escaping a name is the color change i look for.

one day, my love will know the hardness of her teeth,

and she can whisper quietly, smiling, at my bones.

embrace the heavy-handedness of our dialogue,

either past or present; there is no such thing in love

because we only see each other's futures.

caring, in the hole, pushes me to find what i believe in.

you too.

you know, i was hoping to write something slightly up-beat

after the rather "wahwah"-esque horror show of that last thing,

but i think i ended up beginning with something not so nice.

if it comes off that way, do not fret, because, i mean,

it really is about my continuing quest to understand what love is.

in other actual news from my life,

sean came to visit, and i had a great week.

so i can walk around with my head up for a bit longer,

until i realize it truly is too cold in my room or that

i waste pretty much everything.

oh, i signed up for insurance.

they want proof of my citizenship.

future american wife, please apply here.

i have this bad habit of visiting LA and drinking way too much,

like more than i did even in undergrad/grad school,

like more than i really ought to,

like i make really horrendous decisions that half my friends are like

"that is too funny" and the other half are like

"may god have mercy on all our souls, because you are an actual human being

and you are speaking these words."

oh well, i only get drunk once or twice a month anyway,

so i might as well go all out, or whatever.

i currently have in possession some old home video tapes,

because apparently i am an historic loser and not just a spontaneous one;

if you care to check them out, well, you will have to come to irvine

because they are on these little cassette tapes that are ridiculously efficient

and can hold i believe infinite amounts of data.

Foster the People is better than you might think.

"I've been acting like I'm strong, but/

the truth is I've been losing ground-"

- 'Dismantling Summer' by The Wonder Years

First, I went to Starbucks to read.

I read approx. 10 pages of Infinite Jest;

it was the part where Hal describes Himself's suicide.

Second, I stopped by Petsmart to look at baby chameleons.

There was a dog adoption event going on,

and one particular dog in his little black cage was whimpering and shaking.

I left the store and got in my car.

On the drive home, I cried for the second time in a week.

I need some help.

so how am i supposed to kick a nicotine habit when

i go to work and feel like shit and i come home and feel like shit.

okay, it's not all bad. sometimes selena gomez songs come on the radio

and that gets me going pretty good or whatever.

fine attention to details: this is what bores the shit out of me.

i sat in an oozingly comfortable chair for an eternity during the hours of the day

when i know i am barely functioning and presentable,

attempting to care about all these ideas everyone around me threw out.

basically, subjecting me to a torture-thon in the trappings of an "office meeting".

my god, is this what people think about throughout the day?

really?

i found the anger, more like petulance, growing inside me

as discussions about the "patients' experience" vis a vis employee nitpicking

stretched on for literally minutes. as a "people person", this was fundamentally

reductive to the essential problem of making others happy.

or at least, as happy as they can be right before specialists

sit them down in an off-green chair to extract their disposable income

in hopes that the shittiness of their oral health would become less shitty.

at least, as efficiently as they could.

someone suggested comment cards for patients to fill out,

which would be tallied (and displayed, no less, on a bulletin board,

"which there is plenty of room for in the back" one person gloated);

at the end of the month, the employee with the most amount of feedback

would win an award.

my impatience suggested that there was most definitely enough floss

in the office to hang myself in the bathroom, with the plan being to mask

the gurgling noises from my lungs with the one-off coffee maker at the front office,

which does make coffee in the morning.

by this moment in my life, i have already decided that i am not great at living,

and the proof was that if this rabble was what made people great,

then my amateur hour stretched into years was justifiable.

the small picture never crosses my mind. period.

there are others out there that do it for me, and i am capable of genuflecting to them

in hopes that i can keep them around to sort through these challenges.

i feel no shame in this; some people are really good at certain things,

and others are really good at appointing the first ten minutes of the day to

"huddles, so that we can go over specific things for the day".

i imagine the latter never experience the thrill of living on cereal for dinner

for days on end.

finally, we are done with this sordid affair, and walk my deliberately

agitated body to the back of the office. as i pass a window,

i hear the sirens of an emergency vehicle on the street and think to myself

"Jesus Fucking Christ, we are talking about millimeters here".

here is a thing i have been pondering for a little while now:

the sheer amount of creative output a person can receive these days

is astounding (which may be an understatement).

even 10 years ago, the ease of which one could check out a new album

or find a particular book was far less than it is today.

we are so lucky to be living in a time where information and entertainment

are available essentially 24/7, as long as you have a bit of disposable income.

if you take the time to really think about this,

trust me, it will boggle your mind.

the next time you youtube a song you just heard on the radio,

stream a cult classic on netflix, etc.,

pause and reflect on how fucking easy it was to do so.

as much as people (read as: "grown ups") consider our generation to be

time wasters with social media and the internet,

the fact remains that we are inundated with stuff, basically.

just tons and tons and shit tons of stuff.

seriously, think about it.

if it does not blow your mind off its rusty hinges,

then you are not considering it hard enough.

as a way to use my considerably large amount of free time

in some credible way (although to whom i would receive credit from

i cannot fathom in the slightest)

i am attempting to write more.

here are the most glaring problems i have faced so far:

1. i am not a smart man. i have neither the training nor capacity

to take on a project the scale of which i will allow to get myself behind.

in essence, i do not wish to write something solely for the sake of it's existence,

or for my own satisfaction; i want to write something that actually means something

to other people who might venture to read it.

the issue inherent with that is that i am not a writer.

i do not possess the tools to flesh out my thoughts in a cohesive manner,

nor in a way that will make whatever i create meaningful on a level

comprehensible to literate adults

(as in not just some plot-driven flash in the pan

with no point and all show).

2. i cannot choose a topic concrete enough to write about.

i know i want to approach the subject of "the state of society"

a la DFW, but there are inherent issues with that as well.

for one, i have no idea what the state of society really is;

the concept itself is vague and encompasses such a large amount of subject matter

that i do not know who/what/when/where/how to approach it from/with/from/from/

(that actually works on its own).

also, even if i attempt to make some grand point about "society",

it will come from my incredibly sheltered view of it,

considering i am part of a privileged group that experiences things

very differently than others in the same country, state, and even city, no less.

i have no point-of-view that allows me any sort of "expertise"

in what the collective consciousness of the nation
(which is the largest population of people i feel like i can comment on

without being a complete ignoramus)

is at the moment, or how it has changed over the past decade,

or even the past year.

the only entrances i have to the masses are bits of pop culture,

the internet and its relevance on why i find myself surrounded by assholes (essentially),

a small amount of knowledge on the effect of the incredible

diversity of media available to just about everyone with some money,

and a cursory taste of california in all its golden glory.

3. my life. or, more specifically, my choices that have led

to me being who i am now.

i firmly believe that if i had stuck to my convictions,

i would have been drunkenly happy working at a shitty cafe

while going to school to learn how to properly write

and simultaneously keeping my parents' hearts deeply unsettled.

i am not saying i do not like where i am now.

i love my job, and i love the possibilities it has afforded me.

but really, i am a fairly simple creature in terms of needs,

and i would ultimately have been better off putting my sometimes fervent

energies into something creative rather than concrete.

obviously, 99% of those who read this might conclude that

i have, in fact, been the most covertly pretentious person you have ever known,

and that i mock more or less any writer that does not fit my standard

of writing as an attempt to convey ideas of great importance.

i understand your dismay, and in fact, i am frequently irritated at myself,

frustrated even, that i am so quick to dismiss most writing, and actually

most creative output, as "trivial" (anyone who has heard me rant about

bruno mars can chime in on this).

i realize the determination, courage, hard work, and strength of will

it takes to write even the lowliest of paperback romances,

and i commend completely anyone who does it.

the fact of the matter is, i have none of those;

i have always placed in high esteem those who have such traits,

whether it translates to writing, music, film, art, and even religion.

in many ways, i find writing to be analogous to practicing religion

in that one must have a fervent belief in something,

and not be afraid to put their own existence on the backburner

for something greater than themselves.

this is the part where i could delve deeper into what religion means to me

and why i use it as an example here, but that would require a level of effort

i seem to have misplaced last night around 2am when i could not sleep.

maybe one day, i will be able to translate my observations about the

world that i fight to exist in comfortably into some print on paper,

but i fear that day is not now.

the only thing i suppose i could do is to work at it little by little.

and that is what i intend to do.