Death to Perfection

So here in Vermont my grandma has a lot of novels, and because I am a fast reader I like to scour the shelves in the morning for a book and finish it within the day. Today’s is Stained Glass by William F. Buckley, and it is pretty good and I am halfway through it, but it is pissing me off.

Tt is a spy novel set in the ’50s so it features both spies and aristocrats, the two very most annoying types of people to make fictional characters out of. Why? Because they’re perfect. They are fluent in many languages. They are educated at the very best universities and excel academically, socially, romantically. They have all sorts of hobbies and interests at which they are experts. They are jacks of all trades except for those they are masters of. they have no weaknesses. It is extremely lame to feel jealous of a person who doesn’t even exist.

I have never met such a person who is truly good at everything without some sort of cost. A lot of smart people are not very well-adjusted and a lot of educated, accomplished people are insufferably arrogant. But I can’t help but think that’s true only because I’ve never been to Europe. Maybe that’s where all the perfect people are?

It annoys me that by pure chance I was not born into circumstances where it was likely that I would learn concertos as a teenager or end up at the Sorbonne, especially since I know I could. This is mitigated by the fact that I don’t want to learn a concerto or go to school abroad, but then again, I might if I had been raised in an environment more hospitable to lofty ambition.

The big challenge here is one that has always been an insecurity of mine – appreciating what really kicks ass after cutting away cultural indoctrination. There are people my age who are far more successful than me, but in whose eyes?  I can do most everything pretty well, with the caveat that it takes me a long time to care enough to do them. Why do I minimize myself by analyzing my life against the pace of others? And if I don’t, is that a copout, because I am modifying my perception of value to include what I feel I offer?

That’s another thing that pisses me off – you know how Gandhi (I think) said “be the change you want to see in the world” and people will put that in their Facebook quotes section so they seem ambitious? I hate the imperative tone, the implication that awesomeness is reserved for the future, a pie in the sky beyond the grasp of any regular people. I am the change I want to see in the world. I am fine even though I am not a 4.0 Ivy League prat (though admittedly I could have been) and I have never been on TV. Instead of Gandhi I would order people to change the world to what you see in yourself. That is why I think Fear.less is great, because it helps people. Because I feel that the purpose of life is to help others and cover their weaknesses, I can’t stand specious “success” that is of no benefit and doesn’t uplift, I can’t stand arbitrary achievement for achievement’s sake and I can’t stand people who have no weaknesses. Well, I wouldn’t if I met one.

Also I find myself terribly compelled to write a book, though I don’t know what it would be about yet. The reason for this is twofold. One, William F. Buckley is a good writer and so my appreciation for the craft is currently blazing.  Two, perfect characters are so damn annoying and I would subvert this by populating my pages with deeply-flawed people.

Looking Forward To

What are you looking forward to?

We are occasionally blessed with things in life that are both A) pretty much guaranteed to happen if we stay our course and B) good. Remaining aware and reverent of these events is a good way to maintain stability in times of stress or boredom. One time in May my roommate and I went on a late night run around the UIUC campus as it started to storm. Wildly. We were ducking lightning strikes and getting soaked and it was nuts. We eventually retreated into a building, unsure how long it would take for conditions to get safe enough for our return. I kept thinking, in all likelihood, at some point in the near future I will not be here. I will be home. I will not be in this wet, disheveled state. I will be near a warm bed, in the company of dear friends and a pretty girl. We hauled ass back to our dorm before it was safe, and when we burst through the front door, there was a spontaneous and ebullient outpouring of joy that involved crazy dancing. Thinking about the future made living it better.

Things I have to look forward to with no foreseeable obstacles to their occurrence, in rough chronological order:

• The publication of Fear.less
• Girlfriend visiting me (or vice versa)
• Vacation to New England
• Start of the school year
• Bunch of my favorite bands’ albums coming out in September

I use this thought process when I am sick. When I become better, I imagine the afflictions back into each body part and acknowledge that they are no longer there. Time has passed. I have transcended the illness. Feels grate.

One Month

I have now had this blog for one month and been working on Fear.less for just a little over that. I am very thankful for these diversions to give me something to do. It seems insulting at first to call Fear.less a diversion until you realize what it’s diverting me from: humongous boredom.

We have somewhere between 0 and 1 stories left to edit, which I am enthusiastic about. Ishita and I have come a long way in picking the stories apart, separating the wheat from the shit. Many of the stories are truly quite touching and it is my sincere hope and conviction that they can inspire people.

I’m actually not sure what is left to do. A while back we considered that we may be responsible for organizing the order of the stories, in the manner of a tracklist on a music record. I’d like to have a part in this because the flow of the stories can really enhance their resonant power and also it’s fun. I will continue to post on the Fear.less blog and in the Facebook group and page. Soon I will discuss the ramifications of my slow immersion into social media and the other opportunities that may come my way and I hope that I discover something rewarding soon, particularly since summer is only half over so I still need stuff to do.

I still feel a lot of insecurity in my skills but I have been assured that they are there and just need to be cultivated but I am definitely pleased that I was able to concretely and meaningfully credit a project like Fear.less.

This is not a very exciting post at all so to keep things interesting will somebody please tell me what the hell this is?

.thE nexT leveL

In Max Payne 2 there are many TVs strewn about the levels, and over the course of the night the game takes place in, the channel that they’re all tuned to is running a marathon of a bizarre show about an insane serial killer. It’s called Address Unknown and one of the characters is a flamingo who talks in a distorted, awkward voice, like he was talking backwards and what he said was played forwards, Twin Peaks-style. In the subtitles, this weird voice is written thus:

.shE haS dyeD heR haiR reD

.thE flesH oF falleN angelS

And that scared the crap out of me in a cool way. That method of punctuation is just so unsettling to me. Back in the day when I was really unstable, if I was journaling, I sometimes wrote in that fashion to put across clearly how unhinged I was feeling.

On a similar note I was playing SWAT 4 today and there is a level where you raid the tenement of a crazy suicide cult, and they have creepy REDRUM-esque things written on the walls. I love creepy things written on walls. .especiallY iF theY eveR lookeD likE thiS

There’s got to be a name for it. I will look it up on TV Tropes. This is all closely related to my favorite kind of horror that I’ve never been sure how to describe, things that unnerve me for reasons I don’t und H҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘Ȅ̐̑̒̚̕̚ IS C̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̚̕̚̕̚̕̚̕̚̕̚OMI҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘NG > ͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̚ ҉ ҉҉̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑ ͡҉҉
҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡ ͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̚ ҉ ҉҉̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑ ̒̓̔̕̚ ̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚̕̚ ̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̚ ̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔ ̕̚̕̚ ̔̕̚̕̚҉ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡wha ͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̒̓̔̚̕̚ ̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚̕̚t the ̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̚ ̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔ ̕̚̕̚ ̔̕̚̕̚҉ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡f.jusT givE uPuck is ͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̚ ҉ ҉҉̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡ ͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̚ ҉ ҉҉̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑thi ̒̓̔̕̚ ̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚̕̚ ̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̚ ̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔s shit ̕̚̕̚ ̔̕̚̕̚҉ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡ ͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̒̓̔̚̕̚ ̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̕̚̕̚ ̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̚ ̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔ ̕̚̕̚ ̔̕̚̕̚҉ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̿̿̿̕̚̕̚͡ ͡҉҉ ̵̡̢̛̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇̊̋̌̍̎̏̿̿̿̚ ҉ ҉҉̡̢̡̢̛̛̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑̒̓̔̊̋̌̍̎̏̐̑ ̒̓ ̒̓

Crossword Magazines

I’ve always wanted to subscribe to those crossword magazines that my dad always has lying around the bathroom. Starting from an early age I would burn through them and many pens as an preventative measure against Alzheimer’s. And then I would keep them all in a box. My grandchildren would see Grandpa’s Crossword Box and appreciate it as the reason Grandpa still knows their names even though he is 90.

But crossword magazines are so weird. They can’t really be called magazines. They don’t have interviews, editorials, glossy color photos or top 10 lists, and you can’t even slap them into a gun and heat people up. They are so self-contained. They’re in their own little world. The one that assisted me in a bathroom adventure last night opened with exactly one letter to the editor from a farming family who has to get up early in the morning to drive goods to market and prefer crosswords to caffeine for staying alert. Exactly one goddamn letter, one vestigial flash in the pan of human personality. And then it goes on and on into dozens and dozens of puzzles.

I’m not even sure what to muse on about this because it’s so inhuman it just exists in a different universe from me. It’s like trying to see in a world with no light. Is that overly dramatic for a fucking crossword magazine? I get the same feeling from towns with two or three digits of denizens in the middle of nowhere. So isolated. I don’t know if I could live like that. What kind of band would only ever release music without ever giving interviews or having a website or anything? The crosswords are all generic too. There weren’t any themes or anything (though that is hard to do with a crossword as opposed to a word search) that made me go oh hey somebody wanted to flavor this creation. This creation, this black-and-white, down-and-across quilt of challenges with mysteriously no human qualities but a letter from some farmers and a disturbingly long list of credits.

Anyway this is one of those posts where I don’t presume it to have any value but I couldn’t get over how the topic made me feel.

Passive Aggression

So sometimes I would wonder what noun is used for the quality of someone who is passive-aggressive. I eventually figured out it’s either “passivity-aggression” or “passive aggression” if you don’t like the hyphen. And I don’t, because personally “passive-aggressive” makes no sense to me and I think it’s supposed to be “passively aggressive”.

More importantly, before I concluded this, my brain enjoyed the Freudian slip-spark of “passion aggression”. And that’s what this post is about. I was going to title it Passion Aggression but Passive Aggression would be such a badass song title and you’ll notice I say “this next song is called…” at the top there.

Passion aggression. Aggressive passion. Mmm. The hallmark of Hispanics (like me!). Beautifully encapsulated by smooching someone after one or both of you has eaten, I dunno, buffalo chicken or salsa or jalapeño poppers or maybe just rubbed habanero flakes on your lips. Aggressive… passion.

You can feel aggressive passion for a lot of things. When I give examples of things you can feel I usually cite work projects and other people as the two examples. Honestly I really only mention work projects because of how fitting it is to mention business on Topsy-Turvious Social Media but really my favorite example is the romantic interest thing. I have strong feelings about love and how it is misrepresented by Twilight various media and people end up thinking it’s overrated or something. It’s actually underrated.

The point though is aggressive passion. Billowing with enthusiasm. It’s a fantastic thing to be, and it moves people. And best of all, you will most definitely know if you are feeling it. Isn’t that nice, for once? A positive attribute that tells you that it’s right there, waiting to be used.

Right now I am feeling aggressively passionate about going to sleep. Watch how grate I will feel when I awaken.

Regina Spektor

So Regina Spektor’s new album comes out soon. It is called Far and I have already listened to it. It’s very good. She is fantastic in general. She keeps the focus on her voice, her piano, and her always interesting lyrics, and the endless ways in which they intertwine. And I do mean endless.

Like a lot of singer-songwriters she has a great deal of songs that are only 2 or 3 minutes. A lot of them are great. Many people have heard Samson, and The Calculation off the new album is awesome. But my favorite tunes by her for some reason are the longer ones that are around 5 minutes. Whenever I see a timestamp in that ballpark next to one of her song titles I know good things are going to happen to my ears. Tunes like Us, Genius Next Door and Aquarius are just so sparse and subdued and epic and it’s great.

What’s really important here though is when I said the iterations of her musical talents were endless. Now in a period of profound endearment to Regina, I acquired a bunch of recordings of some of her unreleased material – over 70 songs. And these recordings exist because she plays them live. She thinks they are good enough to play live. She has written hundreds and hundreds of tunes. She is prolific as hell. I find it stupidly impressive. She just keeps on going, dreaming up piano riffs and neat vocal flourishes and her funny lyrical vignettes. And they’re not shitty. She had been playing Genius Next Door for years before it showed up on the album, and Aquarius is one of the unreleased 70.

I admire Regina because she doesn’t just have a job making and playing music, she also obviously thinks it is Pretty Damn Awesome and continues to push her repertoire far beyond the confines and standards of the music industry.

When I realized this tonight I went down to the piano and began to compose Real Song #1 but it was too late to continue playing without pissing off people trying to sleep. So tomorrow I will resume. Who knows, maybe you will hear it someday.

And maybe, if I am completely insane and awesome, 500 more will follow before I’m 30.

Bare Necessities

My eating and sleeping schedules have been ruined. I sacrificed these basic needs, these building blocks of life, to devote time to various other activities this weekend while down in Duquoin.

Do you have anything in your life that you could get passionate enough about to neglect the bare necessities for your own survival? Surely, there are situations where you will miss a feast or stay up late to accomplish some task or another and that’s fine. Usually it’s not a big deal and the essay or whatever gets done. But what if you got so wrapped up in something that this persisted for days?

I don’t think this is a good idea in and of itself but I think there are a number of situations, all of them directly related to meaningful human interaction, that justify involuntary fasting and stayupitude. But my intention is not to comment on whether compromising your health like this is worthwhile. I just want to put the concept out there as a barometer for enthusiasm. If you have something (good or bad) that you care about to this extent, what does that show you about yourself? What do you want to go without less than life? (What a clunky abortion of a sentence that looks like at first.)

Tomorrow (today) I will resume work on Fear.less and you may hear about it. Also I will hopefully have much to expound upon about my downstate travels – because if I didn’t there wouldn’t be much point in traveling. I am big on drawing more from your experiences than the experience itself – the inability to do so being a major theme in my observations of southern Illinois, as you will see.

Would I go without food or sleep for days to finish Fear.less? That is a moot point because I do not have to and I hope we don’t find out.

The Tipping Point

In high school sometimes I would draw a graph of my day in Microsoft Paint – happiness vs. time. I’ve always liked to keep track of how I felt about life whether over the course of a day or a year.

That’s why I really love the tipping point, where I’m sitting in an imaginary waiting room reading a magazine about nothing and watching a baseball game on a static-racked TV. What am I waiting for? For things to get good. For that moment when in the world of the happiness graph, gravity points up, and where things are about to get so much better so fast. It’s like an upside-down roller coaster. And by the way, being in line for those is a great miniature example of this.

That’s how I deal with waiting, whether it’s for a dinner at Red Robin, the beginning of summer, or being with someone again. I absorb all the sensory input and vibes of that transitional stage, and then when the transition completes I can measure the difference between then and now. I develop a sense of honesty with myself that stops carrying about society’s rules. I realize that I, without shame, love to sleep until noon (or later), eat gigantic burgers and enjoy being with people I haven’t seen in a while.

It feels great to know you’re about to be processed. I used to think awesome events like going on vacation or first kisses would be these magical things, and I was struck by how mundane they are. But then I learned that I needed to realize my life is not the product of a screenwriter. I had to recognize the beauty and power of those happy moments in a non-visual and even a non-feel-it-in-the-gut way, as something even more intangible. I now welcome the surprise mundanity of a special event because it just proves that it’s really happening.

Big Things Come in Small Passages

ahahaha that is a  sexual title ahaha

I mean passage as in section of writing, and I mean small passage as in like a sentence. It’s amazing the potency one simple sentence can have. Remember when Michael Jordan said “I’m back”? Those are immortal words. So small, yet so powerful, like Mighty Mouse.

If you want to know how you can here come to save the day, please read the following personal anecdote:

I was having a shitty day today (June 2) for a number of reasons. Basically I was paralyzed with fear about the futility of my summer and the long distance part of my relationship, plus it was cold and I was annoyed with how I had had a great weekend surrounded by lovely people and then suddenly they were all gone, so the loneliness hit hard. I didn’t want to talk to anyone and felt like life was outrunning me.

Then I found myself talking to Special People, asking them about their day while heavily implying that everything in the world should die. And then during the course of our conversation, one of them (very special) said “I want you here”.

And suddenly it was the best night ever. A night full of plans for a joyous future, profanity-laden games of Scrabble and delicious ramen noodles.

The moral of the story is don’t hold back. If you have something nice to say, even if it seems obvious, go ahead and say it. There’s a chance you just might redeem the person’s entire day. There’s a big difference between knowing the truth and hearing it, just like merely thinking about Snapple isn’t enough.

Remember in Ghost where whenever Demi Moore says “I love you”, Patrick Swayze just says “ditto”? Yeah, well Patrick Swayze got killed in that movie. You see my point.

The puissance of brevity is also what makes one-word titles of artistic works, like “Lost“, “Taken” and “Hurt“, so effective.

Please, tell people that you miss them, that they are worth something to you, because they won’t always be there. And do it fast.