spent the last week ignoring compass spin. i didn't fuck up (though i did come quite near). starting to wonder if it's really worth it. i really just want to find my musical soul mate, know-whadda-mean? i'm tired of the dictum "if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself." being true. i want to be able to count on someone else.

i've been listening to tales of young girls getting thrown out of trucks by spirits dressed all in white in the middle of the jungle and then refusing to wear clothes ever again, of running away from machete wielding guerrillas and goverment soldiers, lining up in a valley to kill each other, of a woman who delivered every baby born in the village for the last forty years.

the things we do for money.
the things we do for what we love.

i went to go see hilly d.j. the other night. made me realize how stultifying cincinnati is. so many good things, so many beautiful things going to waste. i really don't know if i can stay any longer. i feel right now like i'm watching my good chi, my resources (physical and mental), just dwindle away, just disappear. there's nothing that's keeping me from saving it; it is being wasted through inaction. that's what gets me.

i'm so tired.

Last week I went to Lexington. My mexican grandma turned 78.

She wanted to go to the races and this is what I saw there:


Then I came home and went to school.

And on Sunday I will play Risk!

The End.

Life without second chances is worthless.

I got into two car wrecks this weekend, one saturday morning and one sunday morning. Neither were Ash's fault (she was driving both times). We're both okay. Her car is totaled. My car didn't even have a scratch.

I saw Bruce Meizlish. He told me to go be young. I'm glad what i'm doing makes sense to somebody else.

Friday night I started training at the Red Pepper as a waiter, which is never going to work out, but I met all the cooks. They are Mexican (with one Honduran). The oldest is Mario and he is 54. The youngest is Berlin who is 15 (his uncle, with whom he came, is named Moscow). They fed me and gave me beer after the shift saying "We are comrades and must stick together. We're all crazy vatos." I brought Ash their apartment. We spent the night drinking and singing. They haven't had a chance to talk to a woman in a while, or anyone outside of their little group. The spanish you learn in school is so useless. It is a completely different language from the bar-room lingo that gets slung around. This is a neglected part of my education.

I miss my sister.

Animal City Tour July 2006 - Prelude to Queen City Blues

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replaced rear-view mirrors...
i had a great weekend.

friday i skipped school as all my classes were cancelled. ash & i went to a junkyard, ash's first, and then we went to lexington to visit mami. saw dan vantreese, jade, and eli, too. jade's pregnant. like, what the fuck. i've known her since i was fifteen. seems to be doing well, i guess. she's living on a farm in berea with her super-hippy baby's daddy. i hear josie lamb's back in town, too...i need to get in touch with her.

the next morning we went to shakertown, a nice drive with lots of garage sale pitstops along the way (we came back with so much stuff: a couple of sweet jackets, a pair of jeans, two (!) rubiks' cubes, a Dr. frank-n-furter rubber ducky, a couple of military-issue web belts, a copy of hello nasty, and several books - i'm forgetting things, and that's just my stuff). the sun was shining and we listened to the beatles as we drove along the winding kentucky backwoods roads. we took photos at shakertown, and on the way back had cheese-and-tomato-on-french sandwiches under a bridge and watched crawdads and tadpoles. more garage sales, and back to lexington for sqecial (one of my favorite bookstores ever). got some coffee at common grounds and then blew back up the seventy-five going about 90 (i drove). blew off band practice to see my folks and hang out with my sister. watched the fireworks from the front porch, ash in her new coat.

sunday i spent walking with olivia and heather (her best friend), slightly drunk and not writing the papers i had due today. got an e-mail from john beard who is in japan. i built ash a bookshelf and did a little cooking. talked to dad. basically spent quality time with some people i really love, the perfect way to wind down an eventful weekend.

i've been keeping a real pencil-and paper journal for the last few weeks and it's full of those boring details that seem pointless to record right now but when i'm 42 and find a shoebox in the top shelf of a closet with this little notebook with a van eyck on the cover it will probably make me cry.

it's kind of fun.

i miss stopping by amy sue's after class and drinking coffee and talking her ear off.

as soon as i scrape together the $1 and change needed for postage and buy/beg/steal/borrow some envelopes, three of you have letters coming, .
as soon as i scrape together the cash for some film i'm going to start taking photos again.
as soon as i scrape together the money for a hub, i'm going to finish the Burleigh and i will be the envy of bike pirates everywhere.

since i haven't been working, i've been getting a lot done school wise. right now i believe i have 95's or higher in all my classes. mmm...tasty. i'll probably find a way to blow it before the end of the quarter, though. i signed up for fall classes this morning and FINALLY FILLED OUT MY COURSE SHEET FOR THE ENGLISH DEGREE!!! yay. spanish may be a hassle, as there's a grammar class that is offered at akward times, but make do i shall. maybe i'll be like mitch, and be six credits away from six different degrees and just drop out. it would be rather characteristic of me. what the hell do i do if not school? gah!

i've been spending a lot of time with ash. not wanting to jump to conclusions, but we seem to fit together rather well.

mauri: I don't know if you'll like it, i don't know if it's your thing...
me: nothing's my thing.

koan: homeslice walks up to gran' massa' 'n says "word up, ol' codger, this here young 'un be dee-lighted if you'd impart to me that there enlightenment whazzit."
to which gran' massa' sez "ya gots t' leave it all behind, 'n give up all ya gots." whippersnapper homslice grins this here grin, real big like, and goes "aw shucks, gran' massa', but i done did that there leavin' behint. i gots nuthin', nuthin', nuthin'." gran' massa' hits whippersnapper homeslice with his stick right up there on his crown n' sez "leave that behint too."

i know these are from two weeks ago, but still...

coin-op



subterranean homesick blues...


mr. kato

mike + kat @ hilly + tori's

i'll tear you in half with my naievete!
yeah.

went with marta by bike to mt. storm on friday to lie in the sun and read "love in the time of cholera" to each other in spanish. i fell asleep listening to her...

but that was then. and i'm not gonna do a goddamn thing. hahah! i'm like a greyhound, all i like to do is run.

the night before ashley told me that we should hang out because we live around the corner from each other. so i said sure. and knocked on her door late one night...
we saw chico. he told me he's got cancer. pancreas. no insurance 'cuz he's doing the social work thing for runaway kids. that man is one of my favorite people in existence. maybe a year left? he's twenty two. i don't want him to die. he deserves a long life and a couple of kids and smiling friends and family and a good meal on his 83rd birthday.

go go go go.

i like anarchists. they are ridiculous and never ever get a goddamn thing done but they're fun to be around. good people.

saturday night ashley was speaking in rhyme. we also had a conversation using only hand signs which was completely effortless. she drives like a maniac and is something fierce. i like fierce. fierce means you believe in something, have some hope, maybe.

(when i was in france i met a man who's wife of nearly fifty years had had a stroke and was in a vegetative state. he cared for her by himself, continously. he showed me a picture of her, nineteen and beautiful, standing on a slope in the alps with a smile on her face and then with the saddest and most proud look i have ever seen he said to me "elle est une femme formidable.")


the end.

Steve and Steve, somewhere in the polish part of brooklyn. I can't remember the name of the place as I was inebriated.


Steve and Steve.


a shop in soho with EVERYTHING.

Dieders' birthday par-tay:

zach. being fabulous.


the illustrious Mr. Mayhem. hawt.


a nice young lady, with vince being a cock in the background.


the birthday girl herself!


Banzai Biehler!


mirror! mirror! it's in focus.



hillybonez straight thuggin'.

there are parrots in brooklyn
NYC over spring break. i took notes. here they are (the first day, the drive up):

steve (on finally meeting amy's dad): now everything makes sense about you and jody.
amy: yes, because jody hung out in my dad's garage and i was raised by my grandparnets. jody was strong and chubby as a kid, and i was sick all the time. jody tough, and dad could rough-house with her. he could relate.
steve told us about his childhood in indiana, growing up in the middle of cornfields and cows, tapping maple syrup trees. i was reminded of my own childhood, surrounded by sorghum, and the ubiquitous cows.
we saw a cop pull a u-turn on the interstate, crossing the median, not even putting his sirens on. amy said "he doesn't care."
drove through a land of silos, and amy pointed out the composition of their arrangement, the simple block shapes of farm architecture.
a winter field, full of snow, a backhoe parked in the middle.
talked about politics, bout taft. "as ohio goes, america goes," amy said. new no-tolerance drug laws gonna cause more problems.
the skies, the water, the silos, all the same shade of grey. yellow corn stubble poking out of the dark brown earth, frosted with snow. the darker brown of bare trees and the rusty red of the barns.
we stopped for food and saw a tow truck that said "EL BURRO TOWING."
the three of us talked about maybe going to boston, to MIT, and steve said "i'd have trouble relating to those kids. i'd say to them 'your college experience is a lot better than mine. you have a nice place to live, whereas i live in a fucking shanty.'"
talking about houses, architecture, and anthropologists being bad at designing things. steve quipped "haven't you heard? anthropologists are bad at intelligent design."
we passed near muskingam, and steve and amy told me about this tribe of indians that live in a village inside a warehouse, as a sort of tourist attraction. "imagine what this was like when it was all indians," i said. forests so dense and thick and massive, small communities spread out, more ecologically friendly.
Drove around wheeling. past the cememtary, where someone smiled and waved to us. we drove past a huge, absolutely massive nail factory, made out of tin sheeting. it must have been six or seven stories at its tallest point, and was probably an 1/8th mile on a side. it said "La Belle cut nail plant, the largest in the world" in painted letters on the side. it was surrounded on all sides by flying highway overpasses, and steve said "those are the cathedrals of our time, " quoting david byrne as we went under. wheeling felt truly rust bowl, industrial, drab as hell, and feeling abandoned or left behind. amy said "seattle has parts like this, but sunny and happy."
amy: i wonder if we'll sit around and tell stories of when we were 20 when we're fifty, like about the canoe trip when eric fell in the water, or when jared saved dave thomas.
the landscape in PA more rolling, but otherwise very similar to n. Ohio. the barns are white, though. dusk in the darkly forested deeply creased hills, with that blue cast to the light after the sun has disappeared but the light has not yet faded. windmill generators on a hill.
lines of light moving through the inky black shapes of hills in the dark.

at this point, i took over driving, and drove through all the white-tiled, flourescent lit tunnels to NYC, where i traumatized amy by driving like a new yorker. steve was pretty quiet and didn't say anything, but he didn't let me drive on the way back, which i think says it all.

***

being good isn't nearly as hard as i thought it was going to be.

in other news, i'm poor and need a job that pays more than $200/month. conversa is shafting me. meh.

rousseau was such a hippocrite. like, wtf, 'n stuff. knocking up yr maid and putting yr kids in orphanages cuz ya think ya won't make a good dad after writing "man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains" ain't too terribly punk rock. no-body's perfect. 'cept maybe dead people. i'm learning middle english in my medieval lit class. which i'm taking for fun. bwahahahah. i'm fucked up.

met the most beautiful girl today, her name was leli, and she was five. she had big brown eyes and ponytails, and told me that she had two toys and two books that she didn't know the name of because she couldn't read. leli laughed when i told her i was a bit deaf, like it was silly of me to let that happen (and it was). leli asked me about the school i go to, the friends i have, where i got my backpack (i told her a good friend of mine gave it to me).

like i told amy sue later (of course i had to tell her, i think she's the only one that would understand what i mean when i stammer and stutter), i had to tell amy sue that this leli, she's going to be beautiful when she grows up. not just pretty beautiful, but amazing beautiful.

in other news, i am wanting to do another project with josh and mingus. i'll call it THE WIRE FLOWERS or something equally obnoxious. off kilter noise that's all static smoothed out and ringing. enough of this fiddle-faddle, from now on i'll make my valentines out of bloody beef hearts.

got up today an hour late, missed shakespeare class cuz the night before i was up to three or four or so. i went over to hilly's after making some music with jake and josh. i put together a model of Cornelius from planet of the apes sitting on the floor of her room. i kissed her three times before i left, and i remember each one clearly. but in any event, i skipped shakespeare, which i'm doing pretty miserably in. i rode my bike wearing my steel-toed boots for the first time, and went to brit lit. turns out i got a C+ on the midterm. it's only 10% of the grade, though. ironic that i'm doing much better in spanish than my english classes. after brit lit i went to math, listened to my headphones and gave all the right answers (which was no answer at all). the prof. was talking about flipping coins and probability so i told kristen the story about a man, a 17th century composer named jeremiah clarke, who on being jilted by his lover decided to kill himself. he flipped a coin to decide: heads was drowning, tails was hanging. the coin landed on its edge in the mud so he went home and shot himself.

after that mess, i biked up to kroger and got my weekly ration of peanut butter and stole some batteries for my mp3 player. went to work, and interpreted for a jennifer lopez (no shit) and her baby jesus. he pissed on the scale when he was weighed. mike (michael felger) is my trainer, and i like him a lot. about 25, he's a little taller than me, with short red hair. he is clean shaven, with freckles and clear eyes. he looks tired all the time, looks like the world is getting him down. he teaches spanish to kindergartners in addition to interpreting and is going to grad school for spanish lit. he rides bikes (he wants to get a track bike and is interested in critical mass) and plays guitar in a rock band called Crazy Ivan with a few of his jazz-studying friends from CCM. i like him because he has a good soul and is patient. he cares about lives other than his own. maybe i'm not making myself clear, but i at least know what i'm saying.

after work i got some skyline. sitting at the bar, i tucked the napkin into my collar and it reminded me of my dad. i came home. i dozed on the couch for a little bit, and then i went to my parents house to watch Bringing out the Dead. scorsese's new york makes me feel, just like sandberg's chicago or kerouac's america. olivia and i sipped on gin and orange juice. "It need's more orange juice," she said to me, and i said "ah, no it doesn't" being careful not perpetuate patriarchy. mama gave me a ride home at midnight and we talked in the car. she mentioned all the dumpstered bread in the freezer, and i told her that the crew had gotten more than enough food to feed 30 people for more than a month - the food that one mid-sized grocery threw away. i told her how much this country, this way of life bothers me, how fucked up i think it is that for me to succeed, someone else must fail. she agreed, but i don't think she's comfortable with my nihilism, my bitterness. i explained to her that it's because of the shit i see that i fight so hard to make things right (i don't think of what i want as "right" i just think of it as not wrong). i told her i loved her and went into my apartment.

tomorrow is valentine's. a bunch of gangsters got killed in a garage in the north side of chicago on that holiday in 1929. i believe in valentine's about as much as they do.

that said, i love you all.