen to...

The first time I heard Richard Hawley was about two years ago in the fantastic documentary Exit Through The Gift Shop made by the street artist Banksy. Hawley's song "Tonight The Streets Are Ours" opens and closes the film. I looked him up when the film was over and have been a fan since. He's a contemporary English musician who mixes a wide range of genres across his various albums. My two favorite albums of his are Coles Corner, which is his most popular and critically acclaimed, and Truelove's Gutter. I hadn't listened to them in about six months, so sat near the water in a bay on a cloudy day and listened. The track I'm recommending below is the title song of Coles Corner. It was really getting into my head. I listened to it on repeat. It reminds me of wandering through softly lit pedestrian thoroughfares in fall or winter, surrounded by others but awfully alone, like in Boulder or Iowa City, or even the haymarket in Lincoln.

Was pretty sad today (I know I know, me sad?!). On a bike ride at night it started to rain a gentle downpour and it felt nice to be caught in it. It barely rains here now, since the draught started a few years ago. I couldn't help but think though how lovely a rain it was being wasted on me and my bicycle. It would have been so much better spent on lovers holding hands on a walk through any dark autumn street of Iowa City.

Sigh. Every day hurts, but holidays hurt in a special kind of way. Or maybe they don't. Maybe I can't tell the difference between days anymore. I don't even know. Anyway:

"Coles Corner" – Richard Hawley

"I'm going downtown where there's music.
I'm going where voices fill the air.
Maybe there's someone waiting for me,
with a smile and a flower in her hair.

I'm going downtown where there's people.
My loneliness hangs in the air.
With no one there real waiting for me,
no smile, no flower nowhere."

Great Moments In 20th Century Television

The time on The Simpsons when Homer tried to build a barbecue pit and it perfectly summed up how life sometimes feels:

Homer builds a barbecue pit

Not the best quality video but it's all I could find.

ask not for whom the fall flowers

i wrote a poem:

Scholars would have us believe
that the sun rises and sets
as a matter of rotation.

But I know the sun only dances for you.

Learned men will try to tell you
that the ocean tides obey the moon.

But I know the ocean only waves for you.

Scientists will argue
that leaves change in autumn
to wither and die quiet deaths.

But I know the fall flowers for you.

The sun loves to wake to your face
The ocean loves to try to reach you
The leaves love to lay at your feet

Should you ever cease to love them back
the sun, the ocean and the leaves
would serve no purpose anymore.

fall flowers for you

Cheer up, beautiful.

Sometimes it feels like there is a boa constrictor wrapped around my brain and it is squeezing words and thoughts and feelings mercilessly out of my brain like lemon juice from a ripe lemon.

I spent a week in Paris, France once. The "city of love". Without being able to share it with her, I sometimes feel like I've never been anywhere. All I've done is gone to different places and pretended like it was possible for experiences not shared with her could matter. I've been to the Eiffel Tower, and I begged it to matter. But without her and her kid, it just doesn't. It can't. My brain has the worst wiring.

Post-coital kisses of her figure, up down and all across her body...

Fuck. Add that to the list of things life is nothing without.

One of my favorite feelings that exists is her feet upon my feet.

It's such a rich feeling in my memory, I wonder if it ever crosses her mind.

Spooning the one you love is pretty much what heaven must be like.

So, once in a while I visit this online chat room for depressed people. Typically I go there to listen to people who need an ear and while I'm there I try to make a joke or two. Personally, I find that humor immediately lightens moods and makes people comfortable with talking to you. Tonight, I think, I made a particularly good joke. Someone asked, "Is the glass half full or half empty?"

And I responded, "The glass was kidnapped by Nigerian extremists."

Personally, I think that joke highlighted the ridiculousness of the separatism with which the "depressed hipster self-absorbed community" tries to distinguish itself, and also the horrendous reality of the world we live in where armed hooligans are kidnapping little girls and exploiting them with pretty much zero consequences. Peace talks in Africa choose to whitewash the fact that these young girls are probably being raped on a daily basis by Boko Haram, while negotiations are ongoing.

Boko Haram do not represent Muslim values, and were my life acceptable currency I would gladly (well, begrudgingly) offer it up to every moron involved with Boko Haram or any other terrorist organization in exchange for the untainted lives of the little girls they have kidnapped.

Funny how nature makes mistakes on purpose. Humans aren't that great, evolutionarily speaking.

---

Then of course, you meet those one or two humans who make you feel that all the hard work and all the horror and all the sorrow and all the mistakes are worth it.

Then you meet R and S and you realize life is actually the best thing ever, for a brief moment. And you realize that you would fight all day every day for this planet and all its inhabitants. That there is nothing better than R and S and that they make the planet spin, the stars shine... S makes the tennis shoes come off and then place her bare feet on top of yours. She makes that pure bliss feeling of her feet on top of yours in bed happen. R and S make life so gloriously goofy and fulfilling, that even if you're a writer you can't think of a good ending to your description.

a day at the beach

I went walking along the beach, laid in the shade on a rock for a while, listening to music. When I got up to walk in the water I switched to Van Morrison. "Hungry For Your Love" came on, which I haven't listened to in a while. It's a tough one to listen to, but I put it on repeat. It meshed well with the waves. Also played "She Gives Me Religion" several times. Now hold up! Don't get all upset. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Come on, Stephen. 'She Gives Me Religion' ain't that great, the tempo is all wrong on pretty much the entire Beautiful Vision album." But check it, I wasn't listening to the studio version you dork, I was on that Live At The Grand Opera House Belfast shit. That's right, you know the live recording of "She Gives Me Religion" is a hot joint.

Who am I talking to.

Anyway. Listened to those two songs back and forth for a while. There are few things clearer than when ocean water runs across rocks. When it's not diluted by sand, the water is crystalline and you can see the shadow of ripples on the rock's facade as the water rushes back and forth. Someone had discarded a rose on the beach and its petals were floating in the water. I watched an individual rose petal dance with the tide over the rocks in the cool clear water for what seemed a long time. The petal was emitting a brilliant red color as it lay in the pellucid water. For a moment I felt like a flower petal.

I think I have my next story. It's tentatively titled "The Time I Lost My Hat, The Time I Lost My Hat And The Time I Lost My Hat". It will tie together the three different stories I have of losing a hat.

Then, with "Hungry For Your Love" ringing in my ears, I thought about all the roses I used to send and missed the feeling of being welcome to do so.

Was looking for a nature picture to post, but didn't get any good photos today. I'll use this old one of myself instead. No, that's not Justin Timberlake. Say what you want about me, I think I used to be relatively handsome and a sharp dresser. I was trying to bring sexy back.

"And though we're far apart,
you are here in my heart.
And though we're far apart
you're part of me now.

And after all the years,
and after all the tears,
and after all the tears
there's just the truth now.

I got such a lot of love,
I want to give it to you."

P.S.

I got laid in that suit, and it. was. awesome.

I been trying to steal you from "my best friend, Jim" since the moment I met you.

Ways To Tell If You're Weird

If your portable music device shuffles "You Won't Let Me Go" by Ray Charles, "Like A Virgin" by Madonna, "It Hurts To Tell You" by James Brown and "One Day You'll Be Mine" by Usher together, and you sing all of them in your car with equal accuracy and enthusiasm, you're probably weird.

I started reading an analysis of J.D. Salinger's "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period" and midway through found myself bawling uncontrollably.

happy holidays Matt Phillips, you bastard

"Dear Stephen,

Thank you for submitting your writing to A Year in Ink. We received a high number of excellent submissions, and are sorry to inform you that your writing will not be included in this year's anthology.

We thank you for allowing us to read your work, and encourage you to submit next year. Best wishes on your writing, and happy holidays!

Sincerely,

Matt Phillips, Anthology Coordinator (Vol. 8)"

Why isn't there a "rescind" button for email yet? Seriously, that idea is a home run. I'll take my billion dollars now, Google.

---

I walked along a cliff overlooking the ocean, listening to the Irish band The Pogues. I recently acquired their last two albums that they made without their original frontman Shane MacGowan. I was skeptical of them, since Shane seemed to be the poet, but they're great albums.

Been thinking today that it's been over four years since I heard her voice. That's crazy to me. Truly crazy.

"Sometimes I'd wake up in the morning,
the ginger lady by my bed.
Covered in a cloak of silence
I'd hear you talking in my head.

I'm not singing for the future.
I'm not dreaming of the past.
I'm not talking of the first time,
I never think about the last.

Now the song is nearly over,
we may never find out what it means.
Still, there's a light I hold before me.
You're the measure of my dreams."

That last line. Damn.

Great Moments In 21st Century Texting

Generally speaking, I don't open up to anyone. But, once in a great while, I open up to my sister.

My sister said she was falling asleep so I said, "Up for a woman question or hold off?"
Sis: "Go for it."
Me: "If an ex who is with someone else sends a pic with her naked breast in it and acts nonchalant about it how should a guy interpret that?"
Sis: "Like she's looking for attention. Wth like just outta the blue?"
Me: "Well I email her once in a while and she normally doesn't respond. Then a couple weeks ago she was like, 'I'll send you some pictures.' She emails me about twice a year."
Sis: "Ummmm, that seems weird to throw a boob in there. She's toying with you it seems to me. If I were you I'd act like it didn't phase me."
Me: "Yeah well. I'm me. I fucked it up already. She has awesome boobs though."
Sis: "Lol tmi haha"
Me: "Yeah I'd probably been better off not knowing her boobs are awesome too."

Great Moments In 21st Century Television

If you haven't seen season 4 of The Wire then chances are your knowledge of the American education system is severely lacking.

The Wire – Season 4: Education

---

The time that 30 Rock perfectly represented the internet:

Liz Lemon Online

I'm fucking dumb. I should just die.

a damn good question

You know how when you love someone, but they don't love you back?

Why is life like that?

Sometimes it's hard to think of anything worse than only marginally mattering to someone who is your everything.

I wanted to e-mail her so badly today. Had a lot to say. But I'm doing my best not to inundate her with my pointless thoughts. I really hope I hear from her soon.

It's not even that I have a lot to say, so much as that I want to hear her response. E-mailing doesn't exactly embody fluid communication, but rambling ad nauseam is the next best thing to listening to her. Oh, to have a real conversation with her; the kind that takes places when our bodies are recumbent and our faces are only inches apart.

---

I realized that it's really pretty sad, going to bed with so many thoughts unspoken.

But hey, what's life without disappointment.

Well, my phone now appears to be broken, so even in the off chance anyone were to call me, whether about a job or anything else, I wouldn't get it.

Look on the bright side of life, Stephen. You learned how to type en and em dashes today.

This has been my soundtrack for the day: "Every Time It Rains" – Randy Newman

---

Been a long week. Maybe she didn't like my story.

I don't want to sleep, because I don't want to wake to face tomorrow.

I don't want to be awake, because I don't want to think about all the lonely, wasted days behind me.

Sigh. Memories are cold right now.

"The difference between what he had been then and what he now was, was enormous... Then he was free and fearless, and innumerable possibilities lay ready to open before him; now he felt himself caught in the meshes of a stupid, empty, valueless, frivolous life, out of which he saw no means of extricating himself even if he wished to... He remembered how proud he was at one time of his straightforwardness, how he had made a rule of always speaking the truth, and really had been truthful; and how he was now sunk deep in lies, the most dreadful of lies - lies considered as truth by all who surrounded him. And, as far as he could see, there was no way out of these lies. He had sunk in the mire, got used to it, wallowed in it." - Leo Tolstoy

Damn Tolstoy.

That's heavy.

I was watching Her and had to turn it off. Made me too goddamn lonely.

Such a draining feeling.

I wish I could tell her that I believe we're soul mates without sounding stupid. I was just listening to "Tir Na Nog" by Van Morrison. There's a YouTube video that a father made for his deceased son, and it's that song set to a slideshow that tells the Celtic mythology story behind the song. The guy's son was a big Van Morrison fan.

Maybe I'm just feeling mystical, but I know by the way the waves of our lives overlap that we're meant to be for each other. Even if I never see her again, I know it.

Who am I kidding... If I'm going to wish at all, I would wish that she'd say, "I agree."

"We've been together before,
in a different incarnation.
And we loved each other then as well,
and we sat down in contemplation.
Many many many times you kissed mine eyes,
in Tir Na Nog."

dream journal

I dreamt that I was visiting my hometown, and she came to my parents' house (it was their house but not really their house you know dreams) to see me. We were alone, and we sat on the couch. First a few feet apart, then quickly, as though it were inevitable, as though it were a joke we were both in on to be near each other and not touching, we pulled each other closer like we once did, and interlocked our bodies in a comfortable embrace as close as we could be to one another. She started showing me baby pictures she had brought of her daughter and we were smiling and flirting. I said, "You know I've seen some of these before." I said it because I didn't want her to think I'd forgotten. And she said wryly (how's that for a pun?), putting the pictures aside, "Oh well I didn't know you wouldn't want to look at them again." She said it jokingly and I said, "Of course I do," reaching across her to pick up the pictures again, "I just said it so you'd know." When I reached across her our faces were inches from each other and she gave me her furrow-browed, eyes wide open stare/smile that basically melted me. It's one of a few looks she has that could get me to do anything. I can't remember if we kissed in the dream, unfortunately, but I think we did.

Then suddenly I realized that I had old friends who were coming to visit. It was friends from my childhood and they were at the door. I ran to the door, and while I was disappointed we were being interrupted I was secretly happy to be able to introduce her to other people I knew. It was not a pleasure I ever really had. So at first it was six people that I used to know. When I started to introduce them though, I couldn't remember all of their names. I said, "Everyone this is my friend S, she just stopped by to visit me too. S this is..." and I couldn't remember my friends' names. I was getting them all confused and in the dream it was because I couldn't think about anything other than the fact that she was with me, that we were together for a brief moment and we were near each other and she was happy with me. I was so dizzy (I got physically dizzy in the dream) from her glances that I couldn't remember anyone else. Then other people appeared. It was a lot of people from the church I grew up in. "I didn't realize there'd be so many people here," I said. I was thinking, Oh no all these people are going to want to talk to me, but the next thing I remember is that the house was more or less filled with people, and they were conversing with one another, like a regular party, having drinks and eating cake. I couldn't find S and I was afraid she had left. I ran around the house looking for her, upstairs, downstairs. Then as I was coming back up from the basement, into the living room, I saw her walking toward the couch and my heart was relieved. I didn't want her to leave without saying goodbye. And I was so glad to see her again, cause each time it was like waking up to a brand new beautiful day. A woman in a chair near the couch, she was my pastor's wife when I was a kid, picked up a photo album from the floor and said, "You got a lotta pictures of you as a baby for some reason." S and I looked at each other and laughed and I explained, "No no no. Those aren't me. My friend here just brought pictures of her baby to share with me." I picked them up and the last thing I remember before waking up is seeing S's face, as we smiled at one another. We were surrounded by people, but all I could see was her. And in the dream I could see in her eyes that she felt the same.

I can't sleep at the moment.

Some dream.

When you're watching an objectively shitty movie but you're still crying, there's that voice in the back of your head that is saying, "What the fuck? Really?" I like that voice.

If it didn't have the lovable Tina Fey and Jason Bateman (nod to Timothy Olyphant) in it I'd probably have shut it off. Damn them.

Worst part is, that shit was based on a novel. It was so shitty I almost want to read the novel.

I was informed today that the Salk Institute rejected my application. I was really saddened by that.

---

I was driving in my car tonight and I realized I was smiling. I hadn't felt that in quite a while. It was because I received some pictures and I saw some things I thought I'd never see again. I saw my heart and she/they were smiling, so life can't be all bad.

---

Also, thanks to one photo in particular, I will no longer need porn for the rest of my life.

life lessons

When I was in high school I started writing a Vonnegut-esque novel about Sierra Leone, the R.U.F. (a deplorable militia) and the diamond trade of West Africa. The books I read about child soldiers and slave labor were devastating. I never finished the book though.

I watched a documentary recently about North Korea, and I was quite moved by a particular scene that spoke about the Grand People's Study House. The Grand People's Study House is the central branch of North Korea's library, which houses over 30 million volumes. Citizens are not allowed to view the shelves themselves. They can request a volume and a trained professional will retrieve it for them. There is also a philosophy room, where a citizen who has a philosophical question can ask a professor and, according to the tour guide, "Then the professors give them the correct answers immediately." It's incredible. I might combine these ideas. But it's been many years since I wrote anything long enough to be considered a novel, and I doubt any ideas I have will come to fruition. I'm too depressed.

My problem is, I have great ideas (at least I like them), but I watch them disappear, float away like helium balloons set free on a beach. I have no motivation, no inspiration, no connection. All I do is fail.

---

If someone tells you, "I can't imagine life without you" don't believe them.

Everyone can live without you. Life for normal people is only damage control.

---

I'm just a balloon, floating away into the vastness of sky with no sound, no direction, clinging childishly, frantically to memories of someone who no longer has sight of me.

Great Moments In 21st Century Journalism

Ben Affleck called Bill Maher and Sam Harris "racist" for attempting to intellectually debate the influence of Islamic religious tenants on modern society. At no point did either Bill Maher or Sam Harris denigrate either Islam or all Muslims as misogynists or terrorists.

And at no point did Ben Affleck realize that Islam is not a race. But knowing America, they'll side with the actor.

Nuanced argument... who needs it.