And How Blog

All About Eve

2012-04-28T23:41:00.000-05:00

There's a party happening on my back patio but I just can't bring myself to attend. But I wan't invited so I'm not being missed. But the invitation is open so I wouldn't be crashing. And I do live here, after all. But I'm still here instead of there.

Hello blog. It's me, your owner. I know you barely recognize me. Do you even remember my face after all this time? Nearly a year to the day. That would have been too perfect. I could always post-date...

I've been thinking about happiness because I'm unhappy and that's the only time I seem to have the time to think about happiness. When I'm in it I don't have time to write anything down. When I'm not I have all the time in the world. Tick tock.

I've been scrolling Facebook thinking about my past lives and the people who were in them. People keep getting married and I think about how stupid wedding are. Oh sure, let us get together and celebrate your love, and you'll spend all this money and we'll spend all this money on this grand celebration that all of us will attend a million of in our lives. But yours is special. But it's not. Because it's manufactured by Say Yes to the Dress and the New York Magazine weddings issue. Et cetera.

I'm reaching two years in New Orleans and that makes me feel less about my time in New York. It was such a serious, substantial time in my young adult life, and those 30 total months seemed like such an accomplishment. Now I'm getting older and two years isn't that long after all. And moving to and from New York isn't that big of an accomplishment after all.

The people at the party on my back patio have gotten progressively drunker and a part of me wishes I'd been there all along. But they're too drunk to welcome me in on the Mariah Carey sing-a-long, especially dead sober. I'm not lamenting my lack of attendance, just imagining where life may have taken me had I stepped out the back door.

I'm far from crumbling but I'm not solid. In fact I'm more confident in myself than maybe I ever have been, but ultimately without direction. And that makes me insecure.

I wrote a post a while back about how I quit everything. I searched for it and it turns out I wrote it exactly a year before my last post, which was exactly a year ago yesterday. Exactly two years and I feel exactly the same. Accomplishment?

Here we go loop de loop.

Get It Right, One Time

2011-04-27T02:18:00.002-05:00

A week flies by so quickly and I look around and think oh jeez where did that week go? It's warm out and the breeze is strong. Parts of the country are being whipped by brutal winds but in New Orleans it's just the wind off the river and the sun shining down. On Easter Sunday we sat on the river and watched small boats become big boats then become small boats again and squeeze underneath the giant Mississippi River Bridge in the distance.

In my childhood I'd visited with my parents and we sat on that same pier in that same spot and when my mom went to take a picture a gutter punk stood up and yelled, "DON'T TAKE A PICTURE OF ME!" and my mom said, "Okay but you're not in it anyway." I asked her why the kid didn't want his picture taken and she said he might have been a runaway. Now I'm the runaway. But you can take my picture if you want.

Seeing God in Signposts

2011-04-21T00:41:00.005-05:00

I run a Twitter account for Patti Smith quotes, @ThePattiSmith. I started it back in August just after I left New York and moved to New Orleans because I searched for one and it didn't exist. Besides spreading Patti's wisdom to my now more than 1,500 followers, it also obligates me to be constantly reading Patti Smith interviews, old and new. I've seen her voice develop in interviews from the mid and late 70s, right after Horses was released and its influence began to spread, all the way up to 2011, when she's a National Book Award winner for her memoir Just Kids — a book that changed my life profoundly. Patti, her music, and her written work was one of those things that came along at just the right time and was just what I needed. I'm writing this from New Orleans today in large part because of her influence. I often refer to her as the Patron Saint of Young Artists, and she is.

While preparing today's Patti tweet, I read a quote from a recent interview that has stuck with me:

"Life is filled with those kinds of signposts. I believe in these things, you know, fate. Of course, fate is like a secret friend that helps push you on into life. I often think of those things. One can think of them for the good, and one can think of them for the mistakes we've made. I try to keep it balanced in my mind that you know that's how we get through life. We have our free will, but a lot of fate and a little bit of luck."

This is my exact outlook on life, fate, the Universe and its odd way of working. About a week from now I'll "celebrate" the one year anniversary of leaving my journalism career in New York. At that time my friends and I were all Patti obsessed, craving the life of art and work she lived in the Chelsea Hotel with Robert Mapplethorpe and what was left of the Andy Warhol gang. We idolized that life and time, even knowing that it will never be like that again, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. But we can at least try to capture that spirit in the way we live our daily lives, and in our own budding work.

I recently finished filling a journal I started last April, about a month before I left my magazine job. Reading back, I was so unhappy at that time. I wished desperately for no responsibilities, for no worry of money, to just have time to think and meet people and listen and read and write and just... be. An opportunity presented itself and now, nine months into New Orleans, I've had exactly that. But it's coming to an end, and at an appropriate time. As of April 28, I'm on my own again. I've found a new job, a place to live that I'll have to pay for, and I have to be a real adult again. April 28 will be the one year anniversary of my last day at Fast Company.

The Universe is funny like that. I often put my thoughts and hopes out and see if anything happens. Sometimes it's almost instant, sometimes it takes a long while, but most of the time I do get some kind of response. I can now see why things that didn't work out didn't, and why things that did work out did. Not that I don't have questions — this last year of my life has been one massive question mark, and continues to be. But things seem to be shaping up and the future/present is looking good.

This whole month I've struggled with making a decision: to move back to New York or to stay here in New Orleans. After weeks of thinking, writing, talking to friends, I finally made my choice: stay here. It feels good to make that commitment to myself, to have something solid. I've been so confused, but for the sake of my own sanity I finally had to pick one, and staying seemed like the right thing to do. I just didn't feel I was finished with New Orleans yet.

But my life here will be somewhat less traditional that the life I pictured for myself three years ago when I graduated college. I was talking about corporate-type jobs with my mom a few days ago and she said something that I've known about myself but needed to be reminded of: "You've always been more of a free spirit than that." It's true. I value structure but can't foresee myself sitting at a desk day in and day out for the rest of my life. I did that for two years and look where it got me. As it always has been, my life will be a series of adventures and experience not defined by the cultural norms. I'm not failing because I didn't choose to climb the traditional corporate ladder, no matter what high school counselors and undergrad advisers have told me. People may not understand my choice to work at a locally owned vintage clothing shop and have an open availability for projects that come along, and sometimes I may feel somewhat embarrassed that I don't have a traditional job three years out of school. But what is traditional, and why do I feel I need it? Finding myself and my own core is so much more important to me. And, as my mom pointed out, it always has been.

The choice to stay in New Orleans and pursue my own non-traditional "career path" has been so, so difficult, and I've labored hours, days, weeks over it. But I'm forging my own path now, looking for indicators of my own direction, and, as Patti so eloquently alluded, trying to see God in signposts.

Fate Ordains

2011-02-23T02:57:00.001-06:00

Why you smilin at me like that? You better quit it. You're gonna make me go crazy, smiling that smile. I knew somebody with that same smile once but baby you wear it so much better. So you better quit before I steal it. Yeah that's what I said. You're offerin it up like it's yours to give away but keep that up and it'll be mine. Mine now. You heard me. Don't play coy, that doesn't—you better quit it! I swear to god you're makin my knees weak darlin. I'm gonna fall right over you, I'm gonna trip right over that smile and take a tumble on down and you're gonna be stuck, stuck with this piece. Now you gotta quit it with that smile again. Damn.

I Married An Addict Once

2011-02-21T03:06:00.001-06:00

I married an addict once and we had a very happy marriage and never fought until that word came up. That was a sad day. I'll never forget it. I just asked him point blank hey are you addicted? And he just stared at me like I'd just killed his child. Our child. And I guess in a way I had because the only thing we'd created together was that marriage except for some stupid pottery or something. So we fought but without words, he just walked out on me and he had never done that before.

We lived on for a while after that and tried to make things like they were once. We faked it real hard but finally he said he thought it was over and all I could do was agree. We didn't fight then either, we never used words except good ones and when bad ones were supposed to come up neither of us could say them. I don't think I thought them and I don't know if he did either. We thought we had something pure but I guess we could only get to a certain level.

After that we just talked on the phone, we never actually broke it off just lived years until we faded from each other's lives. What is it about addictions that people can't take? Why does it change everything and why do we have the capacity to ignore it for so long. It's not even like I was ignoring it in the proper sense, I don't know if I even knew it was there until a few days before I brought it up, I noticed some suspicious behavior and even that wasn't bad.

I don't know if I never should have brought it up or if we would have lived on like that forever or if something else would have broken us, but I suppose if everything happens for a reason this was supposed to happen this way. Still I guess I have some regret about it, because his addiction was one I shared, and one we shared together.

His addiction was me, so I guess in the end I broke us and I guess I've always know that was true.

Capitol You

2011-02-11T17:30:00.003-06:00

High flying

free falling

spiral

downward through dark

depths Emerging

fully formed and

beautiful with son shining

from the ground

Peace together the

fragments and a

life itself forms,

like slanted edges

forcing through the

unknown, something

new and different

and better for

all of us

DNA spiral baby calm

down and Out of

our control this ride

It spins round and round

on a broken black

surface

tainted but true blue

Throw it away if

you can

Exact Change

2011-01-04T04:02:00.001-06:00

We spent an hour talking of the future of smartphones, the Internet, the cloud, digital media, and how advanced it would all be, so soon. And then I walked through the cold to the elevated train and heard but never saw it passing overhead. I ran just in case it stalled, but it didn't, and the cold air sank into my chest and made its home there for the next hour. I breathed hard, and saw every breath.

I walked from one end of the platform to the other, looking out at the view of the Manhattan skyline from Queens and thinking what a great view it is. Several bridges, all lit up, and a skyline from an angle I'd never seen it before. The Empire State Building was still lit red and green for Christmas, and I turned around and then turned back around and it was turned off. It was 2 a.m. I wished I seen it turn off, like flipping a switch when you leave a bathroom. Click. The world's most famous building goes dark, every night. Literal clockwork.

A ride and some walking and a transfer and two trains later I was back uptown, back in Harlem, but I didn't know my apartment number and it was past 3 a.m. We'd spent so much time talking about amazing technological advances that my near-dead phone died as I tried to make a call. Late at night (or early in the morning), cold but not too cold, I stood on the stoop looking at the door and wondering what to do. Three third floor apartments, none labeled with the proper name. I tried 32 and 33 briefly but skipped 31. I don't know why.

In my pocket was exactly one dollar in change: three quarters, a dime, two nickels, and five pennies. I walked back to the subway station to find a pay phone but there wasn't one. Across the street at a bodega there was, though, and I avoided three shady men stalking a corner to get to it. I dialed the number, the only friend's number I know by heart, a residual left over from the days when we didn't rely solely on digital address books, but she didn't answer. 'I'm here but don't know your apartment number,' I said to her voicemail. 'I'll be waiting on your stoop. Please come down and get me when you get this.'

I paced patiently, weighing options and willing her to wake up and see I wasn't back yet. Twenty easy minutes passed. I stared at the buzzer. I pressed 31. Thirty seconds later, the door buzzed. She lived in 32. Coincidence is funny like that.

We'd talked for an hour of technology and the future, and then I was stranded by it and used a payphone for the first time in my life. Welcome to 2011.

An Echo Stain

2010-12-23T23:58:00.000-06:00

Men in the form of dogs chase him into the treehouse and he runs so hard it hurts to breathe. Cornered, five of them on one of him, his only defense a stone-white sheet. They vary in size. He picks up the sheet and slings it around the smaller dog, wrapping him up in it and slamming him against the wall. The dog makes no sound. The largest of the five stands over the smallest, protecting it. There are no teeth, no snarls, just a tackling of sorts. He goes for the second smallest, a Chihuahua, and tries to shove him out the window. The dog yelps and screams and pushes back, trying to hold on. The whines echo.

He wakes up and knows it's over, finally. The sun is shining and it is warm out. Through his blinds he sees a blue sky and scattered checkerboard clouds. They welcome him back. He is so sad, and breathes. It was only self defense, and they were men. He feels like he could cry but he doesn't. He never cries from dreams.

He knows it's gone, the weight has been lifted, for now. He is himself again and is ready to be. That sun, that warmth, is for him, and he will use it. Today he will think and be and live. Today he will be happy.

Hoover, Damn

2010-12-15T03:41:00.000-06:00

In retrospect everything is brighter but what kind of retrospect can you have at 24. We think we're so big but we aren't. And we think we're so smart but we aren't. There's that certain feeling of unhappiness that sits on my shoulders at almost all times in my life and I've always thought I could push it off but I'm beginning to think that maybe I can't. Maybe happiness is just a high and the rest of it is just life. And things aren't romantic and the streets don't sparkle and everyone you meet isn't your soulmate.

I don't want to be that person just making it through the day, just taking it one day at a time, because that's so fucking depressing. One day at a time? One day shouldn't be enough. Things should be so great that you never want this day to end. Yet I find myself wishing I could close my eyes and wake up in month and have this all over and done with and settled. But that's settling, my enemy.

I believe in living in the moment but what if the moment sucks? And what if the moment isn't as good as you planned it? What if what you're supposed to do is get a shitty job and have a shitty marriage and raise a couple of shitty kids? When do the good moments happen? Happily ever after doesn't exist, it's just one more stack of problems. That's why sequels always suck. You left the story with a happy ending and some asshole executive forced some asshole writer to make up a problem. And yeah it's realistic but realism is depressing.

These aren't real questions they're just my mind playing devil's advocate with itself. I'm beginning to see why people cheat, or lie, or why people do drugs. These things aren't in me because I so value truth but I can see why.

This is a deep pit and I do not like it. I wish I had a past a present and a future but sometimes it seems like all I have is a vacuum.

Relativity and Drawing Hands

2010-12-13T02:10:00.000-06:00

I'm lopsided right now. Unbalanced. It's cold and windy and wet outside and I long for the late nights when I rode my bike through the French Quarter, the warm humid breeze swooshing around me and a beer rattling in my cup holder. The sky glowed orange then and I was so certain in my directionlessness, and confident that everything was working itself out for the better.

Now the sky stays grey all day and all night and a frigid wind whips around every corner. And it's wet and chilling and depressing. I don't want to go out, I want to stay in, and now I'm so lacking in that confidence. I feel like I've had so many false starts that starting over would almost be easier. And while believing in an overall sense that everything happens for a reason, I wonder what that reason is and wish it would reveal itself to me.

This year has been my favorite year of any I've ever lived and so much has happened to me, both inside and out. But it's left me with a strange wonkiness that I'm not sure I've felt before, and choices I made I have to wonder about. But not really. It's just the greyness talking, suffering from orange withdrawal. I'm sensitive to it right now and I want it to be over, but I know that when I look back even this will just be a snap of a memory.

We push through the difficult times knowing good ones are both behind and in front of us. But it's cold and windy and wet outside and I long for the late nights, riding my bike inhaling the Mississippi. What's the good without the bad and how would you recognize one without the other?

There's a flicker of hope burning behind a paper thin wall but it's delicate and must be tended to. I know this is short term but when you can't get your footing everything gets turned upside down. No one wants to live in an Escher forever.

Downs Man

2010-12-05T16:23:00.000-06:00

December heat goes
up up down up;
a stiff breeze blows
through
Fortune teller waves her
hands filling my
head with spam; it aint
true, maybe
Broken out, about to
break out;
breakaway, no fast
break breakfast
Rock around the
clock tiks toks all
night; missing hours
of sleep then
A dream of life; it
isn't mine but
it might be;
Yours.

Lest Some of My Soul Should Never Return

2010-11-28T17:03:00.000-06:00

I'm feeling contemplative today and it's annoying. I must have dreamt of New York because I woke up with the city on my mind. Less of the place, more of the feeling. Especially the feeling of early 2010, when I was confused and anxious and eager to move from the corporate world to a world of production. And I did that for a while, and then I moved to New Orleans and my job was settling in, learning the city, finding friends.

The nickname Big Easy is appropriate because the lifestyle here is that of extreme ease. There's no pressure from anyone to do anything. And I haven't done much. I sleep a lot. Usually I'm in bed between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. and up around 3 p.m. I don't know how I manage to sleep 10 to 12 hours every night of the week but I do, and I used to function, and well, on half of that. But my body has fallen into that pattern and I need to get it out of it. A job would help that.

Most days here are very good. Today is not such a good day. I woke up feeling creative energy stirring, but not the creation kind, the mid-project kind. But I'm not really mid-project except for a few writing attempts I love one day and hate the next. I believe I am talented and meant to write but my follow-through is lacking, and my work ethic is shit.

Maybe people my age aren't supposed to be free to work on whatever they want because they have no outside drive to do it, just an inner. With no reason to get p in the morning why get up? With no one breathing down your neck to complete something, why do it? With no one to bounce or hone ideas with, how do you know what's worth working on and what isn't? Self-editing is difficult for anyone, but it seems especially so for someone with so little life experience.

School is an easy answer, except deadlines loom too soon and it takes so much pre-planning. How do I know what I'll what to be doing in nine months, much less nine days? Do I want to sign myself up for a two-year contract now?

I find it so difficult to believe that a job for me to put my energy out there exists. My experience in New York, having my dream job and all the disappointment that came with it, may have killed the idea of a dream job actually existing. I put so much into the idea of that job and when it wasn't that anymore, it may have killed a piece of my soul. It will grow back or something else will take its place, but it hurts, more than I realize. Most things hurt more than I realize.

I miss my apartment in New York. The electric blue walls, the sunny open windows, the fire escape wrapped in white lights. I don't feel like I have room to stretch here, and there's no space to call my own yet. It makes work difficult and sleep easy, living in a white box lacking in any charm or personality, a temporary void of a space.

This is such a beautiful city, full of amazing people, and I love living here. But I'm lacking in distinct purpose, which was the goal nearly a year ago. Mission accomplished. Now I need the next one.

This is my 300th blog post, and as such:

This is the road by which I fled,
When the rebels had reached the west end of the city;
And terror, ever since, has clutched at my vitals
Lest some of my soul should never return.
...The court has come back now, filling the capital;
But the Emperor sends me away again.
Useless and old, I rein in my horse
For one last look at the thousand gates.

--"Taking Leave of Friends on my Way to Huazhou" by Du Fu, ancient Chinese poet, from 300 Tang Poems

On Your Feet, Oh

2010-11-23T15:28:00.000-06:00

Drop drop drop with building
force, round and round in
a spotlight from the heavens
shining down on its chosen
children
Movement through words, through
beats, energy pulsating under their
feet, chomping at their heels but
unlike Achilles they are not
weak
They go
round and round oh
round and round,
round and round oh
round and round
till victory

Snippets from IM: A Fowl By Any Other Name

2010-11-22T21:51:00.000-06:00

Meghan: have you watched the anne hathaway SNL yet?
Zachary: yeah she was awesome
Meghan: i basically hate anne hathaway
Zachary: omgggg!!!1 i love her!!
Meghan: like
Meghan: she was funny in the skits
Meghan: i think she's a great actor
Meghan: but in between skits
Meghan: i was like, i wanna stab you
Meghan: she's sooo dramatic
Meghan: and not in a good way
Meghan: she thinks she actually is anne hathaway
Zachary: like from shakespeare?
Meghan: yes!
Zachary: lolz
Meghan: she's like waving her arms around and being annoying
Zachary: you are ridic
Zachary: im calling fowl
Zachary: like the bird
Zachary: im calling it over to shit on you
Meghan: LOLZ
Meghan: i just belly laughed
Zachary: me too lolx

LBO Productions Presents: Love Sand, a Short

2010-11-17T13:00:00.001-06:00

Watch larger on the LBO Productions mini-site, or see it in HD.

Love Sand has taken its time to settle with me. A solid script written by best friend and creative collaborator Meghan Blalock and filmed over a few weeks this past summer in New York, it consumed me for a while. Too much, apparently, as I had trouble looking at it after some 40 hour of rough editing. With months and a move behind me now, I finally felt like I was ready to finish the very last little things and put it out there. It became unfair for me to hold it for my eyes only after so many generous friends put their time and effort into it.

So here it is, my second short, my first narrative fiction short, my first "major undertaking" in filmmaking. None of the crew on this film has any affiliation with or training from film schools, just a love for movies and a gut instinct. We didn't have fancy cameras or sound equipment, expensive computers or editing software. The budget on the whole project was about $7 for a pack of cigarettes. It's just a bunch of kids in the city making work for the sake of making work. Is there any better reason?

I won't go into the film itself except to say I have a love/hate relationship with it but am very proud. To everyone involved, my sincere thanks, and my sincere apologies for holding onto it this many month. To Jenny, my constant companion in love, life and art, who I can barely breathe without. To Meghan, a person I've seen grow in every way possible over the years we've known each other to become someone I'm proud to call my friend and collaborator, and whose body of work I look forward to living and experiencing. To Haley, who gave her all over and over in the role and who was no doubt born to do it. To Chris, with a dedication like no other and the easiest guy to work with. To Jon, who graciously lent us his good looks and physicality and then paid for it with an unknown grass allergy over the next week. To Brittany Bell, who I miss constantly, and Brady, who is down for anything and I'm so glad I know. And to Harry, who made time in his crazy busy schedule to scrape dirt under his fingernails and sit in a puddle of piss for an hour, lending me his talents time after time. You all trusted me with this silly 'why not?' of an idea and gave everything to it, and now this New York story is ours to share.

I've embedded the short here but the blog layout only allows for it to be so big, so I suggest you go on over to the LBO Productions mini-site and watch it in its big screen glory there, or see it in HD at its home on Vimeo. I hope you see it, and get it. There's nothing but truth behind and inside it.

Pledge and Seek

2010-11-16T14:28:00.000-06:00

The weather is beautiful though we're smack in the middle of November. It's cool and 70 with a gentle breeze. I like writing about the weather, and thinking about it, and experiencing it. I like being outside, and I get depressed when I go nocturnal and don't see the sun for a few days. And I always wonder why I'm depressed and as soon as I realize it's due to my lack of sun I'm almost instantly over it, knowing that tomorrow is another day and the sun will come up again and I will take it in.

I walked the six or seven blocks to my favorite coffee shop. I rarely walk because I'm usually on bike, but the bike is in the shop for its check up until this evening so I took it on foot and it was so nice. I forget I like walking. I feel dirty in a car, like I'm wasting something. I suppose the only thing you aren't wasting when you drive is time. I try to bike but it takes a lot more effort, and the end destination has to be worth the ride.

There's so much foot traffic in New Orleans. It doesn't look like it when you zip by in a car but when you sit in one place it's person after person minute after minute. Except at night, when most of the town is completely deserted and it looks like a post-apocalyptic zombie movie. You almost expect to turn the corner and see hoards of maggot-ridden flesh eaters chomping down on a poor, defenseless hipster.

I ate fast food today because I haven't in a while. Now I have heartburn.

Videopost: Tits & Tats; or The 2010 Lollapalooza Video

2010-11-09T02:25:00.001-06:00

I haven't made a video in a while, and this blog has shifted from my general life to my apparently much more ambiguous narrative writing style over the last few months. However, I'm still a person, I still have friends, and even after a long break, I still make videos.

Here's my most recent, featuring video taken in Chicago when Meghan, Jenny, and I trekked up/over from our respective homes and stayed with Christine. Oh, and there was that little Lollapalooza thing. (Remember when I won free tickets?) And some bitch named Lady Gaga was headlining. Whatever.

The video's length is longer than previous videos because it's part road trip, part Chicagoland, part Lollapalooza, part general friend summer silliness, and finally part slice of said Gaga concert. So it's five, five, five videos in one! Click here to watch in marvelous HD, or watch the embed below. I hope you enjoy.

Dream of the Lost, Dream of the Damned

2010-11-06T05:46:00.000-05:00

He told me I was so sexy and I both knew it and denied it. Men told me this often when we were in this position, and how nice my ass was, and just how fucking sexy I was. And I believed that they believed that, and even though I didn't see it, I was used to it and used to playing the part. And he ran his fingers over my entire body all night and I liked it so much, even though I knew it was hollow.

Sometimes being so self-aware is a curse.

• • •

We sat in an anonymous bar and talked shit about people we knew mutually. I brought up a girl and her new boyfriend.

"Oh you mean that kinda stupid girl?" he asked me.

"Oh, well, yeah. But I don't think she's stupid," I said. Until I reconsidered for a moment and realized, yeah, she was pretty simple. I was blinded by the want to be her friend because she seemed like one of those people I always thought I should be friends with. But then my real friends show up and they're nothing like the people I think I should be friends with. They're better, and I can't see it. Until I do.

"Yeah," I said, "I guess she is kind of stupid. I never saw it but now I do." And then, "She really is stupid." I attributed her boyfriend to their mutual stupidity and decided they would live out their days of simpledom happy and ignorant and never change a thing.

• • •

I ran my fingers through my hair and rolled restlessly in bed, coming down from a vodka drunk that could have lasted longer but didn't necessarily need to. I laid in child's pose, like in yoga, the sheets pushed aside, and I thought of the rising sun spilling over the river once more, and myself there to see it again. And I thought about money and how vapid it makes people, and how uninteresting it is. I can talk creation all night but money can only get me so far. People hide behind money, behind perceived sexiness, behind alcohol. People are always looking for an excuse to get out of their comfort zones, but if we all want to leave them so badly they must not be so comfortable.

I like to think I'm on a noble pursuit of truth and I bring it up often. "The truth," I say, "will shine through." I hope to god it will but what do I know, about truth or about life?

No one knows anything but we all fake it until someone believes us.

Upstream Salmon Swimming, Not

2010-11-02T03:13:00.003-05:00

It was time to go, and it was time to go. We floated effortlessly upstream against the current, opposite of those jumping salmon, hovering like on a cloud and it was easy. Up and up and up we went until we hit what looked like the top, the cap on our individual tub, and the stench was horrendous and unbearable and our bodies started to whither. It took root of us and kept us where we wanted to be but didn't and when we cut we bled and bled because it was us and we were it and the puddle echoed as it dripped. A fleshwound not unbearable but painful became a scar we'll never forget but must move past, and the teenage dream was unknowingly realized.

Things change and friends have superpowers. Drawn together like boxed magnets sitting next to each other on a shelf and none of us even knew it. But the truth shone through, shines through, and you know this has all happened for a reason and you're all better for it. If it wasn't supposed to have happened it wouldn't have happened, and a growth would still be living.

He smiled a lot and talked, and he told him what he wanted to hear and he felt good. Mine for a night, at least, he told him, and he knew he meant it and so did he. He pulled out Horses and he told him he'd fuck him and he did. Horses made him do it. Horses made me do it.

Dark grainy nights and sweet smelling mornings, humidity overcast skies a spectrum of ten million colors, better than anything we'd seen before. At 4 a.m. things seem so bleak but here it's only 3. And we're lucky.

We went, he went, they went, I went. We spent the night in tight small places underneath construction uptown like a cave where men grew closer. It feels hard but one day it wont be this easy and we'll all wish for the good ole days before life existed. A movement dead or questioned but not a movement at all, a spirit that lives and hangs above us. We will figure it out, one day.

You Are In Draft

2010-09-29T06:50:00.003-05:00

You are up, with the sun as it peeks over the river spreading outward over the water, over the streets, over the city, brightly. The crickets fade, the cool breeze wanes and you saw it all happen, from east to west.

You hear the voice of your dead great grandmother in your ear. "Do you know, I…" she says, fading, over and over. "Do you know, I…" "Do you know, I…" Her voice is so distinctive, you remember it like you heard it an hour ago but it's almost been a year now. Do you know you what, Lois? You want to know.

You fancy yourself a nice coffee but coffee means work and you want to put that off. You read Fitzgerald again: He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky. "I know myself," he cried, "but that is all." You didn't expect that.

You brush your teeth and you think of how quickly the days pass. And how slowly the days pass. Didn't you just do this? Was it an hour or a month ago? Or both.

That clock ticks forever but its hands never move. You fear the clock.

For $4 a Can I Can Brew My Own PBR

2010-09-25T04:49:00.002-05:00

They jump from one sinking stone from another, these flying, floundering kids, armed with liberal arts educations and a will and a drive to create but lacking the money and means necessary, surrounding themselves with the art of old, of beatniks and lost generations, wallowing in what they did before and how they wish they could do it now. But things are different, they say, things are just so damn different now. Nobody wants anything. Nobody respects anything. Nobody reads, writes, needs, lives for anything anymore, not like they did then. It's just a world of self-obsessed social networking brats who couldn't feel a real emotion if they even understood the concept. The economy in the shitter, a whole system of politics built on keeping people down, a whole world built on pieces of paper representing gold nobody needed or wanted back then. Or so it seemed. Everything's easier in retrospect and today is harder now than it will be later but it's hard nonetheless. In memory this all feels like it never happened anyway. In memory it's already over.

This cloud of thought sat over me and I was slowly rocked to sleep by a rumbling old subway car that hadn't been swept out in who knows how long. Alone in the car, buzzing on beer out of my budget, drunk on the endless possibility of life, or the life I had always been told I'd have one day. And I believed it. Is this that life? I wondered. Maybe it is and I just can't see it from the inside. Maybe when I look back I'll see I've had the perfect life all along. What is the perfect life anyway? Whatever. I saw myself shooting through a tube spiraling like a bullet firing out of the etched twisting of a gun. Bang, subway cars flowing through a network of blood vessels keeping New York alive. Or not. New York was dying in my eyes, controlled by money and pretentious millennials who aren't worth the space they occupy. I know I’m one of them but I don’t want to talk about it. Sometimes you have to face up to what you are but keep it to yourself. Otherwise you crumble like a stale Pop-Tart. Who picked PBR and how did it spread through the hipsters and why? For four dollars a can I could brew my own fucking PBR.

Why does this island feel like a crooked mouth, Central Park the perfect hole slowly sucking me like a joint, my soul intaken and outblown in a fantastical whiff of smoke, disregarded. Another one chewed up and spit out, she said. Well fuck you. A woman boarded the train with her baby. At three-thirty in the morning. Unacceptable. Or, I don't know, I don't know her situation. It just seems unnecessary. I don’t want a baby now but later. One day. I fell asleep and in a dream saw my childhood dog alive again. She walked up to me wearing a collar with a different name inscribed on it. She'd run away, not been run over, and she had loving new owners now but she was back. And I cried and cried and I felt my chest inhaling and exhaling so heavily and I grabbed onto that smelly little dog with her black head and her black tail and her white body with black spots and she smelled just like I remembered her smelling. She wasn't dead she was happy in another home and two pretty little girls took care of her and gave her a good name and ran around with her in the yard like she liked, and she ran in big circles around and around and stood guard and ruled the neighborhood dogs despite her small size. And I cried and cried a lot more.

The subway took that turn, loudly shrieking and slicing side to side through the tunnel. It shook me awake, and good thing because my stop was next. Walk through the station up the stairs through the turnstiles up the stairs and onto the street and smell that familiar sickly sweet smell of trash piles on the street and Spanish food swirling out a nearby smoke pipe. Twenty-four hour food was a godsend but one I rarely participated in, as tempting as it always was. I imagined walking down winding streets, getting lost in them, with no little blue dot on a map to guide me. Here the streets didn’t wind much anyway. The glory days, I thought; Ah, the glory days. Were things easier now, or too easy? Hard to say.

Home again home again the twist click of the door knob, so familiar. I stumbled around the kitchen and into my bedroom, gathering a water glass and filling it up in the kitchen. One thing about New York is the good water, even though one time I saw a thing on the History Channel that said the pipes that bring the water to the city from some spring upstate haven’t been cleaned since they were put in place like a hundred and fifty years ago. Meh. Still tastes good. I set the glass down loudly and it echoed through the small kitchen. I hit my toe on the cabinet as I turned around and I wondered if this is what it feels like to be clumsy, sober. That must suck. I drank the water and left the half-full or half-empty glass, take your pick, on the counter and I went into the bathroom. I stared at my face in the mirror, tousled back my hair and posed. Then I laughed at myself, smiling. But I don’t like my smile so I stopped. Heavy sigh. I was in bed now, lying there, looking out at the hazy moon from my window. Yeah, I could actually see it, that wasn’t a dramatic description to make it seem more romantic. No, I thought about how the moon moved and how weird that was. Like one minute you’re looking at it and then you look away, and you look back and it’s in a different spot. So bizarre.

I passed out and this time I didn’t dream. In the night a headache came and went but I slept through it and he never knew it existed. Sleep is weird when you think about it. Hey, let’s all go get unconscious for a while, we need to recharge our batteries. Yeah, the day lasts 24 hours, but we can only really handle about 16 or 17 of them, mostly. And good thing we have the big soft squishy things to lay down on, it makes this so much easier.

Scattered Thoughts on Fucking Symbolism

2010-09-19T04:49:00.000-05:00

Fucking symbolism. New Orleans is slamming me, ramming me with it.

I borrowed Hemingway's A Moveable Feast from the New Orleans library, took it home, opened it, and a postcard-size map of the Paris subway system fell out. Two thoughts: 1) Are you trying to get me to Paris, Hem? Preparing me for the eventual, perpetual trip? 2) I hate public transit right now, so perhaps you're trying to keep me away? Finished Feast, my first Hemingway and an amazing book that caused many a fight between myself and the author. How have I gotten through 24 years of liberal arts education without a Hem hymn?

Back at the library, I knew I wanted some F. Scott in my life so I picked up his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to pick through. Also got Kerouac's On the Road again, since I drifted away toward the end, too consumed with my own book of New York life closing to end his. And since Fitzgerald is so close to Faulkner, I picked up his As I Lay Dying, my first foray into old William. (Again, I ask, how did I make it through four years of Ole Miss liberal arts without a single Faulkner?) When I got home and opened it up, a postcard fell out. It read, "Maybe you're not special." What? What are you telling me, New Orleans?

I finished decorating my once-bleak bathroom. I chose a black and white New York theme, with a postcard of the Williamsburg Bridge framed and sitting next to a wire sculpture of the Chrysler Building that my parents bought me before I moved, knowing it is my favorite building in the city. Opposite the sink I hung an old piece of cheap Bed Bath and Beyond art I got on damage sale, but I ripped the white away and inserted four photos taken from my old office at 7 World Trade by my best friend, who I pine for. A black and white skyline greets me daily, reminding me of where I've been, what I left behind, what made me who I am today. Finally, I hung a clock on the wall to complete the space. It used to hang in my living room at 312 in East Harlem.

I was brushing my teeth tonight and could hear the clock ticking away, but when I checked the time, it was hours off. I watched it for a moment. The second hand was ticking, but not moving -- the time was the same as when I'd set it 14 hours earlier. A ticking clock, frozen in time, in my New York bathroom.

In my bedroom hangs a clock from my old room at 312, and even after the move it works fine. Coincidence that the New York clock is frozen and the New Orleans clock works? Sure. But fucking symbolism.

Fucking symbolism...

Crawling Up the Leg of History

2010-09-17T00:01:00.000-05:00

There is an unending stream of ants crawling through my New Orleans apartment. I don't know where they come from, where they're going, but when I sit on the loveseat in my room every so often I feel the slight tickle of an ant that has made its way past my foot and up my leg. They never -- or rarely, I suppose -- bite, they just go on their way, and my leg happens to be in the way.

When this first started, I felt so bad for the little bugs. I didn't want to kill them simply for sharing the same space. They don't know they're trespassing, and it's brazen to call the space more mine than theirs in the first place. But time passed and my humanitarianism passed away. Now when I feel or see one, I pinch it with my thumb and forefinger, squeeze, roll, and flick. Invisible ant carcasses litter the carpet, casualties of a war neither of us knows we're in, or wants to be.

In fifth grade I thought I might be an alien, and, somehow, I found someone who thought he might be one too. Logically, we decided we had to be from the same planet. We never named it that I can remember, but I do remember making up stories about what it was like on our homeworld. On Boy Scout trips we shared a tent, avoiding the other Earthling boys, conversing at a heightened level. I never had any shame about my own alienism and I often told other people of it. Of course, this didn't go over well, but it never bothered me -- not much did, and not much does.

My friend was a year or two ahead of me in school, and after a while summer was over, Scout camps and trips were put on pause and school resumed. One time I saw him in the hall and brought up the aliens, and to my surprise he didn't keep it going. He wasn't mean and he didn't make fun of me, but it was obvious he had put that behind him.

I still knew I was an alien, with or without my brother. I lived among my human classmates, hiding behind a human-shaped mask. I called out for my motherworld to reclaim me. It's not that I was unhappy on the human world -- I was quite happy, in fact -- but I wanted to be home, with my kind.

A decade later I wonder if I found it or forgot it. I suppose I still live as that alien, and I still call for the homeworld, now realized as some enlightened state of being or writing or art, to reclaim me. Meanwhile, my old friend calls for the human world to reclaim him from a hole in hell, where he serves thirty years for child pornography and molestation of a 12-year-old boy.

But what are we but unknowing ants, crawling up the leg of history -- a leg that just happened to be in the way -- before pinched, squeezed, rolled, and flicked.

Nola Night, Haze Overhead

2010-09-16T14:31:00.000-05:00

These streets, they speak
whisper in shadows, edging,
encouraging to go, go,
go
Orange haze sits on shoulders of
the brethren,
drawn into that warm embrace
only described as true magic
Pollution you say, but it's
something more,
a spirit lingers after hundreds
of years of haunting
us
Lonesome and quiet, spin
through this life on black
wheels carrying a heart of
gold
Spills forth from deep inside,
from sitting, soaking, aging
wine born from the
deep
Feel it reverberating, thick
air carrying heavy messages filled
with promise
Hands out, palms up,
accept
it

My Purified Eyes

2010-09-13T20:14:00.001-05:00

I am doing laundry and drinking purified water from a Brita pitcher. I took a shower and my hair dried fast. It usually does, especially if I don't use product. I'm lucky to have this long, thick, effortlessly shiny hair. Sometimes I run my hands through it, and it feels so soft, and it's so long, even being male and at the age where men start to lose their hair, and I think how nice it is and how lucky I am. A question on dating sites asks what people first notice about you and I usually write my eyes. But it's probably my hair. Men don't wear their hair long enough. I like long hair on men, especially tied in a bun in the back. It's not a look I want for myself, but it's a look I like.

Sleeping in someone else's bed always leaves me with a fucked up sense of time. And self-worth. It's so easy to find intimacy—I can be difficult to get to know, but I find a certain reserved intimacy easy. Too easy. My counterpart might mistake this for love, or a spark. Usually it's not.

If love, or I suppose sex, is one of the most basic primal needs, why does it leave me feeling so off afterward? Except with you.

There's nothing quite like a cold glass of purified water, free of the metals and minerals that run through New Orleans water and leave a dry taste in your mouth.

I wonder what a cold glass of my mind, purified, would look like.