as i transition from this life to the next,

i am incessantly wondering what is to come.

regardless of the bold proclamations i make for my future self,

i am just as clued in to next week as the electric blue

lint spouting off my new holiday sweater.

another xmas gone by in a flash,
and the pressing needs of every day life start up slowly.

it has been a while since i wrote here last.
i have been more withdrawn, selfish even,
with my thoughts, going so far as to keep them hidden in ink,
folded over closely in recycled paper.

i have actually written a great deal in the past couple of months;
really i have been building a collection of non sequiturs
in hopes that i can actually pen something that beckons closer inspection.
for a while i re-created moments from a very specific timeframe
of my past, and i actually had fun doing so, although the subject matter
was moderately serious, or as serious as any parts of my life can get.

i am chuckling to myself as i read over what i have managed
to put down just now, because i really have no idea how to say
what i want to say, or perhaps even what it is that i want to say.

i cherish the moments when i am not so disjointed,
when i can just sit down, tweak my mind,
and let things come freely without feeling so...forced.
but as we all know, dear readers, that will happen again at some point
and so neither you nor i should worry so much about it.
until then, all you have to read is this babbling
and nonsense, which does get tiresome after a while.
just stick it out with me. 

i admit i was lackadaisical this thanksgiving,

at least re: my usual account of what i am thankful for.

several excuses include me being busy with my friends,

whom i have not seen in sundry years,

and overloading on things that i should not have eaten

that i should not have eaten

(i.e. the point past the point where i should have kept my

overreaching mouth shut and not eaten any more.

i conceded approximately 4-5 lbs this thanksgiving

on phil and clare's mac and cheese alone.).

regardless, i do have some things in mind

which i should directly thank for making my life liveable.

first, and most importantly, are my friends.

without my friends, these last couple of months would have been

disastrous, to say the least.

i have enumerated countless times how shitty my life

has been in the recent past, and without the support

of people who care about me deep in my brainspot,

i would have been far more miserable,

perhaps even intolerable to myself.

i rarely admit in public that i need the help of others,

but i feel safe enough here to say that

i do rely on those who know so;

they know who they are, even if i am bombastic enough

to say so about 2% of the time.

second, i am thankful for routines.
as much as i love unpredicability and spontaneous
gun fires/death dealing robots/encounters with strange animals,
i feel so comfortable doing things the same way
day in and day out.
i know this is an odd thing to be thankful for,
but i can easily imagine myself going crazy
if i had to do a bunch of different things every day.

now that i have dealt with those clerical duties,
time to discuss things more important.

lately i have been having some bizarre dreams.
i actually believe all my dreams for the past several weeks
have somehow seeped onto one another,
creating a world that is parallel to reality
except for one theme between them that is slightly,
yet essentially, different than my actual life.
in all of these hyper-vivid dreams,
i never get what i want.
i see whatever it is i want right in front of me,
but i always end up with something else
or nothing at all.
i would not go so far as to say they are nightmares,
but being denied night after night in my dreams
is quite tiresome, not to mention a bit
disheartening once i mull it over a bit with my dogs
when i wake up
(unsurprisingly, they are apathetic to my misgivings
and generally have nothing to contribute to my psyche;
i am beginning to suspect that dogs are
actually sociopaths, but because of their cute faces
and petite bodies, we are unable to distinguish this fact.
of course, not having humanistic vocal cords
might contribute to the sequelae of this psychiatric condition.).

then again, i am realizing that i am delving deeper
and deeper into the inner circles of my local tautology club.
does what i want in real life matter to myself in my dreams?

disclaimer:

i realize i have been talking about 'reading' and 'books'

far too often for the past month or so.

my thoughts on this subject:

a. i am in charge of this bitch, so i can do as i please;

b. what else am i supposed to do but read during this dead time;

c. as i read, i realize there are more things i want to read,

which lead to even more things i want to read,

which, ultimately, might result in some overdue fines.

i put down Every Love Story is a Ghost Story

not five minutes ago, and i wanted to reflect on it

while its "heartthrobbing" effects have yet to mellow.

considering my last impression of it will come from the very end,

let me attack it from there, which is, i think,

a major point to consider, anyhow.

i cannot be sure if DT Max deliberately used

frequent footnotes (ugh, i am beginning to hate alliteration

more and more, although from where this hate

stems from, i have no idea)

to parallel David Foster Wallace's writing,

or he did so because it was the most convenient method

to relay the information at hand.

regardless, i used two bookmarks while attempting to

devour this "325 page behemoth"

(trust me, i did not at first realize that

it would take me four separate days to read this thing,

and Max makes you work for these 325 measly pages;

i do not like to boast, but this is coming from the guy

that read the final Harry Potter in under 10 hours.

then again, quis est Harry Potter?)

one for the place i was in the biography,

and one for the place i was in the footnotes.

all of my feeble-minded troubles aside,

it seemed very much like being the co-pilot

of an airplane you knew was about to crash,

but the other pilot did not,

because you were the only one with the fuel gauge

on the instrument panel.

as the footnotes plummeted in number,

finally whittling down to none in the last chapter,

i had not even the chance to come to terms with

what i knew was inevitable.

that in itself is quite a "chicken or the egg" conundrum:

even though i knew the whole time reading

what the end was going to be,

the tale kept me entranced just enough to float me,

a loan shark digging his claws ever deeper into

my emotional bank, knowing the final balance would go his way.

that was why the end felt so abrupt and two-sided,

the biography portion finally merging unceremoniously

with the footnote portion at the end of Wallace's life.

another intriguing aspect of the narrative

was how vast and giants-trampling-little-villages-esque

the preceding years of Wallace's life were treated as,

and how it compared to the little last-breath

of his death in the final four pages or so.

it may have been that Max knew,

along with Wallace, The Pale King was stagnant

in the way that only Wallace could stagnate himself;

although Wallace's depression was what ultimately

drove him to suicide, there was no progression for him

with his novel, and that made it difficult for Max

to progress the narrative as well,
effectively forcing him to end at the grotesquely,
paradoxically organic end.

Wallace went off of his medication and barely gave himself

a chance to cope, instead withdrawing

and focusing on the chasm his unfinished novel brought into his life

(that is not to say that there was a reason for his death;

depression, and its symptoms, manifestations, etc., is something

no person ever feels the same as another,

and especially at the level that Wallace felt,

no one could ever begin to imagine.

therefore, to attribute blame to his inability to work

would be misguided.

i am hesitant to say that i have experienced

this kind of depression, but i have experienced

a pain so immobile and disruptive that

the ending of my life seemed to me a rational solution.

i realize i digress, but i cannot stress enough

how important this point is:

even if the pain of his absence lingers in the heart

of those who loved him, and even those remotely grazed

by his writing, which could be seen as the ultimate

extension of himself as a person,

no one can truly step into his world and realize

why he did what he did, and we can never begin

to fully comprehend the darkness that took him).

in this cycle of self-agony, Max really had nothing

to show the reader, because ultimately, he cannot feel

as Wallace did, and thus he cannot analyze,

let alone empathize, for the reader.

picture the mother snake

of the famous ouroboros:

she knows her child is destined to devour itself,

and so cannot attempt to feed it any further,

allowing the facts of her universe to plant even further.

i write late into the night,

and i have so many things on my mind regarding this book.

i am unsure as to whether or not i will ever get to

a full analysis of everything else that i have gleaned from

studying a facet of Wallace's life.

all i can say is that it made me look hard at myself,

and question the feelings and motive for feelings

that i find myself having constantly.

i, as Wallace did, fear the recursive nature

of trying to be a good person,

and trying more than that to be a whole person.

i am not saying that he and i were very alike,

but that there are similarities that made me

feel an aching connection with his troubled life

(that is literal, by the way, that aching connection.

sometimes my body manifests emotions physically,

making my heart press and my stomach twist,

beads of sweat gathering by my unreadable palm lines.

it is not something i can control, trust me,

but sometimes it can be interesting).

i recognize that i still have not really moved on

to whatever next phase in life i am supposed to be in.

for all intents and purposes,

i am just as much the me that i was months ago.

but with each library book checked out,

with each coffee i drink

and funny texts to/from linda

and fanduels with sean

and maybe even glimpses of possibilities,

i bring back a piece of my heart

that i let loose and deemed nonreturnable.

i find it hard to say for sure what i want,

mostly because i do have a hard time realizing

what it is that i want unless it is right in front of me.

but i sure love the desert as it gets close to winter.

i love how dark it gets so early on in the evening,

and all the palm trees leading to my home

lit up for the night to either:

a. guide santa through the maze of country clubs, or

b. keep the geriatrics from running over the dividers.

something about the coldness brings out

so much of my past around here.

the feeling of going to school in the morning;

playing outside at a band gig

even though it is certifiably cold,

just because a bunch of moneybags told you to;

going off somewhere for a family vacation,

totally hating my life at the time

but looking over those trips with longing later on,

because my current self begrudgingly wishes

for more time as my innocent self.

maybe the mountains are too beautiful

when the clouds decide to blanket them.

i can never help but stare at them,

especially early in the morning

(which happens not often)

when each hill and peak

has its own cloud-companion to stroke them,

whispering and coaxing them to forgo

their usual formalities of purple

and try on the obsessive beauty of orange and yellow,

daring them to take on the world as

ridges of the land i love far brighter

than they had the courage to be on their own.

i love the feeling of sinking into my bed during the afternoon,

letting myself get warmer and warmer

while i squeeze together every memory

of the breaks i used to have here at home.

but now, knowing i have no real where to get back to,

it is, as everything is, different.

i got my brother to buy me a new notebook

from the $1.50 japanese store in diamond bar.

i realize i still have multiple fractions of blank notebooks

as well as one or two wholly blank notebooks

kicking around,

but this one called to me.

it has khaki-colored covers,

a loose spiral binding which is important

because sometimes i have a hard time turning pages,

and what seems to be recycled paper with no ruling.

i realize that might have been one of the duller

constructs of words i've slapped together,

but bear with me.

i've been thinking so much about writing and

what it means to me, and to the people who might

actually read this and consider it (perhaps rightfully) blasé.

this might be due to the fact that i've been basically reading

a trillion books at the same time,

with two books being especially focal to this introspective moodiness:
Every Love Story is a Ghost Story, by DT Max,

and This is How You Lose Her, by Junot Diaz

(sorry Mr. Diaz, but i cannot be bothered to figure out

how to add accents to your name).

of course, i've already gotten to this point

and i basically have rambled on with no clear agenda,

so please let me try to clarify.

i went to go visit charles and christian de gooz

in arizona last weekend, which was a blast.

we drank, we smoked a great deal,

and they managed to make my arms unusable until today.

i was so happy during my visit that i honestly cannot say

i feel the need to compare how humdrum my life was,

and still is post-visit.

i've also been going back and forth

as to whether or not i should tell this girl who lives

a quadrillion miles away from me that i actually think

i might be into her.

at this point, i do not particularly care whether she feels the same way;

i just expect the experience of actually telling her

to be cathartic in some way.

also, the job hunt is incredibly unfulfilling.

back to David Foster Wallace's biography:

this is the first time i've read a book where

i cannot be sure i like the content or the delivery of said content better.

i never realized i might like a biography so much;

to be honest, i have always held them with a bit of disdain,

mere collections of facts about people that miss out

on the very essence that make lives...lives.

however, this book is incredibly well-written,

and the life of DFW is so fascinating that i have a hard time

separating my admiration for the subject and the writing.

perhaps this book is just one of those times when

there is a really great synergy between those two concepts

and the product is something special.

maybe i am just fanboying the shit out of this book.

either way, i suggest you read it, dear readers.

note of warning, however: it is a bit erudite at times,

but that is but one of the many reasons why i love the book so much.

by a happy coincidence, i was listening to

the Arctic Monkeys's new album AM

when i began reading Every Love Story

(while taking notes in my new notebook,

although due to the pages being blank,

the middle portion of my notes skew downward,

a trend i cursedly attempt to fix towards the bottom portion - 

see how it all came back together???).

what a great album.

only today was i loving AM so much that

i actually had the heretic notion that Arctic Monkeys might someday

supplant MCS as my favourite band

(see what i did there?).

if i re-visit Favourite Worst Nightmare

and like it at least as much as i liked Suck It and See,

then that means that i enjoy their discography album for album

as much as i do MCS's.

sacrilege.

something you may not know,

and can add to the list of bizarre-ities that i profess

to hold as my own:

i really hate using contractions when i write.

sometimes when i write these things,

i latch on to one, but try mightily to not use any other ones.

for instance, i am pretty certain i've only used

contractions for "i've" this whole time.

from the time i use a contraction,

i surreptitiously make sure i use only that one going forward

and toss the rest aside.

sloppy, i know, but hey, fuck you.

just kidding. i love you all.

as most of my readers are aware,

i'm not the biggest fan of electronic music.

although i was reticent, christian low intrigued me

enough regarding phoenix's latest album bankrupt!

for me to listen to it.

i think this is my favorite song from said album:

"tread softly stranger/

move over to the danger that you seek."

- from "the jeweller's hand" by the arctic monkeys

i find myself incoherent and nigh inexplicable

when i fall into my vices as i did for the last week or so.

as things settle down, however,

i am encouraged by the fact that as i continue

to understand myself and grow more patient,

i leave smaller messes to clean up in the future.

when i do get depressed, i feel like a stranger

takes over my place in the world;

a stranger by way of not knowing

which thoughts swirl behind his burdened eyes,

or why he seems to be stuck in place.

before, this stranger would throw his weight around,

leaving malice-lined prints and eddies of self-loathing behind

for me to take care of.

some of the hardest times was trying to deal with

this unwanted stranger's baggage on my own,

because i was too stubborn to ask for help.

now i know that he is transient,

a face that i have definitely acknowledged in passing

but not allowed to stake a claim.

of course, he still keeps my world littered

with scribbled pages of nonsense,

cigarette butts, and even the occasional escape

to someplace where no one will know you

poured your heart out of your eyes.

but these are inconveniences compared to 

what i dealt with before, and i am glad that

at least i have grown up to that point.

i still feel like everything i write is frustratingly indecipherable,

but i'm trying so hard to make progress.

maybe a couple more days,

or a few more late night drives to clear my mind.

i don't mind that i'm not okay.

honestly i think i am for the most part.

but some days, like today, things fall apart

and i am miserable with the thought of my

self-made loneliness.

then i get angry at myself for thinking that

i don't actually have things to cherish.

it's a cycle of exasperation,

but i know that sometimes i can't help myself.

it's specifically days like these,

when i get so tired of reading about dreams.

maybe reading so much murakami has taken a toll on me.

i wish i were as big as the sun

and i could swallow all the clouds in the sky.

maybe you would look up and wonder

where all of the clouds have gone

and realize i left the vast, immeasurably blue canvas

for you to be able to find me again.

some amount of days from now,

i will be back to my other self.

and that is all i can look forward to.

edit:
i can't stop myself from still thinking about you.
but that's not news; it's unavoidable.
without doing a single thing,
you hold me down in the best/worst way possible.
knowing i did what i had to do doesn't make it easier.

sometimes i catch myself getting lost in your face again,
and i hope more than anything else the next time
it doesn't hurt so much.
even after all this time,
trying my best to not talk to you (and obviously failing at times),
you seem to be the largest part of my life
that isn't myself.

i have to get these words out
so i can stop breaking my own heart.

i've had this stuck in my head for so long now:

"the midwest feels like a hollow place/

that we filled with love and industry."

- "the devil in my bloodstream" by the wonder years

and as i listen to all these songs that were
intended to be innocuous,
their lyrics bump into each other in my mind
and give me heartaches.

i didn't run for a week because i was feeling

especially lazy and ate everything instead;

tonight, when i went out,

i managed to scrounge up a dog and two cats

while minimally exerting myself.

the dog barked at me because he/she

correctly identified me as a night assailant.

the cats walked away from me a couple of yards

and watched me with great disdain.

my wanderlust knows no bounds:

not five minutes ago i looked up torrents for

disneyland specials, just so i could see footage of

that wonderful place i love so much.

i got a haircut on friday, and my brother keeps

calling me macklemore, which shows just how

powerful his brain is when used as an analytical tool.

besides these non sequiturs,

i've been pervasively despondent for the last couple of days.

i think i realized recently that although pat and i

were in each other's lives for roughly one short year,

she has had a large impact on my life.

i guess it's not too out of the realms of sanity for me to

still miss her this much.

i try not to say stuff like that here, mostly because

i use this space as a record of my thoughts

that i find important, independent of my current goings-on;

essentially, i want to write what i feel is
relatable and timeless.
however, at this juncture i cannot help but admit
that i think about pat too often,
and i am trying my best to move on with my life.

it's hard to move on, though,
when there's seemingly not too much to move on to.

another thursday:

full of hat hair, reading so much that i have a hard time

discerning what exactly i'm eating for dinner, and

enough obscure television shows to satisfy the prerequisites for a
TV Land's "Future Classic" award committee wet dream

(side note: Party Down is at least a 7.9 on the funny scale).

i managed to pencil in for this particular thursday:

wandering around the park trying as hard as i can

not to look like a miscreant, although the irony is that

even if i tried "as hard as i can" to look like a miscreant,

the fine gendarmes of Palm Desert would more than likely

consider me as threatening as a crumpled up receipt,

what with a copy of Tender is the Night in my hands

and a grin the size of a South American banana on my face

brought on by the incredibly clear sky of the day.

i've drank so much water since i've been home

that my dad has had to make extra trips to WinCo to fill up

the containers for the water dispensing unit.

essentially, since i've arrived, this family has consumed

double the amount of water.

in case you readers are incapable of some simple mathematics at home,

that means that i drink the same amount of water as

the three other humans and two dogs that reside with me.

although now that i realize, the dogs have their own special water

that has some chemicals in them to try to retard

the alarming and dispiriting rate of tooth loss

and general gingival health they've been facing.

needless to say, i find myself again at one of those crossroads

where i ask myself

"why am i eating two strips of bacon and

a microwave chicken burrito for breakfast

in the home of my childhood?"

as rhetoric as this question might be,

i'm fairly certain the phrase "dental board of california"

could be thrown into the equation without a large stretch

of the imagination or a sprinkling of petty untruths.

on the whole, i suppose i shouldn't really complain about

my temporarily lax existence.

there could be worse ways of spending one's time,

and to be honest, putting the infrequent bouts of

incredible anxiety regarding the future and all its

pecuniary pitfalls aside, i have to admit i am content.

i do feel like lately i've been swooning a bit more

from the romantic aspects of shows and movies.

i think seeing that kind of happiness in others,

even feigned with a professional mien,

gives me hope for the future.

nevertheless, even if mila kunis and elisha cuthbert

managed to mix their DNA, create a female clone from that sample,

and mature it in an incredibly short amount of time

a la Episode II: Attack of the Clones,

(and taught it everything there was to know about

21st century music and smelled of library book pages)

i would have to force myself to smile as graciously as i could

and explain to her that "i'm not really in a dating kind of place

right now, y'na'mean?"

call it fate, call it luck, call it karma.