• sartreations
• Captain Picard
• according to his need
• dead images
• you won't pray
• dead reckoning
• how to be in love
• 18
• sometimes you are beautiful
• poem for a space traveler
• untitled 1
• i am a wraith
• one death
• i have a shining body
• peculiar happiness
• Clawing
• Apology

music:

• maybe

prose:

• misspelled
• D
• distress
• the cult of portland
• reality

letters:

• caroline102499
• ben11999
• ben111300
• jeannie6999

nonsense:

• pLim

misc:

• the master and margarita
• various desktops

(edit | back)

If you don't mind me deconstructing that statement - that California is an incredibly poisonous place - shooting from the hip as it were. where the East coast was fast-paced and cutthroat, California is far more easygoing. no one seems to mind if you're just letting the time go by; there's no felt contrast between the suits and those who aren't in them. if anything I think most people pity the suits. but the price of that is a tremendous amount of dishonesty, and I think that bothers me more than the sight of people kowtowing left and right to the false gods of pride and Mammon.

the story that illustrates this best is that last friday I went to see Requiem for a Dream with a friend of mine. It's about heroin addiction, and it's really, really disturbing. and then I went home and remembered as I stepped in the front door that my roommate was having a birthday party. now my roommate (Josh) is into the whole indie rock scene, and so there were lots of stylishly dressed hipsters in my living room inhaling cigarette smoke and so on. so there I am with this bombshell of a movie in my head, it would be incredibly rude to leave so as to have some thought to myself, and it's too loud to go to sleep. so I'm stuck talking with vapid, cynical indie rockers, and in every conversation that I try to seek something deeper I'm repulsed by a barrier that not even their beer can overcome.

because if the rabid pursuits of power and money in the East are a dim manifestation of man's desire to become what he's meant to be, to do what he's called to do, then in California that calling, that desire to be someone special, to do something meaningful, has been buried behind the odious, meaningless mantra: \"I'm OK, How are you, Thanks for asking.\" I actually talked to one girl who thought there was no such thing as bad art. That the measure of art's goodness was simply personal preference, and since in this vast market economy you can almost always find someone who'll buy your passionless \"art\"...but if there's no such thing as bad art there certainly isn't such thing as good art, and if you're an artist or writer (which I think she was), how in God's name do you reconcile the God-given desire to create something meaningful with a sincere belief that you can't produce anything good?

I'm getting worked up here. But my point, I guess, is that while most people aren't called to be artists, they do have an instinct to create something meaningful out of their lives. and if that's impossible, the frustration just builds up, the meaninglessness gets hidden behind barriers, and I - after having my head up my ass for a few months, which seems to happen when I get plunked into new situations - am realizing how difficult it is to really talk to someone in this damned state.

...

sometimes, i'm reminded, one does break through, and I am being daily taught how important it is to remember things about people. i was talking to someone at one point and happened to remember from a previous conversation where she worked. it's such a tiny thing, but her face sort of lit up when she realized that I had been (and was) actually listening to her. and now i realize that pretty girls usually don't get listened to.