Damage, Inc.

Old Metallica is like a balm for the soul.

"Orion" is my nonverbal mantra.

kore wa, muzukashii desu.

For as long as I can remember, people have told me how great college was. Someone would be over for a family dinner, and eventually the subject would arise, and all of the adults at the table would get the same misty-eyed look and begin to mumble vague stories and chuckle. Over time, the university developed into a semi-mythical place in my mind, a golden Elysium of opportunity and joy, where every wild desire could be met and tamed. And so, in that context, I keep wondering, what the fuck were they talking about?

Had their lives reached such a pinnacle of mundanity that, in retrospect, these years seemed like fun? Was it just the fog of nostalgia, ascribing to these times a sense of wild purpose which they did not, indeed, possess.

Or am I some kind of aberration? Should I be having the time of my life right now? Is it by my own obstinacy or some other flaw of character that I'm not enjoying myself? I've been here for a year and 2/3rds now, and I've met maybe three people I've connected with. I hold a strange, leering contempt for the vast majority of my peers. The next time I hear some Abercrombie-vested girl at the gym talking about how she "tried a keg stand and vomited but it was still soooo fun and oh shit, are you going to Zack's on Wednesday?" I'm going to jump off of a fucking balcony.

But that's really not the whole of it. More than anything it's this feeling of a profound lack of purpose that I can’t' shake. I feel like I’m just floating here in the Bellingham miasma, serving some kind of allotted purgatory before I can go out and actually be in the world.

Is it really just me? Empirically, the answer seems to be no. Most of my friends who I still see in Seattle are just as miserable as I am. Ironically, all they seem to want to do is get out of Seattle, and all I want to do is get back.

Dete Kudasai!

In retrospect, that was somewhat of an odd place from which to take an eight month hiatus. Hmm.


Since then, not a whole lot to report, really. I've found myself at home a lot lately. Maybe it's a sign; Bellingham is trying to tell me I don't belong there. Or not.

Here are some pictures I took:

"If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break,

When the levee break's, 'll have no place to stay."

Transitory

The other day, I was waiting for the bus in the International District, after going to Uwajimaya. As I was standing by the stop, about twenty feet away from me, a homeless man began to throw his belongings across a small grey cement wall, separating the sidewalk from a parking lot. After he had shifted all (or at least all that I could see) of his belongings, he followed them over the wall, and began to talk very loudly and semi-coherently, gesticulating wildly in concert. Among his belongings that he had thrown over the wall were two small, thin aluminum bookends and a book. He picked up all three, and after walking over to the garbage can next to the bus shelter, slammed the bookends down side by side and slid the book between them, pushing them towards one another so as to assure the book's snugness. His work down, he then picked up his belongings and walked across the street to Union Station, still yelling and gesticulating, and sat down by the doors.

I stood at the bus stop for another five minutes, staring at the book. It was an ancient hardback, bound with some sort of faded grey tweed-ish substance and tattering at all its edges. I had an intense, burning desire to walk over and see what book it was that the man had placed so forcefully on the trashcan. However, as he was sitting across the street, and as I had no idea what kind of reaction it would provoke, I decided against it, and settled with just staring at it until the bus arrived. I still want to know what that book was. It's starting to drive me fucking nuts.

Warm

Summer's turgid lethargy consumes us all.

Or, me anyways.
Summer's are always the same. Early June is seeded with epic, grand ambition and plans of conquest, but by the time mid July rolls around, you don't even have enough motivation to leave the house to get beer.

Things're always changing all around us. I'd be running to catch up, but I guess that fucks up my back, so it looks like I'll be swimming instead. If I ever get around to it. Uff.

reflections

A few things, i guess:

When I work for more than five hours and then go straight home and sleep, as I'm falling asleep, I get these these bizarre semi-conscious visions of the conveyor belt at the checkstand flashing on my eyelids, and it freaks the hell out of me. Thriftway is taking over my mind.

After spending a year in college, I've come to the sad conclusion that most college students bug the shit out of me.

Things can only be what they are, not what they were. Life moves only forward.


There, I hope you found these as profound to read as I did to write.
Goodnight.

If I Ever Leave this World Alive

It's odd to look back at the quarter and see it encapsulated in five blog entries. I guess I wasn't in a very effusively literary mood.

My things are packed. The room needs a sweeping and then it's clean. All that remains is to wait until the front desk is open, cart my things to the car and I am then forever gone of this room.

Fifty yard dash.

Geri o shite imasu - I have diarrhea.


And just for fun:

Benpi o shite imasu - I am constipated.

Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson

Well, that ties it. Time to learn Icelandic.

Out Back.

I think I kinda want one.

The Bluebird Can Sing, but the Crow's Got the Soul.

There's a crow outside my window. I've got the window open, and it's sitting on a thicker branch of the unknown species of tree behind the dogwood, which is still blooming. I can hear it squawk while I type, and when I look over, it looks back. Crows have a particularly penetrating, unwavering stare.
When I was little, my dad would always tell me never to hurt a crow; that some people believed that crows were the returning spirits of people who'd died. Sometime, I wonder.

Back in the Room.

Back again. Breaks are always at least a week too short. I think it's some kind of immutable law of the universe; that any amount of free time over a week is never appreciated until about two days before it ends.

My books are bought, surprisingly smaller in number, and cheaper than I was expecting. But still outrageously expensive by any other standards. I also had to hunt for replacement mechanical pencil erasers, but not the normal kind, the twist kind, which apparently are extremely difficult to obtain, because the bookstore went to great lengths to hide them as cunningly as possible. I finally found three of them in a little drawer built into one of the shelves.

The dogwood tree outside my window is beginning to bloom; a tiny flower framed by several brace of leaves on the tip of every branch offshoot. I wish I could post a picture, but I don't have any sort of camera. I should do something about that, one of these days.

mwahmwahmwahmwahmwaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Ugh. End of quarter and accompanying mountain of work...
Bleuh.

I will write again, I promise, but first the mountain must be scaled. And then filled with dynamite. And turned into a smoking crater.

Until then, this is pretty cool. And there are more, if you explore the site.





.........only six more days.....six more days.....six more days.........

ZOGG.

ZOGG.







(P.S. - Happy Valentine's Day)


(P.P.S. - You're supposed to click it)

-oog-

th incense burner is dirty n my room needs a sweepin afore this dust floats into my lungs and thn i can't breathe the dry bellingham air thts chappin the shit outta my face. dead cracked flakes n the morning n red skin n the mirror.

36 Chambers

I'm always whining about all this shit I want to do, but when I actually have the time to do it, I don't.

I should take my own damn advice and go on a walk.

On My Mind.

Beinn.

Selected Tiger Mountain pictures:

I think that, the fundamental aspect of life, is that everything is completely absurd.
Taking that into account, I will now go to sleep.