on the cusp of june, torn between competing feelings: june already? and seriously, only june?! beautiful weather, i've taken blogging outside for my first time ever. this place feels like home, but not as much as it once did. it's familiar and i feel familiar, not quite where everybody knows my name but in the last week i've weaved myself into at least part of the social fabric here. i still have acquaintances, the people i graduated high school with that i hear from periodically, but there's no big homecoming. that's familiar in a way, too. there might be for somebody. keep thinking i want to work on the book, which is to say, start the fucking thing in a meaningful way. all the tools are here, i have plenty of time and all of the places within reach. it's the correct season.

it lines up: things happening all around that i'm not in on, comings and goings, encounters and parties. to alter into the first person a lucksmiths lyric, i live here but i'm a sightseer. always have been. that's what i wanted to write about, somehow living in a place but being so detached from what actually happens there, swimming in an intellectual pool you filled yourself behind a fence of obliviousness. each and every wasting day.

summer makes us all reckless in some measure, except without measure because we are reckless. what am i doing right now? in summer we become a little more reckless, more willing to take chances and chalk it up to the heat or the creeping heat-fed ineptitude, a childlike inability to wield a pencil anymore now that daily homework assignments have disappeared. does everyone remember? out of practice.

i'll think myself more into a pseudo-depression and escape to a nevercoming artistic project. i suppose that's what i've always done before. there's so little patience in me sometimes. i've decided the sounds of approaching sunset are not enough and started up electro-shock blues on my tooquiet ibook speakers. i feel like a real mac user now that my model has been discontinued. right to sad music, but meaningful music. reminds me of summers of the past, people of the past. if i don't delve too deeply into those thoughts i come out happy, almost feeling like i've been a part of something. like the names of people i kept on my cell phone address book months and years after my last contact with them, as if they'd remember me if i ever dared make contact or they'd ever give me a passing thought during a moment of reflection. no. i have a different number now anyway, but even some people since that change i don't talk to now. once more recently by accident. want to write a story about one of them. wouldn't want her to know.

i wonder where they are. all of them. sometimes the same places but never the same people. not yet.

life is so open-ended here sometimes. i'm only writing like this about the past and wishes for a portion of the future that i have control over because i have no idea what will be next.

nice breeze out here. doesn't feel like anything too bad could be coming.

musings on starlight, found via 3 quarks daily:

celebrating the commonplace:

[...]Other things are thought about for the first time because they are so utterly commonplace that no one has bothered to think about them before. These are the kind of things I like to think about.

Consider starlight. What could be more commonplace than starlight?

Arcturus is high in the southeast these evenings. Arcturus is 36 light-years away. That's 216 trillion miles. And I saw it.

It's not like a special ray of light came from Arcturus to my eyes. That's what we often imagine. We've seen so many pictures of Stars of Bethlehem and Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars with beams of light shooting straight down to Earth that it's easy to believe that the light from the star is somehow directed towards us, personally. But, of course, when we think about it, we realize that this is not so.

The light from a star radiates in every direction, like a constantly expanding balloon of energy, getting weaker all the time. Only the tiniest fraction of a star's light falls upon the Earth...

read it all.

based on a conversation from saturday night:

the opposite of sex is not not sex, the opposite of sex is golf.

feel free to discuss.

some crazy dude predicted that the world was essentially going to end on may 25th when a comet or aliens or aliens riding a comet slim pickens style crashed into the atlantic and set off some volcanotsunamicalypse that would wipe out the east coast, the one i love the most. fitting, i thought. that's the day i'm going to prom a year late.

it's all in extremes. we had to stand outside in the courtyard of the high school, a massive blob of formally-clad teenagers in the blazing sun, quickly burning, quickly becoming angry at the wait to be announced. it all seems like such a big deal to some people. i remember one girl several years back saying that the semi in dracut is like a prom and the prom is "like the oscars."

even before that: extremely awkward social situation. arrived first at the house we were meeting at to depart for the school. all dressed up with a very specific place to go. i don't know them, they don't know me. nicole was still an hour off at that point. but everything worked out.

omnibus. "bus" is a shortening of omnibus didn't you ever wonder.

everything worked out. the dresses, especially hers: a victory for poofiness. the dance floor: fits in the scheme of extremes. so hot. guy in bathroom at the hyatt commented to me about it. why are you talking to me? i don't know you.

who are you? who are any of you?

saw kelly, saw heather, saw people i didn't expect who also didn't expect to see me. why would they? remembered grad night last year, the hour-long pool game with kelly. still haven't developed the pictures: cues at awkward angles, speech slurred by weariness, hypnotically induced lesbianism a distant backdrop.

few slow songs. mostly techno, rap, fast. i danced. first time. didn't expect to. jacko danced. should have expected that. california, let's have a party.

available light photographs. screw flash. the room wasn't that bright and your photographic remembrances shouldn't be either. keeps it more real that way. no one took my advice.

the cruise: my mind struggles internally with its physical rival: the anti-pill gag reflex. it's a boat, i've never been on a boat. there will be motion sickness. there's one of those doors with the wheel dealie on it in the bathroom that leads to the engine room. dramamine? didn't end up taking it, didn't get sick. everything works out.

stayed downstairs or downboat or downship or whatever all night, which passed quickly. karaoke, the classics. all night. chairs hastily and strangely arranged, some couples trying to sleep. didn't even try. that was later. unlike the name of the boat, the cruise part wasn't so much of an odyssey. we drank shirley temples laughing about how it was after midnight and the world didn't end. good try, crazy dude.

but a world was ending, because that night quickly passing was self-contained, a state of mind. it doesn't make sense elsewhere, it only comes through in moments and pictures and words and thoughts stripped of context and meaning. it's intangible like all other times, but unlike most other times in life it feels like it would be worth holding on to.

"memories." won't you let me see...?

early morning off the boat, cloud-dappled red sunrise. so early. all one long day, no night to speak of in a way. light rain. standing, waiting again. in the rain. extremes. but not the rain, just the arbitrary wait. then we moved.

falling asleep on the bus early in the morning driving back, her body against mine, drifting, eyes closed, her sleeping most of the way while i only lost consciousness for a few minutes. still, the equivalent of a night of sleep on a red-dappled sunblazing ultralong day such as this one, so the first thing i wake up to is my head on her shoulder and the calmness of her sleep. indescribable glowy-ethereal beauty of a single moment. movement of the bus, occasional bumps: still she sleeps. bless yourself in motion.

then parting, home: slept nearly all day, got a message from mary at some point while i was sleeping for the first stretch, a kick back into the other life. back to sleep, then up, then maybe back to sleep again. not fully myself until six, maybe later. talked to becky, wish she'd write; listened to certain helium songs over and over:

--sitting on a p-i-n-s-t-r-i-p-e glowing like the ocean...

nicole finally called and several of us were out again tonight, still feeling like one long day. movies this time, more familiar territory, people-watching. it's friday night so let's take a moment and look at all the junior high kids. were we ever...?

driving back tonight: foggy, thick, so warm all day. windows open. more helium.

'cause she's sweeter than a honeycomb...

"in a certain sense you deny the existence of this world. you explain life as a state of rest, a state of rest in motion."

-- franz kafka

this is what i hate: anxiety-induced mental exhaustion (when nothing is actually going on) due to an impending event. it happens to me far too often, time standing still like this, and it has probably cost me friends or at least lost me my reputation for timeliness in the past. radio silence, in a way. it's worse at home, when i'm isolated in the first place. i'll be back in familiar territory soon.

but these are three great takes on the "english as national language" issue and the prevalence of nativist fuckery these days:

world socialist web site: us senate declares english the "national language": a boost to chauvinism and racism

i blame the patriarchy: us senate to hispanics: "fuck you mucho"

david neiwert: the "southwestern strategy" (a must read)

i woke up around eight today and it was raining again. light rain, normal spring rain. i fell back asleep to the sound of an early morning thunderstorm, dreaming.

driving around yesterday i noticed that waters still seem to be high and it's raining again today. flooding, perhaps, but not on a sustained weeklong basis like before. the water table may still be high, father says. maybe the water will finally get into our basement.

so the waters were still high when i was driving yesterday, driving over a bridge no less. panic. that was nothing compared to patty and i finding our way back from salem on monday after the final final: sunken dystopic north shore. alternate routes, sudden river in the road. i should have taken pictures. it feels different now, it's warmer and i can hear the raindrops hitting leaves just outside of my window.

last night was so beautiful-- weather so pleasant: the music: dressy bessy, saturday looks good to me. walk me down the street, sit me on your front porch swing and sing me something sweet until i fall asleep.

i love how there's that scene in kingdom of heaven where jeremy irons becomes disillusioned with the crusade and basically says, "ok, fuck this, we're going to cyprus," suddenly leaving the movie.

just saying. it's funny when you think about it that way.

"it is admirable to consider how many millions of people come into, and go out of the world, ignorant of themselves, and of the world they have lived in."

-- william penn, some fruits of solitude in reflections and maxims

my whole family is in the other room watching american idol with a level of interest that some would deem obscene. patty, though watching just as intently as the others, at least realises it. she was just saying something along the lines of, "oh, yeah, this is what we care about when there are people dying everywhere."

cue the x-men movie tie-in. they're drawing this out to an hour, apparently.

a snippet of my father: "i'm thinking it'll be [names of contestants i don't remember or care about], but with 50 million votes, anything could happen!"

please.

he sounds like a commercial. we all do. then i read things like this. i don't want to complete this thought.

today is a beautiful day, an exaggeratedly beautiful day after so many days of rain and an "epochal flood event."

i think after a week or two i'll settle in much more here and the days will stop seeming so long, each one a tiny miracle of sorts. then days will just be days. later, days will become more like an obstacle to be overcome before coveted next year. grass=greener? much more so.

alone at the moment. the house seems much more pleasant when the family isn't here. i can open things up and put some music on. i'm trying to get them to take some vacations, specifically camping vacations, something they enjoy but i certainly do not. hence, house to myself for extended periods of time.

i got my car back, they couldn't seem to find anything wrong with it. my dad was driving when it started behaving strangely, so i'm not even sure exactly what he thought was wrong. i'm a little afraid to drive it, but i may go out later. i don't know where i'll go. i never know where to go when i'm here-- that's part of the problem.

i still need to get the new world on dvd. can't wait for the extended version, but i need another fix of the theatrical version now that it's available. i'll end up getting both, i know it. that's probably what i'll do, i'll go out and buy that. they want $20 for it nearly everywhere, though. not even the extended edition: seems like it should be less.

i barely slept. finals happened. finals are over, school is over, and i'm going home. i miss everyone already. it's still raining.

someone pulled the fire alarm around 3:30 a.m., adding to the litany of strange or foreboding events since the sun went down. it's still raining, and there's this dull sense that the entire world is flooding around us. i keep thinking about that millhauser story but i don't have the book with me. i don't have much with me. there's some serious rage against whoever might have been the puller, and laura has suggested a "witch hunt."

how appropriate.

it feels like...did anyone see that movie identity?

*chirp*

yeah, i didn't think highly of it. but john cusack! good!

of all the places to be in a persistent rain such as this-- bowditch hall. let alone the motel with the numbers and the keys and such. what we have here are some confused people, some taking the situation better than others. rampant speculation, a threat of electrical fires, ever-cloaking weirdness, and constantly falling water. chaos on a controlled scale approaching the level of "but i don't have enough clothes" rather than "we're all gonna die," but an issue nonetheless.

so here's what happened: i've been away since wednesday night, intending to return sunday (or, if you will, today) to stay overnight in spartan conditions (reminiscent of orientation, but add an ibook and subtract whitey mchitler) and take a final on monday morning. then flooding got going, the roads didn't look good, so i drove in with patty and we gave laura a ride in as well. now, with the current state of emergency and unfortunate flooding of surrounding areas, it doesn't seem likely that finals will actually take place in the morning.

so what then?

a common question. no matter what, it will be terribly inconvenient, especially considering that the dorms are supposed to close on tuesday at five. finals would theoretically be moved to wednesday. what then indeed?

six days of rain, almost certainly a seventh directly ahead. is it hyperbolic to start talking about this as biblical?

it is, but the state of emergency and state of confusion merge into an elixir of panic as persistent as the rain itself, though still on a low, subconscious level. we become uncomfortable. laura just called the people who are supposed to know and apparently they don't know. "no decision has been made."

i hate being between things like this.

"whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not. your mother brings you into the world, carries you first in her body. what do we know about what she feels? but whatever she feels, it, at least, must be real. it must be. what are our ideas or ambitions? play. ideas! why, that bloody bleating goat temple has ideas. maccann has ideas too. every jackass going the roads thinks he has ideas."

-- james joyce, a portrait of the artist as a young man

day after day after day after day of gloomy skies and depressing coldness, but a lovely flowering tree, which i sometimes call my tree, visible through my bedroom window. a petalscattered yard, the pinkness accentuated in the chilled air of questionable spring.

i first started paying attention to that tree and seeing some signs of life in this once-deadening room of mine that i've occupied for so many years last spring, which was as much a rebirth of my life itself as it was for sweet nature that gets its due every year. the subject of a year ago has been on my mind a lot lately-- blossoming consciousness, life's too good, cavalier poetry, snowflakes, wscs, the miracle if the telephone, and all the rest.

transcendence, unity: i trust you with the world.

* * *

so this is home life once again, and this is the persistent rainstorm. i hear flooding is likely. the ever-progressing series of hour-by-hour forecast captions online show an advance from showers to rain to heavy rain through the upcoming evening hours. i don't mind it so much: flooding won't have any effect on this house on a hill. i only wish it were a bit warmer. not necessarily warm, just not cold. i want to listen to the rain later tonight when i'll be up late. i'll move down to the kitchen and maybe open the door despite the cold: pitter-patter meets the ear while only a thick aquatic dark meets the eye.

i've been listening to susan mckeown's blackthorn: irish love songs with great interest today. i really need to listen to some more of her stuff; i first heard of her when i stumbled across this, her latest album, while looking for recordings of "the lass of aughrim." her rendition is quite good.

i barely slept last night due to a combination of my hopelessly wandering thoughts and a heat in the room that only seems to get more oppressive as the nights i will have to deal with it dwindle. i finally for the first time ever ended up sleeping with my head facing the other way because i couldn't take it being near the heater anymore. i had always been worried, and this is one of those paranoid anxiety delusions of mine, that sleeping like that would somehow cause me to miss hearing my alarm clock when it went off. it wasn't a problem. so much for that. thinking now, my nights could have been a lot more comfortable back during the dead of winter.

the morning hours, sunless, served as an occasional backdrop during the off periods of shivers and sparklethroughs of dreams, the type of dreams that have quick flashes of consciousness in between and form a sort of crazysurreal narrative. that's my new word. i've rarely felt more alone than in the moments after i finally managed to pull myself out of bed and let the strand of dreams go. i packed and stripped the walls with sad music and rain music, the designations of course mine, playing.

the museum today certainly was enjoyable, though a dull headache from lack of sleep continued following me all day, assuaged none by the inconsistencies and abject cruelties of the public transportation system. good food at uhop, though. i got back to salem just as patty was leaving dracut, giving me an hour or so to kill with everything packed. fortunately, nicole called. i needed that, but we couldn't talk for long, and there's so much to talk about.

transition, but on a staggered schedule. the drive back tonight, made longer than ever by highway closure, isn't the true homecoming, but it may as well be. my sunday/monday stayover for a final exam and final checkout is more of a distraction at this point than anything else. there's a long summer to focus on and many directions it could take. my head is swimming and i need so very much sleep.

listening to damon & naomi's more sad hits on a rainy day. today, for example.

also: wind. i don't have it in mind all the time, but i over the summer i really will miss living so close to the ocean.

i just spent the last hour fixing a bunch of formatting issues that cropped up when i tried to edit some things this morning. the internet was very angry with me. i think it's okay now.

update: then it wasn't okay again.

update two: if you can see this, then it's officially okay.

with 24-hour quiet time in effect, the battlefields of bowditch hall fall silent.

in an essay question for my world civ final i definitely just described former colonial powers interfering in decolonized areas as a "kind uncle with a pocketful of candy" who later intervenes militarily. right.

anyway, i'm thinking about how today is actually my last full day in the dorm. tomorrow, i'm heading over to the mfa with a group of folks (no jill, though, very sad) and then moving the majority of my stuff out and going home with patty in the night. it's all i can do at this point to continually recite to myself the schedule of the next week. it's over soon.

"did you ever see a nun
wielding a gun
down by the bay?"

-- ashley

tearing things up and throwing things away.

that was today, or at least part of it. the bittersweet moments of packing early. very early. what else was i to do on a sunday afternoon? so i went after it, i took out a stack of papers i've been meaning to throw away for a while and went through other more recent ones that i've simply neglected to sort in the hectic days of the last few months. i tore things, things that didn't need to be torn, as some sort of anger subsitute. i was visibly, gleefully, and baselessly angry at paper. threw away a lot of things, no regrets either. then again, the nature of regret often causes it to manifest itself later. maybe in a few weeks i'll really want to remember what i got on those sociology papers that are now long gone. most likely not. i threw away half of my childhood when cleaning my room at home a couple of years ago and that hasn't caught up yet.

it might.

then the drawers. my second drawer hasn't been touched except to put things in for basically the entire year, so it was almost like an excavation. a very, very emotionally trying excavation. layers. first, recent things: better save my housing info for next year, my schedule for next year, reminder for finals the next two weeks. then things from earlier and earlier, ending with the original room condition report. the beginning. as i sorted, thoughts: why did i keep some of these things? i almost want to be angry, like with the tearing things that don't need to be torn, but the same logic applies. there's no point. some things are just over.

i haven't stripped the walls yet. that comes last, probably the night before i go, when it will be dark and i'll be less likely to notice the very prison-like nature of this undecorated dorm room that seemed so foreboding back in september. i wonder how well i'll sleep.

go to bed,
you’ve thought too much for one day,
gotten mostly nowhere.
go to bed,
the world is too much for one day,
so start it over.

start your car,
go wherever you’re going to go,
but know that it is nowhere.
fall in love,
you’ve wanted to for so long,
it’s time to get that over with.

go to bed
with someone you’d like to go to bed with,
and see what happens.

thank you
for this beautiful new day,
it’s forever.
today is our day to go nowhere...

-- apollo sunshine, "bed"

the last day of classes hovers in its last few insignificant hours. i feel like i should say something.

a lot of people have already left. i got to see the exodus out my window, more substantial than the typical friday host, the arms of the students and their parents full of items that don't usually get taken home just for a weekend. out the window i'm sure i saw some missed opportunities, people i'd like to have known better, people i may never see again. you can't know everyone. i don't think i'd want to. but we all have people we wish we were closer to, even if the characteristics we perceive in them have little or no basis in reality.

some people are so much more attractive as concepts, as collections of characteristics and personal quirks observed from afar. some people were much more attractive before we knew them, and perhaps they become attractive again after circumstances force us to know them no longer. some people we'd like to know but are never given the opportunity. missed opportunities. they were leaving today, or they left a long time ago. depends on how literal we're being. some of them were never really there.

some of them really were concepts, some of them simply filled in the roles already carved out for the people we knew before. i frequently make the observation that everyone i meet seems similar in some way or another to someone i already know or knew, and therefore i conclude jokingly that there are only so many molds of people and i've somehow managed to meet them all. not so.

not so at all. it has a lot more to do with using new people to fill in those spaces we carved out in our thoughts for acquaintances, the people who we only know partially. we carved out those spaces with the notion that their original occupants would be around forever, but that was never to be. but they didn't quite fit, and it never really mattered. hey, we barely talked to them anyway. it's all okay. they won't miss us. how could they? and with a little effort we won't miss them.

so, despite the trivial matter of two more finals to go in the space of ten days, that's it for freshman year. i guess there isn't really much to say. nothing that makes sense, anyway.

most fun i've had correcting someone's paper, ever.

watch: john hodgman on the daily show back in november, as a guest, before he became the resident expert.

listen: 700 hobo names, read by the author. too much funny.

i really need to get around to reading that book.

one more paper, two more classes. actually, one more class. the other one doesn't count. just have to get through the paper...

"i will possibly see you again."

christine and i got to talking about eternity again. i remember my first experience with the idea of death. i don't remember how old i was, but i must have been very young. i think it was around christmas, because there were those little trains that i used to play with that only came out in mid-december, but that could just be a crossed wire in memory somewhere. patty says i was a very talkative child, learning to converse and read and all of that very, very early. this was before they tried to get me into any specific theology, though i had been baptized catholic. a lot of good that did.

anyway, it's just this incredibly vague memory, a child with his mother, christmas tree or maybe not, talking about god. she seemed willing to let all those years of uncertainty repressed by catholic doctrine out. "i don't know," she said. i don't know. that's the part that stuck out. i think a lot of my relationship with my parents over the years has been shaped by the understanding between us that they don't necessarily know best. i've been allowed to make my own mistakes, and i think they must feel their hands-off approach paid off, because i turned out to be the good kid, the one with free reign who uses it to sit around reading.

back to eternity. christmas tree? still not sure. so we were talking about death. there i am, maybe a few years old, first child of a relatively successful middle class family, considering what it means to no longer be here. at all. nothingness. i asked her what it all meant, she said she didn't know. then i proposed a scenario, and i remember this part distinctly. what if two people were good friends, and one of them died before the other and went to heaven? couldn't he come back for a little while and tell the other guy what it's like?

"no one has ever done that."

so there it was, what everyone has been puzzling over since the beginning. in later years, as i imagine many others have, i'd lie paralyzed in bed, terrified of death. there was this recurring vision of the earth fading in the distance and then an unexplainable nothingness. a very scary unexplainable nothingness.

do yourself a favour and contemplate some of this at some point. say your name over and over again until it doesn't mean anything.

one magical way to think of this: i had a good experience with ssc administration, so anything is now possible.

so sudden. feels like last year, feels like forever. feels like the thing i always avoided, the events that i always skipped, the family functions i never showed up at, breeding resentment among the cousins.

but this time i'm going, this time there are administrative hurdles, photocopiers. the thrill of discovery. a chance for something better? something to write about, something to think about, something to live about. the culmination of my other life? there are two lives in play here, i realize that. scott mccaughey once famously (at least to me) sang, "after all is said and done, two lives are no better than one," but tied together as a single life i suppose it all works out fairly well.

i go home on weekends, or at least i have, this trend is of course nearly complete, and i don't imagine anyone cares much what i'm doing. i'll hang out with christine, catch up on tv shows, read a book. no one stays here all the time, everyone has the double life going on. still, it's been an amazing year, that word mainly holding true in its happy sense during second semester. first semester was...what? a learning experience, a holding pattern, the embodiment of that thing i read in nietzsche about love for one person being a piece of barbarism, excluding so many others? something like that.

then second semester. robert pollard singing in my head from about christmas on, huffman prairie flying field, rebirth, flight, all of that. something new. it worked. i met or rediscovered wonderful people. turned my life around. you know who you are.

thank you so much.

i was fucking hysterical last night, and now it's okay. "everything's basically okay." that was my mantra for a while - a while when it wasn't true. no need to say it when it's evident. maybe there is. i'll remind myself, so i don't pull a last night again.

heh, "pull a last night."

that phrase has a short shelf life.

new neil young album. living with war. you listen.

choice quote from someone in world civ today:

"i'd like to talk about burger king because i like their commercials with the king, but it would take a lifetime to understand the king...maybe i'll look at that for a career path."

kronborg castle, elsinore, denmark. best known as the setting for hamlet.

a good time overall. as with just about every event of any planned significance in my life up to this point, i became irrationally anxious for no good reason and everything worked out in the end.

well, not everything. i still need to learn how to may.

be informed, please. this is the real labour day.

"the first of may demanded the introduction of the eight-hour day. but even after this goal was reached, may day was not given up. as long as the struggle of the workers against the bourgeoisie and the ruling class continues, as long as all demands are not met, may day will be the yearly expression of these demands. and, when better days dawn, when the working class of the world has won its deliverance then too humanity will probably celebrate may day in honor of the bitter struggles and the many sufferings of the past."

-- rosa luxemburg, "what are the origins of may day?" 1894.

there's still some life in it.