of Superheroes and sidekicks...

This is just a repost of my earlier work...but I want you to read this....

Life teaches us a lot doesn't it. I saw it last night out -- with Batman and Robin from eVer.

Batman is a smart man and I have much respect for him and his kin -- the Batman's in my life... all of them. Robin is unique in that there are many superhero's but very few sidekicks.

There's no SuperBoy to the Superman. There's no Crab to the Spiderman. There's no Flush to go with Flash... I could go on and on... but Superhero's are a plenty...Sidekicks, now they're impossible to find. Especially a good sidekick... I'm not entirely sure why that is, but how do you find someone to trust your deepest darkest secrets to?

No wonder its impossible for most people to ever get married to someone that knows them completely...

If you can't find a sidekick, how do you find a spouse?

I think people go through their lives like Superman or Spiderman, hiding their true identity under layers and layers of society driven, suspicion diverting, inconspicuous camouflage.

What a sad thought considering that everybody started out as Superman and then became Clark Kent as the world took its swipes at them. Rarely, and possibly only in times of deep trouble do they manage to pull off the layers of crap and display the bright red suit they wear, Most times they just forget that they even wear it anymore!

I'm not saying that Batman was gay. I am saying that a relationship is based on more than lust and trust. Lust and trust are my two favorite 'non existent' pillars for relationships.

Everybody thinks that love is important... love is what it is... not one person can define love as anything concrete.

Trust is equally fictional -- here one day, gone the next. If an event occurred today that caused someone to lose their trust in me, then starting tomorrow am I trustworthy again? Everybody that meets me tomorrow onwards might think so, if they never hear of what happened yesterday. Again there is nothing empirical about trust, its just perception, and one that has no metrics applicable at all.

Lust, is well, I won't even elaborate on why that's a bad reason to build a relationship on.

Finally comes the last pillar: Passion.

Passion is important. Not for any other reason but for the fact that if you don't even begin passionately in love and madly trusting of the partner then what will you end up with?

Sure everybody says that passion fades, but these people are usually those that have never known true passion.

Love completes me they say. These people have no idea what it is like to be part of something bigger than themselves. Love doesn't complete the individual, love completes the couple. To be part of this synergy of two individuals ~ passion is absolutely necessary!

Passion is what passion is. A life without it is greatly undeserving of being referred to as such.

How I got from Batman to Passion, I'm not sure but it was on my mind these last few days as I've looked at my life and tried to eliminate everything from my it that doesn't inspire passion in me.

As we travel through life there's so many opportunities to learn so many things from the people surrounding us on a daily basis. Its strange how little we actually do learn. Robin could easily become Batman someday ~ as long as Batman keeps teaching him.

Finally I come down to the half hour test. If I spend a half hour with someone and come away more upbeat, more energetic, and generally happier, then they are good folk. They inspire me, motivate me, and make me want to do something.

If I spend the half hour with someone and they proceed to just suck the life out of my body, leave me drained and unmotivated then they aren't the sort of people I want to spend my time with.

Every now and then you have to look around and check... only because its so strange the amount of influence the people around you can have on you... positive or negative!

That's my Zen for now on the last 3 nights. The stories will follow after!

A haunting...

Sometimes we do things that we regret, but over time we learn to hide them in the back of our minds. We trick ourselves into thinking that it wasn’t so bad after all. We can go for years and years without ever even thinking about it. Then one day, without warning, something happens that brings you face to face with your past. It has been said that those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

Friends To Lovers

I have always lived by the belief that you are only as good as the company that you keep. I abide by that philosophy in almost every aspect of my life. To me friendship is paramount to survival. What could be more important than someone to love you for who you are? Some friends may come and go, but there is one type of friend that will be with you till death do you part.

I often wonder why we can't keep our lovers as friends. Is it because they are so close to us that they know how to hurt us the same way they can make us happy? I certainly would like to be friends with my girlfriend first...at least if all else would fail...I would still have friendship to cling on to her.

Right now I just feel good about the fact that I am friends with her even though she means more to me other than being friends.

It isn't supposed to be a disadvantage...even for people who are in love...

Change...again???

I'm pissed. Somebody asked me to change. WHAT???

Like Oh a simple line..."when will you ever change ian"

Why the fuck should I?

Is there something seriously wrong with me that needs fixing? I don't know...but I wouldn't go out on a limb and tell people that there's something wrong about them...I just don't. I will if you're entirely fucked up or like close to crashing an airplane and I'm exactly on it. Again, i just don't. I guess there's a rule about that. Its like an unspoken rule...between brothers...like don't fuck my ex or like don't go screw a relative or something...

And the nerve? The NERVE!

I guess...the golden rule...don't judge people, if you don't want to be judged yourself...

A Story to tell

Sometimes the hardest thing to admit is not that we have been wrong, but that we miss or need someone that is no longer part of our life. On that Sunday, against my better judgment, I went to her. I didn't want to go and I was determined not to have a good time. It took every thing I had inside me to walk into that house. I stood near the door, ready to make my escape. After about 10 minutes of small talk with the other guest I saw my "friend" crossing the room to greet me. I felt a lump rise in my throat and my back go rigid. I tried to look away, but it was too late. There was no escape. She touched my shoulders and said she was glad that I came and then she did it. She kissed me on the cheek. I felt my heart race. I couldn't say anything. I just looked down at the floor. She moved away into the next room. I looked up at my friends who were all looking at me. They where waiting on my reaction.

Inside I was screaming and trying to keep from running out the door, but on the outside I just seemed uncomfortable. As the minutes turned to hours I finally came to a verdict. It was going to have to be me. She had invited me to her home. That was her gesture. Now it was time for me finish the story.

As the party drew to a close I found her alone. I took a deep breath and I walked right up to her. "We need to talk", I blurted out to her. And so we did. The defensive posturing seemed to fade after 10 or 15 minutes and the truth began to flow. The story of why she stopped talking to me was such a minor part of the why. The more I pressed the more feelings began to poor out. Finally, like peeling back the skins of an onion, I found the core. "I feel like you just don't need me anymore...that you'd rather hang out with those other girls", she explained. "The best times were the ones with just you and me. I really miss you". There it was the why. I reached down inside of me and I uttered the words, "I'm sorry if I hurt you. I miss you, too." We hugged. But it was the end. Things got too strained for us to try again.

In the end we both were wrong. We both let each other down and we hurt each other. They say there are three sides to every story, yours...mine and the truth. Perhaps if we didn't try so hard to have our side heard then we might find the truth a lot sooner.

Wayward thought

In this world of irresponsible medical altruism and the survival of the undeserving - i think naked knife fighting should be the new business end of evolution. Two contestants. Surgical scalpels. no clothing. Take his balls. Stab her in the ovaries. Only one set of reproductive organs can walk away.

You do not know

It does not take seeing someone to know and feel that they are existing. There's no need to see me to know and feel that I'm around. You just need to trust me that I'll be beside you when you need me. It's unfortunate that things hinge on small matters as it does with big things. You could have certainly done better. I'm telling you. To put such great weight on something so small, a thing you're not even sure of ...or on something you could have given me the benefit of the doubt, is something of a puzzle to me. I'm tired of shielding myself from your doubts and insecurities.

Now as we know it

The amount of time it takes for light to hit our eyes or sound to travel to our ears... compounded by stagnant nerve pathways transporting information to our brains... and that organs alacrity at processing information... all contributes to the fact that we never experience now as it actually occurs.

We function in "the lag" between event and comprehension and everything we think we know about the present point in time is assumed in the micro-moment before we ever experience it.

How soon is now? later than you think.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop

I have never, ever, EVER understood that saying. The other shoe? Wait a minute - what about the first shoe? Did i miss that too? And what the fucks with all these dropping shoes?

I have never in my lifetime waited for a shoe to do anything at all. Maybe I'm not as fixated on them as some people. To me, they're entirely non-dynamic devices handy for protecting my street trampling soles and hiding the horrible mutant pigeon toe on my right foot (thanks dad - thanks a bunch).

I'm not even worrisome of undoing shoelaces or wearing socks. I don't spend more on them than i would for a decent restaurant meal. And I wear them again and again and again until i cross the event horizon of probability betwixt the sciences of vulcanized synthetic polymers and ambulatory friction.

It can honestly be said that I spend as little time on footwear as humanly possible and the chances of me waiting around for the first shoe to drop, let alone the second, are infinitesimal to non-existent.

The fact that i bothered to take this time to even explain that fact comes as a total surprise and a valid indication of just how bored i must be these days.

Untitled again

Is there anything better than traffic in the morning?

Is there anything better than food on a plate?

Is there anything better than what's on the menu?

Is there anything better than getting your money on a payday?

Is there anything better than a quickie in a dark corner of a parking lot?

Is there anything better than going to work everyday?

Is there anything better than hope?

Is there anything better than ending with death?

Is there anything better...

Suspended...

I can't get angry anymore. Can’t get sad or happy. Not even anything. I just don't have it in me. I've leveled. Settled. Plateaued somewhere around the middle of fucking nowhere.

The worst I can summon is a vague dissatisfaction with the lack of disgust I have for everything I used to abhor. And there's nothing less poetic than apathy. Someone needs to pick a fight with me – I'll take any side you like.

What is...

...the brief moment between breathing in and breathing out. When you've drawn them in and taken them deep within yourself. When you're full of them and you just pause for that one beat. Totally sustained and happy and fulfilled. And then you let them go. They rush out of you and into memory. And you spend a while releasing them completely. And sometimes you spend too long. And then you breathe them in once more. Or you breathe in someone new. Or you never breathe again.

Now is gone

As soon as you utter the word "now", it has become obsolete. It's all past - there is no present. All of this (*waves vaguely at the universe*) is just the sharpest point at the leading edge of history. We have no choice but to use 'the past' - because that's the temporal context within which we all spend the greatest portion of our lives.

Now and Again

I've said it before and here I am saying it again - sometimes all you are is a stray thought. Oh I know you think you are a whole set of ideals and ideas, experiences and influences, deeds and desires. And often times maybe you are all those things, if you can find the time to balance them all in your head. When you pause for personal station identification - I guess you could list pages and pages of "things" that gestaltalize into the sum of the whole that you call You.

But sometimes, maybe even most times - you are simply one thing turning over in your advanced monkey cranium. You are hunger. Or you are boredom. You are in love. Or you are horny. You are that one time you were a dick at that party. Or you are afraid of something half remembered in the darkness coming out of a dream. Or you are this blog entry you have to get done before you forget why it is you bother blogging at all.

Sometimes all you are is loneliness. Sometimes all you are is the adrenaline immediately before a shot of tequila. Sometimes you're the burn that comes immediately after. Then you're hung on a dumb piece of trivia. You're caught in a glance with a beautiful stranger. You're the weather later this afternoon. You're the need to urinate. You're this song you love. You're a television show you don't even enjoy. You're the phone bill that needs to be paid.

You are all of these individual moments. Stand alone instances. Slices of identity. It’s always been easier for me to be these things than to be a continuing narrative. I'm bad at history and even worse at destiny - but I've always been pretty good at now.

Give me that. Give me now, again.

Give me now, forever.

The Moment Between Strangers

Somewhere between the strangers who turn into us, and the strangers we inevitably become - are the lives we occupy briefly and imagine to be the whole of ourselves.

These transient identities. These dust motes on anarchic tumble-tide trajectories. These momentary illusions coalesced from the quantum cause and ripple effect of all history, ready to evanesce at the slightest shift in neurochemistry or universal whimsy.

It seems I can no longer find time to define time... and meaning... and underlying form... and all those other things that occupied my mind so completely. Is life distracting me from the thoughts or were the thoughts distracting me from life? Am I better off where I am or where I was?

Was I a better stranger once? Will I be a better stranger hence? Am I at least half as far from who I was, than from whom I want to become? Can these things be measured with any accuracy or meaning?

I know I cannot know for sure - but it somehow pleases me that I’m still the kind of person who'll ask a purely poetic question.

If only to beg poetic answers.

Rituals

I'm not superstitious, but I'm very conscious of my own psychology. I know not to do anything that I'll probably blame later for whatever "bad thing" comes next. Which I guess is superstition on a certain level.

I don't mind doing the small ineffectual rituals (dodging ladders, outflanking black cats, clearing all the porn out of my browser history) if it means I can cross superstitious karma off my list of reasons why bad shit went down today.

Truths

God divided the world from the firmament - this is true. The Universe started with a Big Bang - this is also true.

You became self-aware and the universe accrued about your awareness to accommodate the new point of view - this too is truth.

Some instantly forgettable, yet infinitely quotable person, once wrote: "there is my truth and your truth and the actual truth probably lies somewhere in between." There's always another way of looking at the facts - of interpreting different truths. No thing is absolute, no fundamental premise incontrovertible - our spherically flat planet taught us that. Something should only ever be considered, at most: true enough. For current understanding. For present circumstances. For prevailing conditions. What's true enough for you, is not my business. What is true enough for me, is not yours. A truth should only ever be offered and never forced upon another.

The indelible croûtons of absolute truth may exist, arbitrarily, throughout the ever expanding pea soup of human knowledge - but its only at the end of that illimitable dish that we can say, with any glimmer of certainty, where those crumbs may lie.

And even then - the soup is usually just the first course.

(it always comes back to the soup - i really don't know why)

No, Not for me

It's not that I don't like pop music as such - I simply don't listen to the radio. I also don't order from the menu.

I think radio stations and menus are for people who don't really know what they want.

Sometimes

I come here to this black page and I just furrow at it for a while. Or I giggle at it a bit. Or I stare at it blankly and then page-away to some web comic or other. And sometimes that's as far as it gets.

Other times I just start putting words down. Whatever pops into my head. Like now - writing about what I write about and how.

Most of the time it just falls out in full sentences. Some silly phrase or crazy metaphor that's been dry humping my occipital lobe. Sometimes it just springs up around some extemporary word I’ve been dying to use.

It’s the last part that is most difficult though. When i look back over and say yes or no. Publish or draft. Live or die. Inflict or retract. Is it interesting at all to anyone other than myself? Does anyone on the other side of this keyboard give a flying fuck? Do I?

And its the answer to that last question that invariably tips the scales.

The thing from last night

last night

It seemed friendly enough, and we all accepted it and took it in, but now I'm not so sure. Why has it no name? It exists only in our memories now. It exists only as "The Thing From Last Night".

As thinking creatures, we need names attached to entities to make their existence more definite. When something has no name, it's just... just... "The Thing From Last Night", and we're left with an uneasy feeling.

Is it safe? Is it friendly? What are its true intentions? And why why why has it no name!?

"The Thing From Last Night" has no name because I didn't give it one. Yes, I created "The Thing From Last Night". I alone conjured the idea and brought it into its material existence. It's my fault that it had no name and was subsequently alienized.

On the plus side, perhaps this alienization made it more interesting, more of an adventure. Just what were we dealing with? How would it behave under certain conditions? What would be the long term effects of developing a relationship with "The Thing From Last Night"?

In the future, however, I will give these almagamations a name. An identity of their own. In that way, I expect to avoid the ridicule, suspicions, and overly critical eyes of those who would judge my capabilities and mental faculties.

*Note to self: Next time when someone asks, "What's for dinner?", don't answer, "The Thing From Last Night".

untitled

every time the phone doesn't ring, i know it's you not calling me.

I Read You

I read you. your hurts and worries - carefully framed and angled against the light, that the shadows might spill just so. Your happiness and laughter written out in vivacious discourse, buoyant and optimistic. Your anger sharp and jagged against the page. clinical observations and heated opinions. Brazen revelations and coy confessions. I read you in these things. In these thoughts you share. I read you and I guess - for guessing is all I have. Like trying to reverse engineer every raindrop in a storm - to discern the glorious color of the butterfly's beating wings. I read and arrogantly imagine I have some sense of you. however remote. However imperfectly perceived. However distorted by language and distance, by your inscrutable aspects and my implicitly flawed assumptions. I read and I believe that the quintessential part of you that extends out here into my blog and those other places where our lives ever so briefly touch - is knowable. Is something real – on its own terms and however you choose to define it. I'm not addressing your problems, because I don't really know them. But I know you - and you are wonderful. Broken and wound down at the bottom of a pool and totally wonderful. You'll pull through this and all else. You'll hold on when you need to and let go when you have to. And you don't need to hear any of this, I know. But maybe I needed to say it.

Change

People…you thought you know them. The truth is you don't. That perception is wrong. People keep on changing. Sometimes the changes in them hurt you. From a somebody, suddenly you become a nobody to them. Though they might not say so... the way they treat tells you everything. Suddenly, agnosia is a reason and a mnemonic aid is required for them to remember you.

Before, they will tell you their biggest secret. Now, they don't even want to tell you the smallest or unimportant things that happen to them. Suddenly, you feel like you don't know them at all. It hurts you deeply when you are booted out of their schema. But you couldn't tell them that because they will tell you that they are still the same person you know before. Everything’s a distant memory now…like a long lost and forgotten book in a dusty library shelf.

Extracting truth from all of them requires a lot of creativity.

Before, they will turn to you for advices in every category. They will come to you whenever they have problems. But now, they’re seeking it from their new friends. It’s like having dyslexia or a cognitive disorder and they think you won’t be able to understand them at all. Like it’s written all over your forehead. It is not about jealousy. It is just about a friend who thought they lost their sacred friendship.

Is the world selfish or am I just a self-centered being trying to find answers to things I couldn’t explain? A simple way of evaluation for things I can’t put a word on? Change is very hard to accept especially when it happens to people who are close to us. Gone are the long hours of idleness together, the seemingly endless laughter on very simple and crazy things, and the countless things that can be shared together…the shared experience. The semantics is lost.

No matter what kind of reinforcement, positive or negative and all the heuristics in life to solve this seemingly unavoidable situation, when people change… forget the most important things in their lives…its time to look for something new under the sun.

The concept of it all is simple. People change…and that’s a common knowledge.

I got tagged

I got tagged so I must write these things down…little know facts about myself

1. I don't believe in "weird" is an appropriate term when applied to habits or little known facts about people. Everyone has things particular to them – and weirdness just depends on how specific you want to be when describing them. If everything is "weird" – nothing is "weird".
2. I do not possess the ability to suspend disbelief enough to become a Christian... or an airplane pilot.
3. I love people but hate crowds.
4. Every morning i wake up a full three and a half minutes before my will to live.
5. Luckily my suicidal impulse sleeps late.
6. I am narcissism incarnate. In fact, if Narcissus himself were alive, he'd bow down to me and my incredible ego.
7. That fact alone has, quite literally at times, been the only thing that has kept me alive.
8. I believe that reality is an entirely local phenomenon - Which the universe functions under the weight of belief and opinion. That if people thought about something in a different way – then that difference would become fact. For this reason I am irrationally afraid of the terrible things I think up when I am alone.
9. One of my favorite activities is ceasing to exist in space-time. I secret myself away somewhere no one can find me and I stop moving entirely. I disconnect myself from any remnant of cause-and-effect reality. I make myself as small and rippleless as possible against the flow of time and wait until I’m not thinking of anything and I’m sure no one anywhere is thinking of me. Then I simply stop existing altogether. Depending on your point of view - this lasts forever or for no time at all.
10. As I've said before, I don't really go in for these things and this one was completed strictly as a courtesy to Marqui. I will however not act as a vector for this sort of viral contrivance. I will not inflict this on six others as the "rules" declare. This strain ends with me.

Babel

Okay, I'm going against the grain here.

We watched the movie "Babel" over the weekend. I thought it was crappy. I know, I know, it was Oscar nominated and stuff like that. That's the main reason I got the DVD, but I thought it was crappy.

I won't even get into the arguments regarding the way the Morrocan government works or the racist stereotypes or the young boy getting off on his older sister naked or gunshot trajectories, etc.. Nope, not going anywhere like that.

I just didn't feel there was enough character development for me to give a hoot about any of them. Yes, there were awful and thought provoking situations, but these were mainly the results of stupid decisions by selfish and/or shallow people IMHO. As one review I read said, "When bad things happen to stupid people, should we care?"

That said, I'm strangely not disappointed that I watched it, even though it took about 2½ hours of my life. At least the ending left me with the feeling that maybe these people will get their acts together now. But then again, it was just a movie.

The only virtuous person in the movie, I felt, was the Morrocan translator guy who helped Brad Pitt's character. Then there were the little kids. I did worry about them, but that's just because they were innocent little kids surrounded by the "stupid people" referred to above - parents, illegal nanny. There was also the deaf Japanese girl for whom I did also feel some compassion. I wanted to befriend her and tell her to stop being so slutty.

Anyway, I'm not sorry I watched it. I just found the stories and the characters annoying. One bad decision followed by another and another and another, like when there's people you just wanna slap, but you can't because they're on the TV. Watch it, see what you think.

And as for that whole artsy fartsy "interwovenness", yeah, okay YAWN. Sorry, not all that impressive.

One and a half goat skins out of 4 for "Babel".