once again

for a second time in less that a week, i had something to say about physical pain and the fucking thing disappears into a cyber black hole before i can save it.

maybe the blog gods, or the flying spagetti monster, or... whatever.

lets just get to the bullet points, shall we?

• i hurt. all the time. sometimes its not so bad, other times its worse.
• this is having a negative effect on my rosy outlook.
• couple that with the hamburger that represents my emotional state...

feh.

can i just wake up when i am healthy again?

locally, snow continues in the mountains... after these messages.

its interesting what makes the news and what doesn't. admittidly, editors pick and choose what is newsworthy... but based on what?

i tend to avoid news anymore, particularily local tv and radio with the exception of opb and npr. i simply couldn't take anymore after the invasion of iraq and the subsequent nationalism and faux patriotism. it became... excessive.

locally, news tends on the 'bleed and lead' side, of course. preying heavily on fear in order to sell cars and dishwasher soap. i find the whole affair disgusting. people i've never met, having the worst traumas of their lives and a boogieman on every corner.

having made that preface, there is a strange facination with the unknown, dangers, and perils of life that people can find themselves in.

so...

a man i've worked with for nearly twenty years had his brother go missing last month. upon searching his house, the family found only large quantities of dried blood. his car was found a few days later in the mount hood national forest. subsequent searches of the area turned up no trace of him or what happened to him, but the winter snow had already well covered most of the terrain.

now they wait for the spring thaw to continue searching.


none of this made the news, and i don't know if that is a good or bad thing.

driving guilt

i love my car (the old one, i wish it were running) and i love driving it.

all my life my car has represented freedom, escape, adventure.

i can't tell you how many evenings i've gone out and just drove around with no destination, look up some street or road i've never been on, or gone back to someplace i havent been in a long time.

the late summer twilight, the smells of coming fall... all of these sensory baths couple tightly with my motor vehicle.

when i was working the night shift in wilsonville, i'd cruise down I-5 on my way to work with the windows down and the radio up as the heat of the day was just begining to dissipate. the sun lumbering down over the horizon in the west and casting those golden hour golds and oranges into my consciousness.

...and that ribbon of concrete and asphalt running out into the distance, a future laid out there just for the taking. i'd think, "if i stayed on this road, i could be in los angeles by morning. mexico by tomorrow afternoon."

i never did, though.

i'd just pull into the parking lot and watch those other cars go by, roaring off to some other place than i.

killing dreams with paper airplane bombers

melancholy is a loving seductress. when she envelopes me in her arms, i feel the current of this most bittersweet journey. when she takes hold of my life, i am guided only by the knowlege of my mortality. she opens doors that always lead to the same comfortable place, my past, with a narrow narrow view of the future. she rolls me up in warmth and understanding of loss, heartache, and never-beens. she is a wiley concubine, meeting me in dark alleys and whisking me away from the loud noises of the circus to a quiet refuge of soft downey pillows and warm tea.

she is a siren, calling me always in my dreams, and when i awake i find myself shipwrecked on her shores with everything i need and nothing i want.

**********

wednesday, january 25th.

had the worst sleep i've had i a long time last night. waking to agony and uncomfort every hour and a half or so. not insomnia, but the physical pain of a leg wrecked. moving seemed so painful that i suffered in silent darkness rather than claw my way to the other side of the room and my vicodin.

rose this morning to find the swelling back up again. perhaps stretching the thing yesterday was not such a good idea.

i need to make a list of things. i have so much going on in my head right now that i feel the need to write them down and make them concrete. either something i am going to do, or something i am going to cross off undone, just to stop swimming in the pipedreamyness of it all.

lists.

like those poor bastards i see with the daytimer and schedules and appointments and everything i detest...

lists.

the thing about lists is that they operate out of imagination. they take the thought and shove it into a little box or between two lines. this dream, that creation... wedged somewhere between getting my teeth cleaned and an oil change for the car.

gah.

i need to relax a little. there's nothing wrong with that, i know. i don't understand my anxiety over it. i clearly understand the necessity of arrangement of thought and gaining clarity of mission in order to accomplish anything. i mean, could you imagine building a bridge with only the designer's ideas locked in his head?

i think i fear that if i get it out where it is visiable, that it will take on an appearance of impossibility, of undoableness.

...and the dream is killed in a fit of rational thought.


*************

"...i was not embarassed at circuses. some people are. circuses are loud, vulgar, and smell in the sun. By the time people are fourteen or fifteen, they have been divested of their loves, their ancient and intuitive tastes, one by one, until when they reach maturity there is no fun left, no zest, no gusto, no flavor. others have criticized, and they have critizied themselves, into embarassment. when the circus pulls in at five of a dark cold summer morn, and the calliope sounds, they do not rise and run, they turn in their sleep, and life passes by."

~[ray bradbury]

**********

life is pain

i had a 1200 word essay on pain.

it vaporized before i could save it. all on account of i wanted to change the font.

see what i get for placing superficial before substance?




i'm going to bed. the world is cruel and i hurt.



phht.

as if you cared.

indulging in loss

today started as a potentially grand day. things are movin' and shakin'. my house is selling, my sister is taking me skiing.

maybe i shouldnt be so... friggin' happy about the sale of my house, but i was. i want to have it done, and that is my only satisfaction for the entire ordeal, the finishing of it. finishing it so we can stop hurting so much and start healing. as hard as it is to fathom the distance from which we came to where we are now (it is a mind-boggling and sour sour thing), and i certainly take no joy in the minutae of the separation... the steps which have become necessary are always heart-wrenching and gnashing to the soul. finish it, i say. finish it and be done.

with grace if possible.

and so it came to pass, and not without a certain amount of yet more gnashing and at some point, feeling as if i had lost control of everything inside me.

and some minor graces.

i drove to my sister's house after signing the papers and mindlessly took the long way up sandy boulevard. i began to recognize all the old buildings again. the sandy jug had been repainted and renamed the pirate's cove, completely and utterly improper to my mind. then i began to recognize this path, this route. i used to drive this a lot, and i wondered why. i mean, i never lived over here, i had no jobs in this area of town.

then it turned over in my mind, and with it, took my stomach and heart and rolled them like a pair of levis in a large commercial laundrymat drier.

i came this way to see her.

way back when. way back then, at the very begining when we first started seeing each other and she worked at the airport. this is the way i came to find her at work. usually unannouced, i'd drive out to pdx and walk down the long concourse just to see her there. just to hope that she'd have time to hang out a bit... and smile at me, and laugh with me, and see the look on her face at having me there was all i ever wanted and never ever ever to lose... before i had to drive back to my shithole studio in northwest.

those kids... in love and falling for it all. all of it.

damn.

...anyway, as the weight of the memories of my past caught up to my now upsidedown heart, i passed 82nd which is where i would have had to turn left all those years ago to see her.

i can't turn left anymore.

i mean... i could, but there's no point to it, is there?


so i cried instead.


i arrived at my sister's and just lost control over everything. i blubbered like a child for a few minutes and reeled in the knowlege that this morning had been perhaps the last time i might see her on purpose, for a reason.

getting myself together, we loaded the truck and headed to the mountain.

hit the slopes just after 1pm. it was a decent day, fresh fresh powder from the prior evening's snow. the wind was not too harsh and the sun would peek through the terminal overcast sky occasionally.

though i was thouroghly happy to be there, i found myself distracted by the morning's events and daydreaming on the lifts, alternately staring at the back of my gloves or gazing through the mountain at portland eighty miles away. on my runs, i would find myself muttering or singing some song from my early adulthood and cracking up and going stiff on the berms when the downbeat in my mind wasn't jiving with the moguls in the snow.

all in all, i never did really loosen up. i felt sloppy and stiff all over the mountain, never finding my groove.

we did make good time on the slopes getting in eight or so runs by 2:40 when i just lost control over everything yet again. my skis crossed. the outside edge of my left ski bit the ground and took my ski boot with my foot in it to the right and behind me in a clockwise motion. meanwhile, my torso in a fit of unapologetic reverence to newton, decided to do a pirouette to the left in a counter-clockwise motion.

to which my left knee, sensing that the jig was indeed finally up, said "pop" and walked off the job.

before i even hit the ground, my frontal lobes were already saying "this is not good", followed by "this is gonna hurt" followed by, "oh, that's not so bad" in an attempt to rally the knee back to his duties, followed by "ouch, you idiot, that fucking hurts a lot."

um.. yeah.


a longer ride down in the back of a sled and a couple of hours in the medical hut and we're back in town and i am renting crutches which could have been frisbee's on account of the store where i picked 'em up.



really though, it was the best birthday card i've ever gotten. two 9 x 11" glossy b+w photos of the inside of my knee and a script for vicodan.



time to stop losing control.

its a kind of indulgence.

life is good

man.

i tell you what.

given the extremes of the past six months, really... no... the past two years... today was remarkable and yet so sublime... perfection. greatness.

i went to work a bit early because i knew i had tomorrow off and wanted to clear my desk of the important shite. then came the three hours of downtime whilst i tried to gain my tix to ttitd. sucessful, at 2:47.

finish off the remaining work and then meet friends for drinks.

...on account of my birthday.

i mean... jesus...

people came out to spend the evening with me?

you don't know how much this means to me. you, my chosen family... and you choosing me... i have no. no words... words fail... even you - especially you who could not make it, but i felt you here anyway...

fuck, i am all weepy now, but please understand how important this is to me.

there are not adequate words.



second, introducing my blood family to my chosen family for really the first time and watching that alchemy work.

comment: 'you should invite them to covers and blankets', in regard to my blood family.

amazing.

amazing because i always knew my blood family would accept my chosen family, that's just how they are.

...what i always hung up on was if my friends would or could accept my family... and it turns out that they can, and with open arms.

i am so blessed with love.

so amazingly blessed. i wonder what i have ever done to deserve this treatment.

an amazing day, i have been in high spirits all day. tomorrow looks to be just as great, my house sale is closing and my sister is taking me skiing.

i want you to know i love you all.

you know who you are, please take this to heart.

...and if you are unsure, please stop me sometime and look in my eyes.

you'll know.

xoxo,
~w

crack open the ribcage

fuck this hurts.

i've been largely occupying my free time with a busy social calendar, lots of parties, lots of wine and cocktails, a handful of drugs, dating (sort of) and sex.

...all to keep me from thinking about the unbearable sadness of losing her and a life that was not perfect, but it was OUR life, unduplicated anywhere in the history of humankind.

today, tonight rather... after a day of still more hedonism, i retire to my room, tears streaming down my face.

fuck, i miss her.

i miss her looks. her voice. the pancakes she made every sunday. sharing the comics. the heave of her chest as she breathed...

and a hundred other things i'll never be able to adequately describe to another soul. mostly, i miss the future that never came, and now is stone cold dead.

we were going to do so much.

this wasn't supposed to happen.

but, here i am now, snottynosed and giving myself a good cry for the first time in weeks.

with rickey lee jones making sure i feel all the nuances.



i had a conversation with a friend the other day about the seduction of melancholy, how it draws me in and holds me in those bittersweet and dark arms. comforting me with my past while taunting me with a future that could never happen.

i like to say that i embrace my melancholy, from here i can gauge my joy pure. i am determined to feel the extreme ranges of the human experience.

but now i'm wondering what kind of intellectual jerkoff is that?

i'm fucking sad.

i dont want to be sad anymore.


i am lamenting the death of my old life. the one where i knew where i lived, and what i was doing the next day, and who was going to hold me when i ached and applaud when i succeeded.

but that's dead.

dead.

dead.

looking at my nightstand?

"All of these roads to Rome are legitimate for different travelers, at different stages of life. But if we are at the crossroads, as the blues singers moan, longing for something else, niether diversion nor distraction, escape nor mere entertainment? What if we have finally wearied of the paladins of progress who promise worry-free travel, and long for a form of travel that responds to a genuine cri du coeur, a longing for a taste of mystery, a touch of the sacred.

"For mellennia, this cry in the heart for embarking upon a meaningful jouney has been answered by pilgrimage, a transformative journey to a sacred center. It calls for a journy to a holy site associated with gods, saints, or heros, or to a natural setting inbued with spiritual power, or to a revered temple to seek council. To people the world over, pilgrimage is a spiritual excercise, an act of devotion to find a source of healing, or even perform a penance. Always, it is a journey of risk and renewal. For a journey without challenge has no meaning; one without purpose has no soul.

"Pilgrimage is the kind of journeying that marks just this move from mindless to mindful, souless to soulful travel. The difference may be subtle or dramatic; by definition it is life-changing. It means being alert to the times when all that's needed is a trip to a remote place to simply lose yourself, and to the times what's needed is a journey to a sacred place, in all its glorious and fearsome masks, to find yourself."

[phil cousineau, the art of pilgrimage]

am i the (warm)pupilgrim?

to blog or blaaaagh...

a series of events:

• tribe.net changes the terms of use granting tribe perpetual license for anything posted to their service.
• my web host increases my storage capacity by five times.
• my domain has been largly unused and ignored since 2004, except to temporarily store photos for my friends.

add one rainy saturday afternoon, a jigger or two of tequlia, and too much time on my hands.

result?

site redesign.

i've moved my blog to the front page as it is the most active thing i've got going right now. i'll also keep the old versions of warpup.net avaialble for viewing... or really my own curiosity as it comes up. i'll continue to modify the template i ripped from blogger, but i have to say i'm pretty happy with the results thus far.

i'd forgotten how much i like this stuff.

oh, yeah...

that's why i went back to school...

phef. funny how things work out.

well, i don't hardly know her...

(an open letter)

i had such an amazing time last night. from the crossroads to the grilled bananas to the mirrored speakers, to the seduction of melancholy, to the primal vs. demonstration, to houses that you can drive AND blow up...

amazing.

now, this morning, i sit on the side of a hill outside dundee, the yamhill valley laid out at my feet and watching the sun diffuse through the seeming everpresent oregon cloud blanket, wondering where and when i knew you before.

i guess we are all connected, i never ascribed these feelings to past lives... other than the possible connection with our continuous and transmuting energies.

what happens next?
where do i go?
who do i connect with?

whats really important?

these are the questions that i find myself mulling.

its a big world out there.

i want you to know that i enjoyed our many-levels conversation. something to take with me as i move through this next day.

i feel enriched somehow. i'm a little more than i was twenty-four hours ago. i find you to be an increadible woman... and yet knowing also my own toxicity, my place in life now as a very self-oriented person... i desire to spend more time with you and worry about how that energy moves upon you. i hope for the good. i hope for the better. i hope for comfort in some little bit of companionship.

thank you for sharing those few hours. good stuff.

hope raleigh is doing well today. poor fella (he's lucky to have you).

oh...

i rise, wipe sleep from my frontal lobes, throw on clothes, and hit the door. half a cigarette and step through the rain to the car.

drive.

out of the car and up the stairs. vending machine coffee in a paper cup.

oh... i have no bowl, so its grape nuts with yogurt in my coffee mug.

tribe.

review blueprints, type reports. shipping checklists and non-conformance reports. this is overdue, so is that, and the project manager drops a friendly reminder. later says he wants me in the field a half day tomorrow. does that delay his other project?

out the door and spark that lighter and stepping through that neverending oregon rain again, i puff hard on american spirits. yellow. the ones i picked up when she was around. what was that... a year and a half ago now? more?

...fuck me.

drive to the bank and grab a sushi plate on the way. back to the office and tribe. the wasabi is unusually hot today, but i am sure it has nothing to do with sex or me having or not having any. post about that.

more drawings and a planning meeting and i should stay late on account of my workload, but i've got an appointment for a fucking massage, man. later.

pack my briefcase and out the door the last time today and the sun shines bright and warms my cheeks.

i pause to watch the canadian geese flying out over the filbert trees.

breathe.

drive.

the sunshine is coming down mostly over my left shoulder as i navigate the hiway along the swollen and fast-moving brown water of the willamette. i noticed the glint of light off of the wet rocks and cliffs on the right-hand side of the road and the massive tree falls along the other bank of the river. reaching the falls the traffic on both sides is slower as all of us, steadfast and committed commuters that we are, look on at the tremendous amount of water crashing over the concrete pilings.

god. that's. power.





oh... i need gas.

fill it. yes, cash.

drive.

i get to the studio and the therapist lays me on my back and works my neck and shoulders hard. i am hyperventilating. the pain is incredible and sweet. my mind stalls, focused on her movements and my reactions.

my heart opens like a cathedral door.

home. eat. phone calls and email.

tribe.

miles davis.

cracking my toe joints.

thinking about a touch a long time ago.

thinking about tomorrow. how much sameness can i take? how much?

...and who am i betting against?

who am i betting for?


it better be me.

oh... sleep would be good.


good sleep would be good.

can i get a witness?

having a witness to our lives is of paramount importance. the little things, the 'yeah, i was there', the ability to call bullshit when appropriate.

i talked a bit with blessica about witnessing when we were discussing the nature of the separation ceremony for julie and i. as it happens, we passed on the public ceremony and held a private unjoining between ourselves. yet still witnessing.

i have been getting plenty of witnesses in my individual life these past few days. jb dropped me an email which... i am quite sure was outside of her intent... managed to pull my head out of the clouds and back to reality with only a few words. witnessing.

kirsteen managed much the same with a phone call in response to my 'prose and cannes' post...

"bullshit," she says, "i've done that and it's complete bullshit."

yes.

i knew that.


i just needed a witness.

narrow our eyes

...
We'll take back every thing we said
Split up all the things and move ahead
Forgot how you said
We'll split the side off the bed
I get on my bike
Ride down our block
Ride through the world
Through the green lights
But when I think of all your advice
I narrow my eyes
narrow my eyes

I don't want to change your mind
I don't want to think about your mind
They say love is blind
I don't think you're blind
I get on the bus
Ride past our stop
And though I'm late
I can't get off
I just can't bear to tell you some lies
And narrow your eyes
Narrow your eyes

Now let's toast the sad cold fact
Our love's never coming back
And we'll race to the bottom of a glass
So narrow your eyes
Narrow your eyes
Narrow your eyes
Narrow your eyes

[they might be giants]

******************************

damn. this is so. fucking. different.

i miss her. i do. i cant help that, of course i am going to.

but the sappy mind... look at me. getting all hung up on tina turner and whats love got to do with it. crying myself to sleep in my gigantic and empty bed. waking up without purpose or need to do anything beyond myself.

[sigh]

she came into the restaurant last night, i was already on my way out... so it wasnt as if i was running away.

...but any other time - -

any

other

time

- - would have been reason for me to stay longer.


godamn, this is so fucking different.

prose and cannes

"Why would people want to live on the Moon?" the girl murmured.

"Chronic malcontents," he said sleepily. "Normal people don't need to. Normal people would be satisfied with life as it is." He closed his eyes and listened to the dance music on the radio.

"Is it pretty on the Moon?" the girl asked.

"Oh Christ no, it's awful," he said. "Nothing but rock and dust."

p.k. dick [time out of joint]
_____________
item a) i dislike my job. there is little to no satisfaction for me in what i do, other than the money and benefits are decent.
item b) its the only employment i've had in nearly twenty years. i am literally bored to tears at times, yet i am terrified to do or try anything else.
item c) i have a dream, a business plan for something completely different. pulling it off will require my full attention for at least a year or three.
item d) i will be positioned to begin in earnest on that project in short order. sort of... i have no desire at this point of my life to attempt a starving artist lifestyle.
item e) but, i would like to travel, see some other parts of the world and cultures.
item f) it looks to be a banner year for the company i work for. i could make a lot of money, which might make some of that other stuff a hella lot easier... but that means i have to keep working here. see item a.
item g) i keep catching a knot deep in my psyche in regard to education. how much i have, how little i have. do i need more facts and figures? i figure myself to be fairly well-rounded, but also recognize that i know a little about a lot, and not a master of any particular thing. is this a requirement to be taken seriously? and if so, which discipline?
item blah blah blah..

obviously my head is swimming in doubt. self doubt, doubt about my future, doubts about my capabilities, doubts about what is important to me, doubts about every waking moment. have i done the right things? am i going in a direction that is good for me? have i made my intentions clear? does it matter?

is this all a case of grass looking greener?

have i made a major mistake?



tineke said i am breaking the rules.

where is the rulebook, please?


no? anyone?


...is this one of those things where i write the rules as i go?




oof. gah.


[feeling nineteen, stuffed into a fourty-year old's life]

modus operandi

i feel like i am at the top of a mountain, but don't know which way to go down.

(add more stones)

its a matter, really, of choosing the general direction. what happens along the way is of little consequence to me as long as i end in the general area i set off in.

(another here, a good heavy one)

the ratio of mass to inertia. the stored kinetic energy of those stones of knowlege mounting up against the friction of stasis.

(contents: dolomite, quartz, jasper, obsidian)

once enough mass is collected, motion begins yet the inevitable results are obscure.

(stack it high, stack it tight. there's no returning here, take everything you might need)

climbing is the easy part. when climbing, the ground rises up in front of my face. i see in detail the issues of each foothold.

(use the small things to hold the larger ones there)

once here, at the top of my mountain, the danger is not in falling. falling is the same as any other way down. the danger is in indecision, sitting, waiting. stopping.

(move boy! tote that bale!)

i am loading my sled.

which way am i pointed?

??compare::contrast??

Jan. 1, 2004
I hold onto my stress as if it were the breath of life.
__________
**********
no more. yes, i still have stress and confusion... but i think the difference is that i am becoming more adept at change.

mostly.
**********
__________

Jan. 20, 2005

these things that pull at my heart these things that start down there somewhere in my gut and runs up through my abdomen somewhere just under the skin and through my heart and then into my throat and i feel it in my cheeks and then i cry.

these things which pass in and out of me like ghosts and thats what it is too. ghosts of you and her and how you used to live in my heart and how that was all ripped away and now all that i can feel about it is emptyness hurt remorse sadness.

these heartstrings, thats what they talk about isnt it? these heartstrings run through my bones and out into the floor and sit tangled up under the furniture along with the dust bunnies and lint and some old button.

these heartstrings get played everytime i think of what i wanted for us all.

_____________

*************

damn. still. yes. pluck. twang.