Ablogalypse Now

when it's love

"When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment. It is an impossibility. It is even a lie to pretend to. And yet, this is exactly what most of us demand. We have so little faith in the ebb and flow of life, of love, of relationships. We leap at the flow of time and resist in terror its ebb. We are afraid it will never return. We insist on permanency, on duration, on continuity; when the only continuity possible in life, as in love, is in growth, in fluidity – in freedom. The only real security is not in owning or possessing, not in demanding or expecting, not in hoping, even. Security in a relationship lies neither in looking back to what it was, nor forward to what it might be, but living in the present and accepting it as it is now. For relationships, too, must be like islands. One must accept them for what they are here and now, within their limits – islands surrounded and interrupted by the sea, continuously visited and abandoned by the tides. One must accept the serenity of the winged life, of ebb and flow, of intermittency."

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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Questions, by Anonymous

(1) What is your definition of love? 

(2) How do you know if you're in "love"? 

(3) How do you know if they're the "one"?

Answers, by Dan Savage
 

 

(1) Love is making out with someone after you've blown a load on his/her face. 

(2) You know you're in love when you're eating breakfast in a restaurant together the morning after he/she blew a load on your face and you suddenly realize that you didn't wash your face when you got out of bed that morning and you don't care.

(3) You know he/she is the one when he/she realizes that you've just realized that you're eating breakfast in a restaurant the morning after he/she blew a load on your face and you didn't wash your face when you got out of bed that morning and he/she smiles, leans over the table, and gives you a kiss.

a splendid torch

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.

I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

- George Bernard Shaw

dream 12.2.07

a vacant dirt lot and a pile of junk that needed to be cleared from it. me worried about getting my clothes dirty because i hadn't planned to be there for more than a day and i had nothing else to wear. i was dressed up for some kind of a high school reunion and didn't want to trash the only set of clothes i had. thoughts of who i would see there that would still be single. my dad was in the dream too in some way. something having to do with cell phones. him complaining about the shitty service and how expensive they were. i don't recall who i was was working with (maybe my dad?), but we uncovered a large rattlesnake while clearing the lot and it followed us as we slowly tried to back away from it. it followed us and blocked the way out, refusing to be ignored - perhaps a symbol of something that had to be dealt with. me and at least one other grown man, paralyzed with fear, thinking the snake would strike at any moment, and the fearless young boy who suddenly appeared with a weapon of some sort, a machete perhaps, and moved in for the kill...

bizarre, what to make of it, if anything?  the need for some kind of inner yardwork? the dangers of what might be uncovered? the folly of worrying about appearances? the boldness of youth?

maybe....or then again, maybe it was just the melatonin talking...

feels like i've been here before

here we go again....

i'd rather burn

over the course of my life i've often been accused of being too emotional, but i prefer to see myself as passionate. this unshakable propensity to feel everything too deeply has often put me at odds with those who see passion as a detriment, or who fail to see that the essential nature of passion resists all attempts to surgically pick and choose when passion is appropriate, and when it's uncalled for. the conventional wisdom seems to be that it is far better to live a life governed by the cool, detached calculus of reason, rather than the unpredictable flames of passion. but from my perspective, given the choice between living like a machine, and the fiery alternative...

i'd rather burn...

and yet he remained

no winter fire for barren hearth

no warming sun for frozen earth

no summer breeze for ragged sails

no soothing cure for a heart's travail

no new love to replace the old

no spirit pyre to fight the cold

no fresh hope of a new day dawning

no way to end his incessant longing

the seasons changed,

his life rearranged,

from friends estranged,

and yet he remained -

waiting for a nameless vision

waiting for a grand transition

waiting for his heart to mend

waiting for the world to end

...::cdp2007::...

groveling for dollars

today i saw a co-worker - a grown man beg, plead, and grovel for the right to keep his job. he and i had committed a minor fuckup for which we certainly deserved a verbal reprimand, but, as usual a verbal reprimand wasn't enough and soon become an absurd and humiliating exercise in top-down managerial flagellation. i've been through this many times before and in many different settings from the insane regimented world of the army, to the hallowed halls of academia, but i'm not sure i've ever seen people seem to take so much pleasure in making other feel stupid, weak and small as i have here, and i'm frankly sick to fucking death over it. what is it that drives people to act this way? why such smug, arrogant and condescending bullshit from such pathetically shallow and haughty motherfuckers? fuck these people. there was a time when i would beg and plead to keep a piece of shit job, but not anymore. i'm done groveling and would rather be broke and homeless than eating shit from the hands of these thankless fucks.

dignity

a broken man who tried to love and lost, wanders the streets of a nameless town. he remembers days of sunshine and grace, quiet laughter and summer rain - he remembers, but tries to forget. tries to forget how it all came apart. how in losing love he lost his mind, his job and his dignity with a quickness that made his head spin. dirty, stinking and disheveled, he looks for a place to shit in private, but everywhere he goes he's treated like a leper and so he ends up shitting behind a bush in a local park, hoping that no one sees. while he squats to do his business, he is seen by a young woman walking down the street. she recoils in disgust and yells at the old man for his lack of social grace, but she keeps on walking because she's late for work. she's attractive but has a weary look about her, like she's been battered and beaten down by life, or maybe just an abusive boyfriend. she walks quickly, the crystal meth in her veins propelling her on the way to a place where she will dance naked for a room full of drunken businessmen and frat boys. she thinks they're all scum, except for the one with the nice eyes and expensive shoes. she likes him because he makes her feel special, not like a piece of meat on a shiny metal hook, spinning under the lights for everyone to pick at and devour. later that night, she sees him and he gives her a shiny gold necklace and a business card with his name and number on it. maybe she'll call him later, and maybe she won't. as the young businessman leaves the club that night, he's a little buzzed, but he gets into his new bmw and drives away. as he pulls up to a stoplight, he sees a middle-aged man dressed as a hotdog spinning a sign on a corner. he laughs at the hotdog man and tells him to get a real job before driving off into the night. the car he drives isn't paid for, and neither is the driveway he pulls into, or the $500,000 house he brags about to his friends. he's maxxed out on all his credit cards and daily has to contend with a flurry of calls from creditors all over the country begging for their pound of flesh. maybe he'll pay them, and maybe he won't. he has a trophy wife, a pool, a timeshare in cabo, and is well-respected by the guys at the office, so life is good. as he goes to bed, he thinks about the cute stripper at the bar, about how great his life is, and sinks off to sleep, oblivious to the cancer growing in his bones that will kill him in under 6 months. the next morning, after a brisk workout at the gym, a massage and a hot shower, he spends an hour berating a fellow co-worker for his poor judgement and tendency to be too emotional. he could have just written the guy up, but he enjoys making people feel weak and small and helpless, so he drags things out as long as possible, savoring the moment, the raw fear in the eyes of the weak little pussy in front of him. he ends by telling the guy that maybe he's just not cut out to be a manager, and sends him on his way. stunned, shaken and humilated, the young man leaves for the day to ponder his fate, because it's either this, or a trip back to the corner and that fucking humiliating hotdog suit. later on, the young man will go home and smother his dreams of white collar success with a quart of vodka and a handful of prescription painkillers, never to wake again.

on being thankful...

exhausted this morning, thanks to the miracle of melatonin. maybe i need to lay off that shit for a couple of days because it makes waking up alot harder than it should be. this is one of the down sides to working late nights. when you get off late, then it's not like you come straight home and go right to bed. one's mind tends to wander a bit, and it takes at least an hour to wind down from the day. so yes, i'm up now and getting ready to suck down some coffee. had dreams of some kind but not very vivid ones, or maybe they were vivid when i was having them but the melatonin haze simply won't let anything seep through. ugh...i hate starting the day this way, especially one where i'm going to have to spend a couple of hours on the highway.

so, despite feeling like i've put the events of 2005 squarely behind me, i still feel like i'm waiting for something. for an opportunity to just come along and materialize out of nowhere, for a suitable woman to come walking into my life, for The Next Big Thing, whatever that might be. i've often heard it said that if you follow your heart and move confidently in the direction of your dreams, then new vistas you could never have imagined will suddenly open up from out of nowhere...well, i'm here to tell you that really isn't the case...i've left behind a life it took me 10 years to put together and made a new start in the direction of passions i've long held close to my heart and there has been nothing else, nothing magical or unexpected, no divine providence of any sort...am i in the right place? how does ever know such things? all i know is that this feels more right than anything else i've ever done for a paycheck. and i am thankful for my family and my life. for having left behind unhealthy associations, poisonous habits of body and mind, and for having managed to stay alive long enough to learn how to be a better man...but the fact remains that i need to find some way to get into a creative routine, to shit or get off the pot because i've been on the fucking pot for far too many years now...unsure of my talents, afraid of doing something less than perfect, afraid to fail, afraid to succeed, afraid to try anything, there's that and the issues of commitment, perserverance and sustained focus...it's so easy for me to get distracted entirely too goddamned easily, and for a writer, for anyone, that truly is the kiss of death...need to find some cognitive mechanism that allows me to short-circuit that...actually it would be enough to just devise and stick to some sort of a writing routine, like a fitness routine...something i do more or less at the same time every day....and i wa able to get into the gym routine for several months but have stopped ever since my work schedule got flipped upside down, but this is the way things go, this is the trade-off you've made for sanity and peace of mind...because i had it, i had what most would consider a "good job" working from 6-3 monday through friday...i had paid vacation and sick tme and weekends off and all that shite and i was absolutely fucking miserable at the sheer bloodless, clockwork monotony of it all, so much so that i lost my mind and my marriage over it...so yeah, a chaotic work week with a constantly shifting schedule seems to fit me better, at least for now, but it does make it more difficult to devote a regular chunk of time to writing, but i must find a way to not only do that, but to get back into the gym too, because i'm not getting any younger, and no novel or screenplay ever wrote itself...i feel thankful, and more optimistic than i have in a very long time, but i still find myself haunted by thoughts of love withering on the vine, and of growing old alone, save for the company of my dogs...a good friend told me that it's never too late to reinvent your life, and while that may be true, i don't think i can ever reinvent myself in a fashion that most women - obsessed as they seem to be with the pursuit of material things and illusory security - would find appealing...

shopocalypse now

"what would jesus buy?" looks to be a timely and brutally hilarious documentary that won't be showing in the malls, and - like most timely and substantive docs - won't be seen by the vast majority of people it hopes to shake out of their collective stupor.

fuck hillary and obama - reverend billy has my vote for president.

wwjb comes to the loft on december 7th.

check out the trailer below...