August 2005 Archives

I've been on a real negative head trip lately, man.
So I decided to think some happy thoughts and make some happy lists.

I love:
     vicious, unapologetic, 17 minute classic rock songs
     unexpected emails from old friends
     finding someone who I lost track of on friendster, and seeing that they got out of the Small Town Trap
     seeing my reflection in a CD and realizing that I'm still here
     goose bumps
     singing along to sappy, schlocky crap (and crying like a baby)
     yams
     URBN*HNKG
     walking out from the shadow of a building and feeling the sun on my skin
     Emily
     my family
     my friends
     making lists
     Mabel Maney
     feeling it
     dancing to it
     air guitaring to it
     opening a door for an elderly lady who's not expecting it and getting a nice smile
     Beck
     reading books
     talking about books
     having those Conversations that are so real they've got to be fake

Authored by David

Mikey, Emily, Miriam, dani; you bring up some excellent points.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, that in the very deliberately interactive blog format, writing this kind of an essay puts weird pressure on (what would in a less interactive form be called) The Audience.

Very Bad Etiquette on my part.

Authored by David

I've been thinking about blogging a lot recently. And talking about it. Talking to my parents about it is difficult. I think that they are both too private—by nature or practice—to ever be interested in blogging themselves, and the complications of "family subject" blogging are probably pretty obvious from the start (to anyone besides me).

My mother seems especially averse to the whole enterprise, though between she and my father, she is the more regular reader of this one. She always talks about what a "big job" it would be to "keep up" with people's blogs. I think that she worries that I'll spend all of my hours on said pastime. I argue, and defend blog culture, The Blog as Art, but whenever I'm actually writing an entry, the first thing on my mind is "Hm. I doubt anyone is going to spend the time it takes to read this."

No, I know that that's not true. One time my father was being presented an award, or introduced for some speaking engagement, and everyone else that was being introduced had all these fancy write-ups prepared about all of their Nobel Prizes and their manifold degrees from all of the Ivy League schools and whathaveyou, but the one that he wrote said something like "I study mast cells. My mother thinks that the work I do is very important."

So yes, I know that my mother will read my blog.
(Not to mention Emily's disappointment at my recent "modifications," which was, truly, the sincerest form of flattery.)

But I would really like to poop out some writing that was widely enjoyable, not just a tolerable undertaking for friends and family to... undertake. You know, the Human Condition; tapping my personal experience and pain for the edification of the masses and what-all. And at the same time, I can't do that. I can "tap my own pain" when nobody else is involved (usually just highly neurotic, highly useless crap anyway, you know how it can get), but there's almost always someone else involved; usually several some-ones who I feel compelled to protect from the brunt of the semi-fictionalized sorting out process which could potentially be written about in an interesting fashion. And I bet that, in her Maternal Wisdom (she'll think that's funny), these are the real problems that worry my mother: the Art Problems.

I was talking to Willow earlier today, thinking about her blogging situation right now, and I was like, "blogging is hard." By which I meant, it's so hard to have this forum with its huge potential for creative expression and self-examination, but to have no choice but to strictly limit the public component of that examination out of respect for the feelings and individual processes of those "involved" individuals that one feels compelled to blog about.

It's also so hard to be that intimate with oneself to begin with, with or without external-internal limitations.

It's so hard to resist the temptation to be topical, recitative, boring, "I biked down to Mississippi today, wandered around that industrial area. There's this amazing convergence of overpasses down there, where..." to rely on making it sound pretty and not go anywhere with it, so as to at least produce some daily content. But also so as to avoid having to look deeply at what is weighing on my deeper heart, what surfaces in those moments of solitude under the overpasses, "I feel alienated from myself and my family, and I don't know how it happened or how to fix it, and I'm at this weird point in my relationship where I fluctuate daily between being present and ecstatic, and being heartbroken about the contradictory expectations I somehow got wrapped up in."

And the wonderful thing is that that could end up being boring, too. Boring, and also exploitative and unfair to my sweet friends and relatives. Lurid content does not readability make. Just as the lovely container crafted by mining the farthest reaches of ones vocabulary does not readability make. It's a chance at some awkward opening of communication, too, but for me the form is guided by an understanding that public space is public property, so let's have some entertainment while you're at it, no? And, paradoxically, the kind of communication that would be most interesting to people not directly involved with it would no doubt be the sort which would suffer the most from any lapse in privacy.

It's funny too, because I want to present a self-contained unit of product which speaks an organic whole, but I also want for conversation and dialogue: intimate, real, confidants to whom I've presented a perfect heart but who will come to me in their flaws and fallibility.

Authored by David

Hey! My name is Harry Balsagne and my frends David And Anna wanned me to write a something for this web page!
So here goes!
So I was doing this movie bit width my man Justin and he hada Kiss me smack on the lips for it only I didnt know until he didit.
Buy! Was I suprised!

Then, we was doing annother shoot for this movie thet I'm in, ans we hada make me look like I fell down a clift! So I got all bang up!
I look a little rough around the backal an frontal an assal reagins!
But hey! Thats show bisness!

Guest Author: Harry Balsagne
Hair, wardrobe, alias, and accessories: Breakfast of Champions
A Johnny Bigshot Production
Photograph of the Author: Emily Johnson

(This is why.)

Authored by David

(O.K., David seems to have resolved the Comments situation.  So, if you posted one before, I think that it's still gone forever, but I should be able to get new ones if you post them now.)

     So he got into my car.  This was not good.  Karena mouthed "it's cool," or maybe "is this cool?" at me.  He was definitely not "cool," or "o.k.," or "not a criminal."  He immediately started talking this existential soliloquy at us, encompassing many things that I didn't want to hear from any man who had just stepped into the car with me, regardless of whether or not I have a tough N.Y. friend there for "protection."  He was really upset about how you can't trust anybody anymore these days, and how you gotta watch out for "cheese tasters," and he seemed generally excitable.

(him) "So you two wanna get some beer...

...

...do you live near here?"

"UHHh, NO!  I mean, sort of far, but not here, no, not right around here."

(him) "Yeah, I haven't been here long, but I been here before.  But not for a while.  I been gone for a while...

...There used to be this other store right there, near where the Freddy's is, just this little place.  I used to go there...

...I been gone for a while.There was this guy I used to know.. you GOTTA WAtch out for cheese tasters though..."

(He was getting very emotional already, and his sentences were starting to run together.  Definitely picking up some steam.)

(him) "I needed an 8 ball, you know?  And this guy I knew said he could get me one.  So we met up at this plACE, you know!?  It was, like, a hotel down in this place over by the.And he was gonna get me the 8 ball, so I came down there, and I found him in the roOM.  And right when he was gonna give it to me the cOps came there!"

"Oh, man..."  We tried to sound like "we've been there, buddy, you don't have to worry about, or kill, us."  He had this vibe that was at once very forceful and very needy; like at any moment he could either crumble into a sad, kindergarden disappointment at having Done the Wrong Thing, or overpower us, abduct us, and pull some sort of Twin Peaks shit in the woods outside of town.

(him) "I know!  I couldn't believe it!RIGHT then!I don't know how they found us  .But the guy got outa there somehow.I don't know how he did it, but he got OUTa there.  So they took me down, and they were telling me "WHO DO YOU GET IT FROM" and "WE'LL MAKE A DEAL WITH YOU" but I wouldn't take it!  You can't listen to 'em 'cause they'll tell you all.I wouldn't do it, man, 'cause I'm no cheese taster!  Not like some guys that are out there.  Man, you gotta watch out for that, man; 'cause they'll rat you out, nothing.they'll take that cheese and you'll be swingin' by your balls in there!"

(I don't think that he meant us, literally.)

(him) "People's low, man, they do anything.  You know?  I just wanted my 8 ball...And they already wanted to put me away, but I wouldn't do it.  They had me mArked.I'm a decent guy, you know?  'Cause after you're in the system they put you away for nOthing!"

     I don't remember everything he talked about, but that pretty much got us to the parking lot.  It seemed like about a half hour, but it was probably more like three minutes of these slightly-too-impassioned reminiscences.  So we parked in what seemed like an inconspicuous spot—not too close, not too far—and gave him most of the money that we had in the world, silently resigning ourselves to the fact that we would see no return from it of any sort.  Ever.

     And he walked off.

     Directly we could no longer see him in the rearview, Karena and I turned to each other in a half-crazed and breathless cackle of terrified hilarity; "OH MY GOD!Are we gonna die?Is he going to kill us?Should we just drive away right now?'CHEESE TASTERS'?!?!?"

"We're never going to see that money again anyway.  We should just drive.  We should go right now."

"But what if he comes back with our beer?"

"I know!  I don't know.."

"But what if he comes back and kills us?!"

"I KNOW!"

"Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God..."

"O.k.  He's probably not going to kill us.  He's probably just a little crazy, and maybe he'll take our money and we'll never see him again, but maybe he'll come back with some beer, and we'll give him some more cigarettes, and we'll go home and never see him again...

...OH MY GOD!"

"He's taking a really long time.  Is he taking a really long time?  When did he go in?"

"I don't know.  I think he's taking a really long time."

"Oh, shit."

"What are we going to do?!"

"NO!  Oh my God, here he comes!"

"Oh, shit!oh, pleease don't kill us, pleeease don't let him kill us!"

"Oh my GOD!"

"WhaT!?"

"He's pushing a cart!"

"A shopping cart?"

"Yeah..."

"..."

"What is that?"

"O.K! Here he comes, here he comes!"

(him) "Hey!"

"Hey..."

(him) "Check it out!"

"Oh, my God!"

The discrepancy was slowly dawning on us; we had only given him about twelve dollars, but he came back wheeling a huge case of Bud bottles, and about half of a slaughtered cow.

(him) "Do you like meat?  I got you some meat."

"Yeah, I know."

"Wait...  How did you get all that stuff?"

(him) "Took it."

"YOU SHOPLIFTED IT?"

"DRIVE!!"

(him) "Whoa!  They won't know."

"LOOK at all that stuff you have!  How did you get out of there?!"

He was handing us our money back!

(him) "I learned from the best and now he's dead."

"..."

(him) "...The trick is the shopping cart.  So, do you like meat?"

"Uh..."

"Were...  um."

"Vegetarians."

(him; face registers nothing)

"We, ah, don't... eat, meat."

He looked just crestfallen.  He was so sure that he would make a huge hit with the cow, and we wouldn't even eat it.

"But our neighbors downstairs will LOVE it!"

"Yeah!  Oh my God, they'll totally love it!"

(him) "Really?" (regaining some hope, but not convinced)

"Yeah, they LOVE meat!  They'll love this meat!"

     This was basically true.  We had no way of knowing for sure that our downstairs neighbors would "love this meat," but they were three-ish twenty-ish brothers who had this gigantic stereo system that looked like it had been designed to provide "dancing music" for a wet T-shirt contest in some movie about nitro car racing.  I think that they also raced nitro cars.  And they smoked a shitload of pot.  They had this amazingly intense job, working for a disaster cleanup and restoration company, where they would go into houses after there had been flooding or a fire, or after people kill themselves, and they would clean up the mess as best they could so that someone else might be able to use the property.
     Mostly we felt sure that if we said "love" and "meat" and "neighbors downstairs" enough we could work out some kind of a plan before our new friend killed us.

     I guess we managed to convince him that the guys would be worthy enough recipients of the meat, and we made it back to the movie store, giving him some of our money for his trouble, thanking him for the beer and for everything, and hoping for a clean break.  When we got there, he wondered, "So, you think you can drive me, just, down over there?  There's this field..?"

     Yes, he wanted us to drive him to a vacant lot that was "really close to here."  He again seemed crestfallen and saddened when we gently-but-firmly declined him this favor, and I felt almost bad, and almost crazy for feeling bad.

By Anna

     My poor blog has languished long enough in the heat of the August lion, my school stresses and love worries, anything I can do to get away from my terrible persistence of self.

     But here I am, cheerily back to it so as to further my escape into entanglement.  Fitting, I'm sure.

     I don't really want to talk about it.  I'm sure it would be good for me, I know that that's what "blogging" is all about, but I have more of an aptitude for hurting people than is really passable in polite society, so instead I'll tell you a story about something that happened a long time ago.

     When we moved out here, out to Portland, Ore a gone (they laughed at me in the thrift store), Karena and I needed beer.  We couldn't get beer because we were only 19, so we were upset.  But a man walked up to our car in the parking lot of the West Coast Video—we were sitting there for a long time for some reason, probably trying to decide what to spend our last 17 dollars on and how to spend it on beer—a man walked up and asked to buy a cigarette off of Karena.  This was a bad video store.  We spent a lot of time there, and there was a strange carpeted plyboard feel to the whole place.  We would wander the "isles" for hours, always coming within minutes of wetting ourselves because we'd been in there so long, and then we'd rent some movie that neither of us would remember and a marginal VCR, and go back to our close to trashy semi suburban apartment and "mellow out."

     So she gave him a cigarette, and I think he gave her a dollar.  This was back before the turn of the century, so a dollar was really a lot of money.  Especially to us.  Anyway, Karena and I sort of looked at each other as he stood awkwardly close to my car, rolling his cigarette around between his fingers, and we furtively glanced our way to an understanding that I was not privy to that she should ask him if he would buy us some beer.

"Hey, buddy; would you buy for us?"

"Booze?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah, yeah; I'll buy it.  Where do you wanna get it?"

I said, "there's a Freddy's just down the block..." in hopes of mitigating the ensuing situation.

"You driving?"

I vibed "NO!" at her as hard as I could

"Yeah...
Are you packing?"

"What!?  A gun??"

He held back his jeans jacket to let us see that he was clean.
"All right; you wanna go?"