Everything I need to know

I learned at Reed College.

Don't start anything a second before you have to. Waiting even longer is advisable. Also, staying up late and drinking beer makes you wiser.

People who have "lives" and want to do things like "work in groups" or "talk on the phone" are scum, and should be dealt with accordingly (death glares, notes left on the entryway: "HEY FUCKHEAD: Talking? Go the FUCK DOWNSTAIRS. THIS MEANS YOU!")

Um, caffeine and nicotine are vitamins.

Also, fuck you.

<3

Hey

Sometimes you're on, but sometimes you're off. How does THAT work? I mean, I don't feel very on top of things, how do I get up there? Sometimes I'm up there...

Well JESSE, since you SMOKE now, tell me, does SMOKING help you get up there? Because my corporeal self would have me believe that it (tobacco) does, but my, um, software, er, logic, um, thoughts... whatever, they think... I think... ehem. I think that's not the case. Well, it could be true in special cases, but not generally. Like, sometimes when you crash your car its better to not be wearing a seatbelt...

Machine

Oh, so, LaTeX stuff, I really like Reed's page for basic questions. Like the linebreak thing is \\.

Also, in case there was any confusion:



I should start writing that paper.

the floor in between

i'm only taking two classes this quarter (in addition to the thesis credits). i'm taking a beginning german class largely because patrick corrects my english when i say something incorrectly and i vowed to become a scholar of german so i could correct him in his native tongue. patrick said he thought that was a great idea. i don't think he realized that following through on statements like that is the way i convince myself to do shit. when people ask why i'm starting a new language so late in life, i just tell them it's because my boyfriend is german.

they think that is so sweet of me.

the german class i signed up for is a review class designed for those who have taken some german or are motivated beginners. though i completely lack real motivation, i felt i could convolute the first half of the prerequisite to work for me.

then i went to class and got my ass slapped. these people were speaking real german, like, instantly. it was disheartening. so i'm going to see if i can weasel my way into a real beginning class and come to terms with the fact i'll have to go to class every fucking day.

on the plus side, the building in which the german department is located has HALF FLOORS! going up, i took the first door off the stairway, thinking it would be, you know, the next floor. BUT IT WASN'T. it was some crazy shit in between. to top things off, i did it again coming down (in a different stairway) and found the anthropolgy department.

obviously, they are not scientists.

also:
it turns out that a shitton of people go to this university. i knew that on paper, but never really experienced it, as all my classes have tended towards locations on the fringe of campus. but i have to walk right through the heart of the beast, and let me tell you, there are entirely too many people. uw should really think about having tougher admissions criteria.

I learned how to use an html command, I feel so slick.

you could just walk away.

went for a ride, found this crazy big hill east of 82nd (mt scott? jonny?) and plodded up it, found a chinese graveyard and smoked a cigarette looking out over midnight portland, standing atop a field of dead lovers. made my way down, flew along flavel, home, music, fogged-up glasses. shaky hands, numb ears, raw throat. now what? nut onto a towel and pass out? today was weird.

i have such a swirling chorus of concerns

did my level best to sleep all fucking day, now what? make like modest mouse and drink the rest away? try to be lucid and explain myself here? i don't think i can find the right combination of words and punctuation with a clear head tonight. maybe i'm too entrenched in lamps and domesticity, it all makes me want to run away as fast as i can. should go for a bike ride, where? who gives a fuck? i never want everything to be simple, i would fucking hate it if i went to bed and woke up and bought new clothes. i was raised with a certain disdain for nearly everything, a way of focusing on the futility and the disrepair that surrounds us. live within yourself, i was told. inner resources. and now i'm butting heads with all that i see around me, all this handholding and goal-achieving and success. FUCKcess. makes me hide even more, hide in plain sight, unapologetic and bored. there isn't anything that looks right. there are no role models as far as i can see. william burroughs, jay? racetrack junkies? i want to cry on someone's shoulder but everyone's so sarcastic. what i REALLY want is some fucking soda, but i was thinking maybe i shouldn't, but i guess that means i should. run straight at the devil and kick him in the shins. leatherman prepared leather seats automatic carwash self-cleaning oven pot holders and one too many pairs of shoes. jimi hendrix greatest hits 24hour grocery store i used to live right next to mississippi and now all there is is a patio full of CRAP and a vacant audience. i mean absent. not vacant. 'you said you'd always be there, but where are you now?' i remember promises that were never made, anything to make me less to blame. this is not confidential.

omg time again

Busy week. I start teaching next week, so was prepping all week. Learning the ins-n-outs. Sitting bored through lectures on why you shouldn't lecture too much or your students will get bored. Lots of time & energy & waking up before noon, but I'm feeling pretty confident about the first day now. Wrote the syllabus last night while drunk. Proofread it carefully this morning, then gave it to my faculty advisor. He pointed out that my office number was off by two digits. 236 instead of 356. I wonder how that might have happened?

My roommate is in the act of leaving. He's literally carrying things out of the apartment. Which is great, since my new roommate moves in this weekend. EXCEPT ...!!!... she calls me yesterday afternoon, one fucking day before she's supposed to move in, and tells me she's decided to live somewhere else. What the fucking fuck?! So, instead of spending the weekend resting and planning for school, I've got to deal with craigslist n'er-do-wells.

But on the bright side, I just got responses to my craigslist ad from a "January" (no last name given) and a "J e ssie La_ng" (spaces in case she's googling herself, which I assume works). I should find a way to get them both in my 2-bed apartment and start a bizarro-Center.

Oh

Save.

The addressing comments here thing was genius, as I spend entirely too much time digging, just to find that no new comments are there.

About to be omg deadline approaching again...

sometimes i don't wanna put out the effort
(It's ironic, 'cuz I had to delete the period to make it look like I didn't make the effort.)

Whoah.

Doing X makes me want to do X. Eating makes me hungry. Drinking makes me want to drink. Working makes me want to work. Fucking off makes me want to fuck off. Until the urge hits and I want to bail on X.

Bail.

hold steady. make them like you.

wild mood swings, despair, elation, caffeine, menthols. reading about my hometown, births, weddings, everything.

http://www.moultonadvertiser.com/news/2007/0919/people/041.html

this blaring music, deafening, distracting me from the growing lump in my throat. why did i leave, why was it so easy? why don't i go back? why does it seem so natural to live one month at a time?

started the job today, hell to get out of bed at 6:30am, rad to fly downtown, touching to be back among my favorite coworkers, maybe ever. feels good to have something to fill up the days, right? sure. keep feeling like i'm on the verge of getting my shit together, and then i go to the minimart and slip away again. my fingernails are turning colors from all this smoking, hide them under pink sparkles. HA. broken furnace, no food, no money, dirty jackets. part of me wants to go to jail.

jonny: instead of digging around in your comments, i'll just address you here and now. i was indeed drinksick when i wrote that shit; god knows who she is; i know you too, asshole.

soaring chorus, still feel vaguely ill, leftovers from plaid pantry's finest. going to straighten up for a while, carry a pocket knife again, flirt with the idea of buying food, all that. right.

anyone up for a field trip to moulton? pull some funds together, spend a winter week in north alabama? bring music, notebooks, american spirits. sharpies and makeshift drawls. mess up, err, dismantle, regress. slip and fall, withdraw, drop the ball, miss a flight. get bored and sleep it all away.

how does this all look/sound? work for a while, get restless, sleep a lot, work again. midway through the twenties, godammit. i'll just laugh if anyone tries to tell me another fucking way.

i never saw that girl again.

line in the sand

it didn't seem like this day was shitty when it started, but i'm almost on the verge of tears now, after just being more pissed off than i've been in weeks mere seconds ago.

i had to do some hand-holding of the undergrad i'm advising. which was fine, even if it took up time and interfered with my rigid observance of lunch at noon. so i was especially looking forward to going home for lunch and spending some alone time there. perhaps finishing the "europe" section of the newest edition of the economist (i'm actually being completely serious here. i don't find the economist particularly compelling reading or anything, but i have a compulsive urge to read while i eat, i was in the middle of the "europe" section and i like to finish what i start--in fact, i'm fighting the urge to go back home and read it right now). i knew things were going to be less than perfect when ken, who lives in the basement, passed me on the way to my house on his recumbent bike. i wasn't too worried, though. afterall, he does live in the basement and i probably wouldn't be forced to share the living room with him. the shit really hit the fan when i walked in the door and saw meredith sitting on the couch. i've come to dislike meredith a great deal and she was one of the last people i wanted to see.

so of course she comes over and chats up a fucking storm. and what does she want to talk about? if i'm still tired and why i'm still tired and if i eat enough fucking leafy green vegetables. in reality, meredith is not much older than my boyfriend, but i got the distinct feeling that she should be friends with my mom. then she has the nerve to compare herself to me.

i wanted to kick her in the shins.

then she brought out this hideous faux-leather looking large bag and tells me she got it for "only $25." fuck. you would have had to pay me $25 to take that thing. but i realized that this is why a woman in her 40s with a ph.d. who runs a research lab lives with other people. we're her outlet for fucking show and tell.

i also dealt with some magazine people who annoyed the hell out of me, but i don't even want to get into it now.

when you walk from my house to campus, you have to cross a small bridge that gets a shitton of traffic. myriad cyclists and pedestrians share the narrow sidewalk. to simplify things, i generally just stick right next to the railing and force anyone else to veer around me. today, this woman was walking right towards me on the rail. i knew she wasn't going to move over, but that didn't deter me. i was going to stick next to that rail if i had to walk right through that chubby little woman. at the last possible second, she got over just far enough to not hit me full-on, but our shoulders bumped. i berated myself for not yelling at her for hitting me.

but i still won.

dear madam (or sir?);

the crush of boredom nirvana should i clean my bike? probably. if only there was nevermind

some remember solo good job clown

this is what happens when i live on woodstock and try to ignore the seven-year itch. right? boy names swirl in my brain and all i can do to ignore them is pick a midwestern sound and claim it as my own lean my head on the monitor (NOW) and try to forget the glare of the screen focus on the buttons that represent my fractured desire pretend i am capable of reason urination dream of handholds in libraries and an end to this drought postpone the inevitable period because it represents an end to this long-awaited outpouring of carefully obscured allegiance You know what i let You know so hahahahaha i will bank on my own perceived control for as long as i can (which is realistically forever) and lord it over the sneaking suspicion that there is more to this than street numbers and vices galore whoops i'm sorry i used to be reserved and now i am faint with doubt and for that i apologize to You love means nothing (all)

kill this superstition

my body is poisoned and i want nothing else right now tomorrow afternoon type with purpose intense focus skirt around [her] the issue caffeine like cocaine wine like conversation cabernet savignon hurts my mouth and loosens my heart shortens the distance i was born in washington goddammit why doesn't that count for something? surprised i can type at all at this point remote control for my shorthand desires swallow back the cancer and choke on my stagnation and the progress of the commoners MAKES ME TIRED. plaid pantry is sex compared to the wincing compromises of trader fucking joe's my lack of balance comes with real hello kitty commentary not sick longing i never hear my name maybe i don't listen carefully enough to the incense. there are so many people and pairs and portentious and forgotten feelings that i just return to two-thousand-whatever and pretend that nightmares are blessings that provide more waking DISTANCE the serene drug i would twist myself in knots I DO AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN without fail over what i deride as fake but is probably real in some shirtless sort of household why can't i sharpie up my future as easily as most americans. left with this boyhood vacancy digital present parental rebellion refusal to lay myself on her tracks and risk the inevitable severance the coincidental glance. catch what i pretend to throw countless mistakes and nuanced allusions to what i thought i heard so fucking long ago. i use her face like most people use childhood trauma. i make the effort to forget generational transgressions like lost movie ticket stubs and all it gets me is eventual betrayal disease-ridden fever-inspired memories of what probably meant NOTHING. water is hollow and i need to remember my reliance on such emptiness to stave off what fairy tales promise and gradeschool teachers hint at. there's no label that can explain the vague disgust i feel when confronted with airport mirrors and masturbation stalls, no necktie can reverse the years of commentary created by the absence of eye contact and human consolation. when i use you i feel momentarily lifted thank you st louis t-shirt haven

There used to be a burn now there's nothing

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Hide my pros flaunt my cons

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his twilight, her fatigue; their ignorance.

got almost giddy today with the prospect of straightening up and becoming a more focused human being, energized by an acknowledgment of my missing values. the freedom afforded by writing off nearly everything lightens one's load considerably, allowing for a jaunty approach to each day. i'm starting my new old job on thursday, and i have big hopes. i'm going to stride in there, pay motherfucking attention, do what needs to be done, and do it with panache and precision. redefine myself as a more angular person, less wishy-washy, etc.

also: i'm not going to cut my hair for a long while, i think. the problem with that, though, is it never gets COOL like some people's hair, it just gets BIGGER. but maybe i'll consult a professional about it and see what can be done. i need something rad to go with this ever-growing beard-type-thing.

and so forth.

Gratitude

I'm grateful for:

1. Snotty quotes. Like "Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable sub-human who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house." - Robert Heinlein. Cause fuck 'em, that's why. (And needless to say, this quote will epigraph the syllabus for the math class I'm teaching.)

2. "Remember me" boxes on websites that make me feel like somebody is paying attention.

3. Jesse's prose.

4. Jonathan's old haircut.

5. The stillborn remorse of my twice-vindicated soul.

with all

i am blind excpt fr hr dress. soda wine smokes bob words dizzy with dissatisfaction why can't i say what makes me write this? i waste hours spitting small phrases and remain plain virginal bored twitching leg why can't i just ride the dog and see what i want to see when i get like this? up all night even now with the water in the cold air and i will not use my fenders and i want to take off all my clothes and get WET fly thru the dashboard because other people humour me and pretend to know my name when i can't even remember her eyes since i canceled my subscription to the comics. used to write with dry-erase about her eyes and stick ink on paper to remember the looks i imagined but now all i do is increase my speaker size and lose myself in other people's stories of reveling and merriment and try to capture birthdays but end up alone at 2:54am with a room full of petty assumptions and a roster of sleeping former roommates that i pretend to have knwn. i want her to hit me hurt me make me sick give real meaning to this forlorn thursday night i wish i had more bruises on my skin and i wish i had the dexterity after the bottle's empty to extinguish the promise of cancer on my skin to make this a little more REAL, more real than forty years off the horse. would you break me if i opened up to you? that's all i want i swear

Grwnt

Jesse's off having Kerouacian adventures, and I feel like I'm going the opposite direction. New cloths (YESSS), new hair-cut, new schedule, new... um... round of pretending I've changed? Ok, so, maybe not the opposite direction, but a pretty different mode... no... just another round on the merry go, wait, what?

In other news my haircut is cool now, so relax, Jack.

barely in love with these lies

home.



(the wagon has left me far behind, but i'm fucking awake. lv was sleeping and reading, no daylight, all that. ignoring the pull of the bed right now, inhaling caffeine, hidng from my hunger, pretending cigarettes are people: falling in love for eight minutes at a time, basking in the smoke, relishing the polluted body, savoring the hurt. taking a last painful draw, casting it aside and swearing off future trysts. forgetting my promises within minutes, mindlessly lighting up another life. pressing repeat to save my soul.

i resent being awake right now. fucking christ. but i'm in my own goddam room, and i can leave whenever i want, make noise, hole up, etc. life in the breakdown lane.

i love the fuckin' eagles, man.)

Pwnt

I cut my hair. I'm not sure I'm glad about it...

the way i forget to eat

what's with yous? school got your tongues?


approaching a month out of pocket, feeling weak and dirty. starting to imagine living on some sort of coast, seaside, ireland. way tired of the sun. las vegas only technically, more like this apartment. i don't remember what shoes are like.

been plowing through the books, having genius brainstorms re: writing, but i can't think in this climate. MAKE YOURSELF.

upbeat and sometimes lively, barely resentful and often silent, i am less broken than i pretend. i just want a goddam reaction, right? that's all.

why has the music stopped? START OVER.

i expect ALL of you to meet me at the airport 2am tomorrow night. ryland. why am i always the one to fuck up around here? time dies whenever you want it to, like a goldfish. flex yr muscle.

what i won't say - is there a hole for me to get sick in?

somehow i'm back in portland, bob dylan breaking my ears from giant speakers, 9-something in the morning, windows open, vault in my mouth. a lifetime has elapsed since i last sat here, and it's hard to pretend like i belong here. anywhere, i guess. first turned my back on tolman three weeks ago, deciding to smoke as many cigarettes as i possibly can, wear the same clothes forever, live on caffeine and the occasional bagel. fuck everyone, spit up all over their normal lives and their new england cars and everything they stand for (read: my mom's dissatisfaction). spent ten days trying to keep a straight face around the kids, gradually building up a head of steam about the dissolution of my upcoming marriage. left new england and backseats and vegetables for new fucking jersey and the boys of my memories. sucked down even more soda and cigarettes, opened up the stream of obscenities and wife-beaters. wal-mart, muddy rides on bum bikes, rolling around in the filth, tearing down princeton with our disdain for their fucking look. new brunswick, trenton, philadelphia, boston, new york city. taking our trainwreck down all the blueblood lines. $8.50 cigarettes in nyc, no alcohol in philly, beautiful despair in trenton. flipped over the handlebars in princeton, woke me the fuck up. nothing like some bruises to keep you going. sat through some rad movies, listened to mandy moore like it was good, made myself stumble around for future reference. broke shit, stole shit, tried to make our presence known. the rules don't apply when you're traveling, or something. you can drink yourself retarded at harvard, smoke while you steal, ignore the threat of real life lying in wait back on the west coast. pretend to read henry miller, talk on the phone like everything's fine. toss the empty wine bottle in the airport garbage can, smoke until they let you check in, make weak vows to not live like this forever. sleep as much as you can up in the air, swallow back the vomit, get on the beautiful orange bike in portland and glide home. hit the sack, stay down for 30 hours or so, get up and tease youself with whatever you can find unfrozen in the freezer. more weak vows, back to bed. up again, hit the caffeine, crank the bob, write it down for the family. if i still believed in food, this might be longer.


to be explicit: the girl i didn't really know wrote me off entirely, which is fine. las vegas is for my sister, not loveline half-wits. i'm going there tomorrow for another week away from this 'home' of mine. i drank alcohol on the east coast, which was probably a bad idea as i can FEEL myself slipping away. i need to stick to soda and cigarettes and fasting. i don't need anything else making it hard to walk. if i want to slow down this endless stream of second-guessing and thinkthinkthink i'll just turn up the music. that's much easier and doesn't taste as bad. but i'm so WEAK.

whatever. i need to turn over some new leaves, etc. get a real job, put some air in my tires, stop coasting. fix myself.

ok then.