All you need

First posted 3-3-04

"All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people."
- My Man Godfrey

Edit: no emo, yes movie quote.

Out of this comes a sickness

First posted 2-28-04, edited later to remove my shame. There will be much of this in the posts to come.

"It happens to have killed man's faith in his ability to influence what happens to him. And out of this comes a sickness, and out of sickness a frustration, a feeling of impotence, helplessness, weakness."
- Seven Days in May

Edit: good lord, did I really write that shit back then? How horribly embarassing.

A situation like this

First posted 2-26-04

"You know, a situation like this has a high potentiality for the common motherfucker to bitch out."
- Out of Sight

Ain't that the fucking truth.

But before that. I had originally a different topic in mind for my particular brand of rant tonight, but I've decided to postpone it until tomorrow. Timing wasn't quite right. But instead I shall talk first about the thing which I'm sure everyone who knows me expects me to talk about.

Snow.

Yes, it snowed last night. And in the very Georgia tradition of the season, school was closed on account of an inch of snow that is all but melted away. Got to love the South. In any event, here are the events. I wake up a quarter after 6 AM, thoroughly tired from staying up too late playing Tetris at Pam's. Probably had the most fun doing that than I have had in a very long while. The "Schnap" story will be a private joke between us, I am sure. Stagger and yawn through the morning routine, then wander over to the window and take a look outside. White. A white blanket draped over the cars. First thought is to immediately turn on the computer and check the email. Yep, school closed. Cool, can relax a little this morning, though I still go in early. And after a time and fashion, I step outside to travel to work. And I am confronted on the steps by the curved and patterned indentations of Jeff's footprints in the snow. I have not seen a scene of this magnitude in some time. I step slowly, carefull down the steps to the car. At which point I pause. I stop and smell the cleaness of the air. Hear the snow-crested stillness that only comes in the early morning after that snowfall. I look up to the depthless skies, paled over with gray clouds so that I cannot tell where the clouds actually stop. And I am happy. For three seconds there I am happy. I grab a wad of wet, packing, wonderful snow from the car roof, roll it into a ball and lightly heave into the air. I watch as it disappears into the lawn in that strange way that snow becomes other snow and is gone. And I proceed to work through the fairy land. Ruts on the pavement that haven't seen ruts in two years since the last snow. An early morning wakeup call snowman on the corner. And as I tremble up the bridge to work, shuffle the old man shuffle across the slippery creaking boards, I pause at the end near the building. I had never noticed before, but the end of that bridge dips between a bank of trees. Just sort of juts between them. This morning I paused in that section and stared through the white-lined branches until the roadwork and the streetlamps and powerlines all disappeared, and for a moment there I thought I was in the snow-tamped forests of my youth. In the accompanying peace and silence.

It is the silence that I love. Night snows are the best. In snowfall itself the flakes are large and stark against the night sky and they seem to drop from nowhere. Seemingly just a few feet above your head. There is no start there. Then you wake up early in the morning, before the world arises and see the fields, pristine and unmarred by the mark of man. As if I were all alone on this planet. But it's the silence most of all. It is quiet during the snowfall. No cars on the streets, people bundled warm in their houses. So quiet that I can hear my footsteps solidly crunch in the drifts. So solid, so sure. The sound reassures me that I am real. My footsteps make sound, they leave prints. I am alive. I am here. I am real.

Edit: snip out the emo

Don't let the bastards get you down

First posted 2-25-04

"Don't let the bastards get ya down."
- Payback

Today Dawn called me a pukka. Met up as we walked to class and called me a pukka. It's better than it sounds. Pukka is one of the Jack Payne Memorial Words of the Week. I miss Jack, he was a good man. Such men should not be lost. We should have the power to say, "that guy there, he's a good guy. We want him to stay around. Him over there, not so good. Take him; leave Jack." But anyways, pukka means "genuine" or "the real deal." So she called me a pukka. I tried to say something witty, like "I should hope so, I hate to think there was another one of me around." Nonsense.

But as I think about it now, I realize I am not a pukka. I am not real. It reminds of something I wrote Emily in the explanatory email. I told her that I was not a man. That I'm not even human. I am the antithesis of a human. I am the empty space where a person should be. A photonegative. I am defined by my lack. Outlined as a shape by what I am not. This is truth.

Ultimately that thought helped. It defined for me the scope of my villian in my novel. This was a character that defied description for some time. I still don't have a story, but I have the villian now, and he is me. Or at least the me that is not a me. He is this emptiness that dwells within. And remarkably it reminds me of another story that I tried to write. This story took shape in my mind one evening about a year ago. It was the story of a coversation between a man and the Devil. But I took an entirely different bend on the Devil. Almost comical, very sorrowful. Basically I showed the Devil as a very beaten middle-aged man, pathetic really, but he was defined by his desire. Consuming desire. It was a great story in my head. I wish I had written it down then. I tried to write it later, but the dialogue was not the wit that it was at that moment. It is a great regret, that story. It was a brilliance that I let slip. If only I had written it at that moment, in that moment. It would have been fascinating.

I have no ending to this blog. I have no way to tie it to my movie quote. Hell, I have nothing to say for this movie quote other than I like it. Like most of my thoughts I will let this drift. Though I will conclude in a very traditional blog style. I will include a hyperlink. This is a site I found on the Forums. This is 2-dimensional sidewalk art, drawn in chalk. It looks entirely 3-dimensional. So much so, I can't even find the plane of its real existance.

http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm

My personal favorites are the swimming pool and the self portrait (if only for the Cubs hat).

Away from the things of man

First posted 2-24-04

"Away from the things of man, my love. Away from the things of man."

- Joe vs. the Volcano

I once knew a man named Carlos. A good opening that. He was an assistant manager at the theater. A 6'6" black man, always in stylish cuts and he loved to hit the dance clubs. The absolute epitomy of trend. A good man. One day he disappeared. He was supposed to show at work and didn't. And he didn't for days. Didn't even pick up his paycheck. Eventually the topic of him died down, but I never found out what happened. I still wonder. I like to think that something in him just snapped, something just flicked, and he took off for parts unknown. And I would very much like to do that.

Deep in the marble tribal pillars of myself, I feel this urge. I would like to step out of work someday, step into my car, step on the gas and just drive. Forward. And never back. Just keep going until the roads have no names and the signs are rusted and bullet-ridden. Until the car runs out of gas, dies, falls to rust, disintegrates with entropy and chaos. Disappear into the mist. Fade.

I can imagine the lives of those around me. "What happened to Patrick?" they would ask. And knowing their minds, it would be two or three days until someone called the apartment to check. Just my rude and curt answering machine. The cell phone? The voice mail. No email. No smoke signals. Just Patrick gone. I think the best lasting memory I could leave in the minds of those I know is that of an unfinished mystery. Not a bang, not a whimper, just an "oh, well then...huh?" Very much the sigma summation of my existance.

I have a theory. In a very Warhol-esque fashion, I believe that each person is allotted a certain amount of happiness. 15 minutes per se. The number is unimportant and I'm too lazy to do the math. But each person gets only so much. But some people have more happiness than others. It is assymetric. And I think that if the happiness of those around me requires that I toil in misery and drudge, then I will take one for the team. People, take that which is offered to you. Live. Live in happiness if you can. There are those that can not, and they are doing it for you. The Alamo of the soul. Though I hate the word soul....

I make no promises of this blog. I do not even know if I will ever post another. And I personally don't care what the internet community at large thinks of my thoughts. This is close as I can come to sending my thoughts to the electronic void, and much of this rant has been less eloquent than I originally intended, though much can be said the same for my life. When/If I do this again, I will try to lead with a movie quote. That, at least, should be some cheap form of entertainment.

Life would be easier if we could fade at will. Not die, not pass to other realms or other sci-fi jibberish. But just fade. Disappear into nothing. These days I feel I should fade. That this all to earthy and earthly body of mine should remove its profanity from the face of this place. Thin without a whisper, without a sound. Just erased. Removed. Away from the things of man...