November 2001 Archives

BEEP BEEP. the alarm. it's not mine. my roommate's down the hall. it's louder than mine. check my alarm anyways. it's a half hour before i have to get up. i turn it off. i am up. but. a half hour. give me this half hour. shut off your alarm. the alarm keeps going. I roll over. I try to sleep through it. this is impossible. my roommate isn't around. he's not there. I don't know where he is. his alarm is gigantic and i'm too tired to get out of bed. too tired to understand that if i turn off his alarm, if i get out of bed, walk just a bit, find the alarm, turn it off, I would get much more sleep than trying to sleep through it. my mind is boggled. i think about this in an infinite circle. i roll over again. i look and see what time it is on my alarm. it's fifteen minutes after my alarm was set. but I turned it off. why did i turn it off. how did i sleep through forty five fucking minutes of BEEP BEEP BEEP. i can sleep through anything. i am a super hero. i can ignore whatever i want, whenever and as long as i want. the alarm just doesn't exist - or - it's always existed and i've gotten used to it's quiet. i like the beeping. it lulls me to sleep. compared to my life. it's a siren song and my ears have no wax.

out of bed. walk to roommate's room. even without glasses i know he's not there. i destroy his alarm. in my mind. in my waking, i pick up the alarm. politely. my god it's as big as a toaster. a toaster you'd find at a 24 hour breakfast place where you can get pancakes with bananas and confectionery sugar and chocolate - oh i love chocolate! i don't like this alarm. just as nice as i picked it up, i felt around the 25+ buttons on the keypad of this alarm and find the 'alarm' switch. that master switch that they make much too small for anyone who wants to turn off the alarm without being entirely cognizant of their surroundings.

i haven't showered since saturday. i don't need to comb my hair. i have no hair. i change my under ware. i change the pants i wore to bed. i put on one shirt and a polo shirt i bought for a dollar over that. i find my hat. i put on my hoody. it's cold. it's cold with all those clothes. i'm walking to the bus station. i take out my keys and i rip two holes in the bottom of the sleeves of my hoody to put my thumbs through. there's no reason why but i feel better about it. i feel that my sweat shirt didn't have this before, but now it does and that keeps me walking. the bus comes quickly and there's a small hope that i may make class in time. if the class met a half hour later than it does now, which is a full hour later than it started to meet in the beginning of the year. i'm in the building. i look around. i can't find my teacher or the class. i meet a classmate. she can't find the teacher or the class. we look together. we can't find the teacher of the class. she gives up. i give up. i watched a slide show on sculpture from a different class. when i was looking for the teacher before, i hopped into that class by accident and told them. 'class, if i can't find my class, i'm joining you', and like i said, i did. i saw sculptures made of astro turf and gum. (not the same sculpture) i heard my painting teacher yell my photo teacher's name. so i raced out of the slide show which was over anyways and found her. i found her and did something else and didn't give her my project. i'll see her later.

i went out of the building and caught another bus. i had a bill to pay. a big bill. a big bill i received on monday that was due today. wednesday. it was a bill which included a charge for $714 for 'dog damages'. i own no dogs. my ex roommate/ex girlfriend/ex lover/now-hates-me owns dogs. two. her dogs. i'm paying the bill. she doesn't talk to me. she won't talk to me. i get stuck with the big bad bill for bogs - i mean dogs. i pay the bill after waiting to pay the bill. they took all my money. more than that. the check will bounce. they gave me back a slip of paper saying 'you have paid'. no thank you really. i wrap the receipt carefully, consciously inside the copy of the bill that i have and stick it back into my backpack. i go back to the bus where twenty people are waiting for the same bus. this bus isn't large. it's larger than that alarm. it's more like a decent sized Ford truck, but with everything flat. like a big van. a big van with rabbits painted on the side. not like a truck at all. i like trucks.

i'm squished inside this bus like a sardine. i know this because a very homeless person said that we're squished inside this bus like sardines. he said it more like slimy small salty sardines. but i didn't believe all that really. i thought of what differentiated me from him. we were both scruffy looking. we both had old clothes with holes in them. i thought, unthinkingly, the only difference between this homeless man and me is that I own a Mac. and. i have a home. and i wasn't drunk today but oh is the day still new.

yesterday i quit my job. i've had the job almost 3 years. i've never had a job for three years. i quit when my boss talked to me after i came in 2 hours late. i slept through my alarm. it seems to be a recurring theme. among his pep talk - he's into sports - he stated what he's stated the other times i have been late in the almost three years i've been there. 'damnit alex' (he says) 'if you weren't so talented, i'd have fired you a long time ago. so somehow i eeked saying i didn't want to work here anyways. the job was too much. he told me i'd missed the opportunity of being a shareholder of the company and i stopped him short. i was thinking to myself of getting a job at a coffee shop. the same way you think about fucking a girl you pass on the street. thinks are different than actions. but i thought. about getting this job there and writing bad poetry. and painting mad paintings. i wanted to be poor. i thought (realistically) -

I have no idea what i'm going to do.

i wrote all the above and went to painting class. I sat by the hot hot heater. I talked. I don't even have a canvas stretched. so I wasted time and went home and drew. I decided for this project, I would actually research the painting and draw it all out in stages. i was a believer. I believed that careful planning is needed for flawless execution. after five hours of drawing, i have this:

oh i know what you're thinking. and i know what i'm thinking. it's like dancing galaxies to me.

i planned this day. i really didn't tell you that. after drawing for 5 hours, i was to read. i have a copy of _perks of being a wallflower_. girls give me books. i read them. after 5 hours, i finished it. i didn't plan on that. i was three quarters of the way through it and i said. the hell with this day and the hell with this book and by 11:30 charlie was through highschool. i felt empowered.

i felt fantastically empowered. i want to knock on mr stephen chbosky's door. i want to push him back when he answers it. i want to throw the copy of the book i have right at him and laugh. 'ha! mr weird last name. fucking ha! finished your little "work of literature" in 5 hours. all that work you put into the book. *snap* gone. devoured! by me in 5 little hours!' i would look him up and down and leave his house. i bet he lives in an apartment though. i would leave anyways and kick a can in front of my foot and make stupid hand gestures to the car that almost hits me. i wouldn't be looking where i was going. i'd get something with cheese to eat afterwards. i'm sure chbosky gets little encounters like this all the time. he probably has a stack of books people throw at him. if i ever become a real author it would be a goal of mine. i bet also he would first be puzzled about all this and then sad and then just feel like the fictional artist out of nick hornby's nipple jesus in speaking with the angel. another book a girl gave me that i read.

i come back home and eat my other roommate's pumpkin pie and watch VH1 and think about how much longer i'm going to stay up and how late i'll be for work tomorrow. what are they going to do. fire me? i have a project that i essentially have to finish by friday. the project is similar to one that took (get ready) three months work in three days. why am i quitting?

i know some facts. i know that i really can't make a full beard. i stink cause i haven't bathed in a while. i lie. that's all the facts i know right now.

This is a series of photographs, taken with a Canon AE-1 Program camera, originally compiled into a book. The book was lent to a local art gallery, run by friends from school. Those friends left the city, without warning one day and in a very big rush and we'ren't heard from ever again. They took the book. Or threw it away - kept it there to be thrown away - I'll never know. Sadly, the below images are all I have left of the original prints. The stories were a part of the original book. - 08//14/10

1.i keep waking up an hour after my alarm goes off, wondering how exactly this strange sense of panic from my instantly forgotten dream has made it's way into my room and then just as quickly, feeling relieved that it was just my alarm all along. whatever event i set my alarm for has since passed and been missed, so i go back to sleep or stay up thinking, since unconsciously listening to your alarm for and hour has the ill effect of not...

...allowing yourself to drift back to sleep again. i run through my head all the things i went over last time i allowed myself to be in a quiet room at night - last night when i was struggling to get to sleep after drinking too much coffee. i silently panic about bills that were now late, the money that never was there to pay for the bills, the girl that just left me with limited and weak explaination, how i have no matching white socks, why the world looked more interesting without my contacts on, if people saw...

...colors the same way or not. i think all this would take great lengths of time, but glancing towards the abused alarm enlightens me that all this worldly thinking only took but a few minutes and i should get up. so i do. i make it to the bathroom where i look at myself for a few minutes; i strike super hero poses, i smile, frown, grimace, check my teeth, pop a zit, see if i'm balding, wonder if i should get this or that pierced or get this...

...or that piercing taken out. then i look at my hair again. i tell myself "self, someday you're going to cut your hair" i say this everyday - i'm sick of how it looks, how long it takes to wash, (when i do, in fact, wash it) and how screwed up it's gotten after i've bleached it yellow and dyed it any damn color i've wanted to. i take a cheap brush to it, pull it into a sorry bun - sometimes with an elastic, but most often just sort of knotting it together. i have a damn fine hat anyways. i get at least my face washed and try to make some sort of excuse as why i am now late.

2.i'm walking down pearl street where i work and realize these little walks i do have been the same little walks i've been doing for years. go down the stairs from work, at the bottom, turn my head left, smile and pretend my right hand is a gun and shoot myself in the mirror while at the same time winking and making some sort of `click` sound with my tongue and check. it's some sort of 'i'm hot as hell' dance that...

...teenaged boys do in movies made for teenaged girls. i turn my head right and open the door - i stop and think, why exactly is there a mirror on the bottom of stairs? i get too amused by children playing on the rock park. i walk past them all, thinking all the mothers and unmotherly hot and cross the street towards the flower shoppe. i miss seeing this one guy that worked on the street, he kept all the flower beds in tip top shape, planting tulips...

...and roses and digging up weeds. the thing is, he kind of looked like he'd kill you if you'd ever try to like, spit at him. he's gone now, i think he's in the military. passing the flower shoppe, i marvel at how cheap two dozen roses are and oh i should buy them but to who would i give them to? i walk past the hotdog man, never buying a hotdog. i glance at the hat selling man and the hats he\'s selling, but never buy a hat. i walk amidst...

...the panhandlers and teenagers the make an effort to look like panhandlers. they always ask for change. i either get really mad - having them ask me of all people, someone wearing shoes with holes in them and pants with holes in them and an old shirt with holes in it - i either get mad, or they don't ask me. i cross another street and take a right onto walnut and take a left when i'm on walnut and scamper up the...

...stairs of the post office to check my measly po box. i get the same things every time. one letter, addressed to someone else with a po box number one digit different than mine. one letter, this time with the same po box number as mine, but with a zip code belonging to california. i repeatedly put this letter in the 'missorted' slot, thinking maybe this slot is for getting mail you put in it missorted, instead of relieving this...

...problem. i get a notice from the post office telling me i should buy stamps, as if there's another way to pay for a letter to be sent, or a notice from them stating that my po box needs to be renewed on [some wrong date]. sometimes i get a check for some reason. sometimes i get a bill for at least twice the amount of any check, except for that one time my sister gave me a few hundred bucks to pay for rent one month. lastly, i get a piece of mail from the university, postmarked for "the parents...

...f:" and then my name. i throw it all away, even the checks and bills, until i realize that i just threw away important checks and bills and go rummaging through the trash for them. i smash my pockets with all the envelopes and walk back to pearl to fetch something to eat. wherever i go, i never have to order. the person behind the counter knows. i come wherever it is too often. sometimes i don't have to pay, or i forget and...

...they seem to forget but they say hello to me the next time i come in. i walk a similar way from how i came; past the hat man, the hotdog man, the flower shop and rock playground, i open up the door to work, check myself in the mirror and run up the stairs. after i get my food next time, i should do the second part of the route walking backwards and see if the time i get back is the same time that i left....

3.it was about 6 pm, late, at least the feeling of being late. it's fall and night just sort of happens after five. i was looking at the mountains, which is easy to do when all of the west is mountains. a funny thought popped inside my head. i should climb to the top of the mountain, one of them anyways, and well, climb down. something that if you....

...start at, say, 10:00 am would seem perfectly normal but not at 6:00 pm where it's dark and getting cold and after 6, mountain lions come out, looking for stupid hikers that start hiking in the early evening in the fall. are there even mountain lions around here? i thought about hiking and walking and thinking. maybe also battle a mountain....

...lion. a big one. i bet i'd meet someone up there, i'd ask them, "what are you doing?" and they'd reply, "hiking" and start walking up a different path. after a while, i'd just simply lose the path i was on, since it's really fucking dark and i'm wearing only a black hoody and i'm thinking i'm probably going to die up here, up in the mountains. people are going to find my body weeks later, the police will...

...piece together when and where i was right before i dissapeared, and ask themselves, "why the hell did he start climbing that mountain at night?" it would be in the papers. it would be on the front page. the headline would start out as "wtf?" it would start out like that in respectable papers. no one would understand. parents ...

...wouldn't make a lesson out of me cause they'd be pretty sure their 3 year old knows better than to start hiking up a mountain at night, wearing almost nothing, is just udderly... stupid. i stopped thinking about this all and walked the rest of the way home. i went into the bathroom, took a shit, and cut off two years of hair off my head (that is, all of it) i'd been thinking about doing that as well.

i was on the set of a play

there was someone on a rope like in Peter Pan, swinging, but out of control. I was on the side of the stage, and i put a rope 'round myself and swung off to help them, since they were now still, in the middle of the stage. I grabbed them and whoever it was, got scared. I pulled them out of the middle of the stage and used various pipes and things on the ceiling to pull both of ourselves in. The person then turned into a bird, a sparrow. He/it was hurt and somehow i knew how to help it not hurt anymore. I started operating on the bird, the bird turned into some sort of shell and two pieces of parchment paper folded into each other. There was some sort of debri on the middle piece that i swept away and there was writing; my mother's handwriting. It said something like 'don't worry about the past, you'll figure out the future, they'll all come back to you' i usually can never read my mother's handwriting and then i woke up as the phone rang, and i was 10 minutes late to work.

(unfinished draft)

So i met this girl.

It was a Saturday night I thinks. I was working on a project for the City of Lafayette, for real work. When you're in the middle of the country, and you have nothing for support, working on a Friday night isn't unusual. But as of recently, I have become passionate about this, about work! I wanted what was created to be the best I could possibly do, that anyone could do, I wanted the end product to be featured in next year's design annuals and have it win all sorts of awards, I want to become some sort of cultural, underground phenomena. I was that fucking serious about it.

To trick my senses into thinking I'm being some what social. I leave my Instant Messenger program on to get delightfully bothered every now and again. It's been easier since I joined a certain online community You wouldn't believe how many people I've found work not two blocks away from where I work on Pearl Street. I should ask them all for lunch one day.

That night, I got a random IM from a girl, this being not too unusual. People like to talk to people about themselves, I never really understood the draw. I never start these conversations, but anser anyone that does want to say hello. Look! I'm even anti-social when it comes to talking to people on a computer, I'm udderly hopeless.

This girl, like many, talked about herself and Indie music, which I really don't have a clue what exactly that is, music today isn't what it should be. I plan to fix that soon. I am the savior of this world you know. I guess I told her I was indie music personified, whatever that means, I like to bullshit on this stupid contraption of a program. This girl went away as randomly as she appeared and I went to sleep soon afterwards. I later found out she smoked pot for the first time in months before she talked to me. So very normal. I've been working on Friday nights since I was seventeen. At 3 am, not many people bother you and all your favorite songs come alive in your headphones.

And then I started talking to her more.

I found out all sorts of things that someone reading now may find interesting and somewhat critical to any story I'm trying to put together, she lives in the same dorm on campus as my Silent Bob Body Double friend. She knows who The Pixies are (which, is a very very good thing) She was a writer for a paper that had some time with the Vilage Voice, kinda like the Village Voice of Nashville. She... never met someone she first talked to online.

I forgot exactly I was really doing one time, when my computer was on and IM was on as well, something amazingly embarrising and the main reason I don't have some sort of webcam to just make my nerdish leanings oh so complete. She asked if I would like to meet sometime. No big deal really, someone to talk to for a night, someone new and fresh and hopefully not ugly but obviously shy. Sometimes meeting people you know about but never physically met is like fighting with a total stranger - you don't know theire strengths or weaknesses, you barely know what they look like, you're just in the ring with them and there is no way to escape...

We met on a Wednesday night. I think I even shaved. We met at her dowm and walked and talked to a coffee shop, got kicked out of the said coffee shop, then went through campus and somehow, out throught the other side of campus and down by ways of 30th, the street I used to live on.

When I moved out of that house on 30th, I left this Marble Sculpture that I carved (and haven't fully written a story about) this summer. I explained how crazy I got after carving 8 - 8 hour days in a row in the middle of nowhere for no particular reason but to do it, carving an emerging human form from a solid, quarter ton of pure white stone. We walked back to her dorm and sat on a bench and talked and talked and talked till about 3:00am.

That was Wednesday, I didn't see her on Thursday, but Thursday was the day I bought my Fender Stratocaster and actually went out with another girl that asked me if I'd like to meet right after girl #1 did. Something must have been in the air. I talked to her, walked to a coffee shop recited the same stories in auto mode and said goodbye a little sooner than the day before. I walked down Broadway, towards home with my guitar in it's guitar case, feeling like someone who wants to walk with a guitar, in it's guitar case.

The next day, I got up very late to work, I proably slept with the guitar in my bed. I'm almost sure of it. It happens. I almost changed that day, tied the dread of hair into a bun and scuttled back to work. I looked like crap and felt much the same. At 2:00pm, I decided to call girl #1. Walked outside to use the pay phone, dialed, ring. ring. ring.

ring. ring. ring. Hi, this is -

At that moment, I turned to the right and saw the exact girl I was trying to call. I out the phone down and recited what just happened and what i was doing and using lots of 'duhs' and 'ands' - i was caught off gaurd. I was embarressed by my appearance (scruffy and smelly, if smelly can appear, it did) She was "being a girl" and shopping for things she didn't need and I just so happened to be right in there. Crazy. So I asked her right then and there to hang out on Saturday and on Saturday I shaved again (that's twice that week) donned my aligator 70's red polo shirt made sure I had deoderant on and went back to her dorm.

I had planned this night, researched our entertainment possibilities. Made a plan 'B', made a plan 'C', alternative plans if she wasn't even there, if, somehow I got run over by a clown car on the way there, all two blocks. She heard what I thought would be fun and shot them all down. She opted that talking in her dormroom would be just fab. She wanted me to tell her a sequel to a story I had.

You see,

I pointed her to some diary entries I wrote about some horrible times I had, the first visit back to Colorado. I hinted there was a followup I haven't written yet (looks like I'll be busy writing things, or none of my stories now will ever make sense) and she was determined to get it out of me.

Odd little note, I wrote this much and stopped, cause well, I do sleep sometimes, I visited her and she saw all the above and wanted to read the rest, the draft of the draft that was in my notebook. She read as I looked dumbly on the floor. She finished, closed the notebook and threw it down and looked pissed. What do I do? Take this off? Stop right here? What would you do? -js

I protested, but promised I'd tell her, that night, half lying. It wasn't easy shit for me to talk about, and the longer I waited, the harded it was to say anything to anybody Think about how that is. Think hard. I was in a major funk. I'll be damned if just anyone was told. Six months this had been in my noggin. So we talked about... things - friends, hometowns, college - but she wanted to know, she was curious, I wanted to kiss her. I'm a guy and she had an amazing looking top on. I am in her dorm, aren't I? So I tried. She backed away completely and I felt like the fool I always knew I was. I felt, great, ruined the night - good work alex! you fucking idiot.

I stared at her wall, which looked much more interesting than it had previously been. wow, off-white cool. "Is that, eggshell white?" I should have said to break the silence. Her roomate put one of those motivational posters on the wall, something with an awe-inspiring picture, with a caption to just melt your little heart and in real small type, some sort of dumb quote. Her ibook started playing a song by Belle and Sebastian that I somehow knew, a girl gave me a mix cd of it and it's actually very nice, so i sung along, trying, anyways - i got half the words and made a note to look up the lyrics if ever such a situation ever comes up again. I didn't know what she was thinking. I really didn't know what I was either. What to do? It seemd like the right place/right time thing. So we sat. On her bed. I had to piss for like the 10th tiem that day, cause sometimes when I'm nervous I have to piss alot. I remember when I was the juggler for Dick Nixon, I pissed maybe 4 times a half hour before the show and didn't realize that I was using the women's rest room till that forth time. She still wanted to hear that story. That Story I haven't told anyone. Anywhere. So I told her about, IT. I told her how terrible sad I was because of THAT (I'll write about it formally later, I swear). I cried, she squeezed my hand, I whipped my hair back into place and gave a shrug and a smile between the tears. I looked at her and asked her what she was thinking and she replied that she was wondering what I was thinking so (oh no) we smooched.

Whatever just had happened, I felt fucking happy - telling something so horrible and getting off my mind, the largest relieve I've felt all year and then having that happen to me, it catapults how you feel about that person, like two things get mixed up in your brain and you can't decifer what each exactly is, but the mixture of the two is fireworks. Fireworks! In the dorms, oh never so happy to be in the dorms! Till 6:30am doing similar little talks with similar little kisses until she kicked me out - her roomate was coming back in the morning, and well, that's dorm life for you. I walked home dazed and all that cal, home being only a couple blocks from school. I'll never know how I got this place so soon before college started. Halfway there, I remember: Forgot my keys The thought actually came to me, if I was locked out of my house, that sleeping outside, until someone from inside the house let me in, that that situation would be O.K. I would be cool about freezy myself for hours. I hoped the fence to the backyard and made it through the doggy door, no problem. The moment I collapsed on the futon mattress, my roomate's alarm went off. All Saturdays should end like this, as all Sundays should begin like this.

(abandoned for now)

Love Is Just A Joyride, hey girl?

saturday i chalked done some words i brought
all about a girl i thought i loved
told the story of what we did and what went wrong
heard it all before,

it's the same old song