February 2005 Archives

I am in SUCH a good mood today! It's the first gray, nasty day after a week of beautiful warm, mid-February Portland fake-spring, and I'm in love with the world.

All the teachers were in a good-weather mood, too; it was so funny. There was this "eh... go have fun!" vibe, and we kept getting let out of class early.

?

Whatever! I learned that it's pronounced "MAHN-gohs," not "MAING-goes."
What a day for humanity and connexion!

I love you, everybody.

(If you're done reading and you wanna keep listening, I recomend looking at this.)

Dear Dr. Thompson, perhaps a distant relative

The perseverance of your wit in the face of unimaginable self-poisoning is truly a testament to and against the human animal.

I will miss just knowing that, somewhere in the savage backcountry of the Great Western Frontier, there was still a man who, having ingested everything else at hand which posed a threat to his personal safety, would now find and consume the American Dream.

Goodbye, and fare thee well!

(Sorry Ladies, the Gentleman is spoken for.)

photo by Emily Johnson

O.k., I'm doing my algebra homework here, but I just have to take a minute to tell you about this stat in the book. This is from the Economic Research Service, USDA: Guess how many cigarettes were consumed in the year 2000, in the United States alone?

One billion?
Five billion?
A hundred billion?

WRONG! It was almost FOUR HUNDRED FIFTY BILLION!!!
Which is down from 1988's 550,000,000,000.

Uh-h-h-h-h...

When I was in elementary school I had a sweatshirt that had a puffy paint picture of penguins, and it said "eternally cool." Nobody else seemed to think it was. But I bet my nice sweetheart with her penguin ice cube maker would've.

O.K., o.k. You were right, as usual. Uhg. I have just had a string of highly awkward, truncated interactions recently, which do not reflect on my worth as a human being. But everyone's always like... I mean they're always... Well they say things!

I used to be so cool. I mean that in a whole, pathetic variety of ways, but right now I want to talk about how bad I've become at functioning within my own expectations for human interaction.

I understand that Emily is already shaking her head at what must seem to her to be "just another day in the life of her sweetie who won't leave himself be and get over it." But please, bare with me for a moment.

Once, long ago, I had patience with the great, unwashed masses. So much so that I felt like I'd really fallen short if I didn't actually encourage people to step all over me like I was a rat at a b boy competition. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I didn't have all the presidents' heads going the same direction in those days, either. However, it would seem as if the subterranean rivers of my grievance are really beginning to break the surface. And not in a "healthy, cleansing" way.

I had a dream last night where this rotting, nauseous, refrigerator sewerage was pushing its way through the wall into my bathroom, propelled by its own noxious expanding gasses.

Before I went to bed, I was reading about tolerance, communication, and conflict resolution. As I read their little examples of "aggressive communication styles," "nonconstructive criticism," "stupid assholes," and "people who eviscerate golden retrievers with the jawbone of a living orphan," I became more and more palpably upset and angry.

Just when I was at the verge of having to get up and actually pace furiously, they started talking about "personal relationships." By which they meant "boyfriends and girlfriends." And it was like someone had replaced the vitriol I.V. drip with one filled with August sunshine. I was filled by a feeling of calm and well-being. Life was once again given meaning.

And then they started in with the "managing anger," at which point I just about managed their anger, tell you what!

So, what the hell was I talking about. ? OH!, yeah. I have lost the ability to remain calm and objective to a fault in situations where the other person is "pushing" my "buttons," but I haven't replaced it with the ability to assert my position or say anything constructive or which even remotely articulates how I feel.

Also, I seem to have lost the ability to evaluate, and act accordingly upon, even normal situations which require some modicum of tact or, I don't know, empathy?

Like when I aced my midterm, and none of the other suckers did, and I was all, "YOU SUCK! SUCKERS!!!!!"

That's not actually how it happened, but still.

It's an unpleasant phase which I'm eager to get through. I feel like I have some hormonal imbalance a lot of the time, and I'm on the verge of tears when I try to, like, say something in class. Or whatever. And I don't even eat that much soy, anymore!

I guess these are probably signs of depression or something, but I really feel quite functional, otherwise. On par with any other time. But I also feel as though I'm very unpleasant to be around (no, sweetie, not just "not perfect all the time," actually actively unpleasant) outside of my immediate relationships.

Well, I gotta go to class right now.

And a very happy birthday ta me pop. Though I don't believe I've ever called him "me pop" before.

I also want to extend an apology ta me mum, as I didn't write up her birthday at the appropriate time, that is to say December 22nd. But I was visiting them both at the time. So I hope that that makes up for it.

I'll do a better entry for them soon. They deserve the best.

And thanks to their kind gift, you will all be treated to many a digital photograph, the Good Lord willin'.

Thankye.

I just now realized the extent to which I've become engulfed by the trauma/drama of School and History. I've totally fallen off of the empowerment I had going in to this term, which was driven by a mantra of "This is for ME!" I was focusing hard on personal enrichment, and I had pretty well forgotten about grades (for a day or two...). But now I have these "goals," and I'm worrying about my "transcript," and I just feel kind of stressed and competitive about the whole thing. What the eff?

Well, this is a step in the right direction. Happy my birthday to all, and to all a good rest of the day.

Just as campus becomes neighborhood I passed a young woman and man. I overheard the woman say, "Black people, we' materialistic; we always need something..."
To the man, who said, "... to go with everything."

I've been having this conversation with Ritchey about people who rub me the wrong way from a distance; people who, though I'm not familiar with their actual work, I still find meet to judge and disdain by virtue of what I have heard about them.

Malcolm X was one of those people. No sooner had he come into the exchange, but I woke up to KBOO playing this amazing lecture on him by Manning Marable. A different perspective indeed.

One of the many things Marable talked about was how Malcolm X (as with Rev. King & so many other people) has been frozen in history with his fist in the air and one ideology on his lips. But OBVIOUSLY that sells him short/out. (Duh, me! Get it together, man!) His ideology went through many deep stages of evolution, as did he, Malcolm, the human.

And one thing, on which Marable was very clear, was that Malcolm X and Rev. King both strongly believed that capitalism and materialism were poison to the human race.

There's this house I walk by on my way to school; it's one of those cool, sprawling old Portlandine types. It has what I think might be an old, copper-clad letter press machine against one window (in the dining room?), and some of those cool, Victorian-looking lamps with the intricate shades, all fringe and warm-colored fabrics.

And there's also this pickup that parks next to it on the street with a Bush/Cheney sticker. So I was having a little trouble putting my finger on the demographic I was dealing with.

So one day, when I was coming home from class, there were two guys in the alley behind this mystery house: one of whom had a small baby, and the other of whom was pushing a large, docile cat into it. Into the baby. It was a dark colored Siamese, and it seemed resigned to its position despite something of a sour expression.

Another time, I walked by and the same two guys were out there (salt and pepper grey, a mustache on at least one of them) with, presumably, the same cat and baby. But, this time, the one of them had the baby on his shoulders and the other had turned the cat over on an ersatz table, and seemed to be inspecting its underside.

Both times I got what I took to be a "couple" vibe from these guys; they seemed to have that comfortable demeanor of people who've been around each other awhile. And they certainly seemed comfortable with the baby. But then there's the Bush sticker. I suppose it wouldn't be the first time I'd met a gay republican, but, c'm'on! A letter press?! That's so esoterically erudite.

I don't know. Each time I walk by, I look for more clues, or more strange goings on in the alleyway, but as yet I haven't been tremendously successful.

I just found out that my friend Dave had been totally lying to me for, like, a week. We usually have a recording date on Saturday evenings around seven, and this week he wanted to do it at six because he had some dude coming over who he wanted on the record.

So, here I was, just sitting in my recording chair, getting ready for the "session," when Dave comes down and is like, "There's not gonna be any recording tonight."

And I'm like, "There isn't?"

And he pulls out this cap gun and says, "Nope. And you're being kidnapped!"

And I'm like, "Uhhhhh..."

So, he tells me to gather whatever personal effects I think I might want over the next couple hours, blindfolds me, and puts me in the car.

Let me tell you, folks, it is a truly psychedelic experience to be in a moving vehicle, unable to see, and listening to a Pink Floyd "rock block" on the radio. Everyone should be so lucky.

I tried to remember what I'd learned from watching Sneakers and UHF, but quickly became disoriented and unruly. I thought we must have crossed the river, and I thought we were maybe ending up in S.W., or maybe under some overpasses.

He parked the car, we got out, and I followed him trepidatiously along what I imagined to be a sidewalk in some industrial corridor. I could hear the occasional passing car slow down to assess the situation. I could feel the eyes of passers by upon us.

We walked. We walked, until eventually we came before a place where I could hear loud conversation and smell cigarette smoke. And this was our destination.

He bought a little time while "discretely" taking my picture with his phone, no doubt to be sold on the internet at some later time. And then he told me to take off the blindfold.

Except not with those people, WITH UTAH PHILLIPS!!!

He didn't look quite how I'd gathered from the pictures. He's tall, quite tall, and fairly lean, and has more vim and vigor in him than they can put on a record. I got to shake his hand. It was incredible. Sorry to sit there starin', Utah. For just a minute I thought you were some National Monument or something.

I'm sad and discouraged. The inability to finish "timed" assignments had plagued me throughout my so-called academic career. I'm so much better at EVERYthng, these days, but still, I can only "do it fast" under relatively ideal conditions.

Today was not as such. I spent my time doing the reading which, as it turns out (since the teacher was absent on monday) wasn't even expected of us until next week. Had I been reorganizing my notes, getting more sleep, and taking a moment to gather myself before class, I may have had a chance. But I didn't. And I didn't.

So, should I talk to the people who give the disability exemptions? On the one hand, I would be saving myself a lot of a particular type of grief. My self esteem would suffer less in that regard as well. Right now I feel dead to school; all the weight of my past failures pushing at the little crack opened by today's unfinished writing.

But on the other hand, I have to look at this in the perspective of my current situation; I am much better at many things, and I am just now getting back into school after six years' absence. It is unfair of me to expect that I will be good at everything right away. This dissonance could be a catalyst. I might be able (and as near ready as one could hope) to start thinking critically about my failures, rather than just having sweeping, torrential emotional responses which lead me to hate myself and dismiss everything.

So, what should I do? Can I do both? If I try to do both, will I do both badly?