A return to the essentials: my cat Fluffy

It’s been a while since I used that phrase and the inside joke was made, but I feel it’s appropriate right now.

My cats are some of the cutest things I have ever seen. I posted about Fluffy when I first got him (his name is actually Sydartha, Fluffy is merely his pen name) and he’s still adorable even at his old age.

My cats are rather clingy and cultish, and they circle their fascination around certain things, and when they do, their whole life revolves around it. Until they move onto another object of their affections, of course. Two things are currently holding their fancy.

The first is a flokati area rug. My kitties love it. Well, only Rocky loves it. Syd loves it because Rocky loves it, but he feels that he cannot let his body completely touch the rug. That’s why he is currently lying on my English award envelope on top of the flokati. And he’s stretched out with his belly exposed and his legs spread wide. Even in this position, he is one of the most attractive cats I’ve ever seen. He’s a siamese stunner.

The second is a small Buddhist water feature that we installed into our living room last night. It’s beautiful. Rocky seems to agree, and he hasn’t stopped playing with it since we first got it started. It’s behind the couch, so he’s on the back of the couch with his head facing the stream of water, pawing lightly at the water.

The fountain works really well for Rocky. It’s a great natural resource for him; he’s able to get his water there. Previously, he’d have to MEOW and MEOW to get our attention, and then we’d turn on the tap in the bathroom for him to eagerly consume, his bulbous backside hanging off the side of the sink. Things have become much simpler in his already simple life.

And now they’re sleeping in their respective locations, dozing most of the day away. A huge part of me wants to curl up on the sofa next to Rocky, and have Syd sprawled at the feet of the couch, and just dream. Another part of me wants to rush down to the beach park with my friends and throw myself onto the sand, letting the sun bake my thoughts away. Another part of me (is there much left?) wants to go back to bed with coffee and my laptop and write.

But unlike these two hepcats (the ska band or the comic book, I leave for you to decide), I have responsibility (which is the easiest way to avoid responsibility–admit that you “have it”).

Enough with these parenthetical phrases. I must attend to my large pile of work.

Rain and a full moon

I’m restless and optimistic sitting in my room tonight. My elbows are resting on my desk and my face is turned toward my open window. The rain is finally coming down in torrents and the air is sweet; succulent nature pouring back into me again. I am reunited.

There’s a strange energy in the air, like the darkness and the dripping sounds outside my window are calling to my elemental roots with a powerful pheromone. Longing overwhelms me, but longing for what?

Down, down deep in my chest cavity there’s an eruption of warmth that contrasts with the just below body temperature breeze. Breathe. In and out, here I am: an animal that longs to dance in gentle tropical showers, that wants to call to the full moon.

A calm has taken over me, and I’m glad it’s here at last–it’s come in with the rain, it seems.

Prayer

Diclaimer: I’m not against any religion, and I try to keep an open mind. This is not a declaration of my faith or what I believe in, it’s just an expression linked to a southern TV preacher. I’m not pro-satan or anti-satan or anti-Jesus or pro-Jesus.

There are five things that we need to do to set ourselves up for a miracle, according to the shiny headed preacher on the TV screen. It’s glowing through the darkness, the TV screen. The words that he says blur together like the tangled blankets on this bed. The amens and laughs become one. His jokes about walking downstairs to pray and finding that his “dog had been there first” and his stories about talking to the Lord, conversationally wise; those words enter my half awake mind jarbled. My mind is soggy with slumber, and only a fragment of my consciousness is paying attention to this now.

1. Only a fragment of my consciousness. Only a fragment of my amusement, and none of my prayers, because for some reason his excitement and passion and faith in me  (sitting alone in my dark air conditioned room vaguely watching the blue light and hearing the white noise) doesn’t translate to the unstatic of my organic Earth bound mind. “Seek the faith in the Lord. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord,” he says. I’m not sure I can hear you clearly, I’m fading off to dream land and transcendental meditation with the Maharishi and I see the Beatles over in the corner and Yoko and John are holding hands and I’m gone now.

2. “You’ll find if you study the Bible…and we American’s seem to throw the baby out with the bathwater. If we treated our prophets like we did thousands of years ago…dead…I’m bring you a prophetic statement…” I don’t study the Bible, and I don’t study at all and my baby and my bathwater are definitely solidly together. I’m not sure I should or want to specify the babies and the bathwater in my life. I’d much rather take them both and not throw anything out. “Hear with your heart. I’m giving you a prophetic statement from the Bible tonight. Don’t listen to me because I’m saying it, listen because the Lord is saying it.” And I know you’re saying it to the teenage girl drifting away from you, my red, shiny faced salvation. Do you really believe that I will raise my hands up and up and up until I can feel the blood rushing Earth bound, now, right now?

3. “Who cares what we feel. What matters and is true is what God says,” you say in return. This makes my head spin in truth and untruth and feel and believe when I try and work around the logic of this. This reminds me of something I heard earlier today: freedom of speech is only valid if what you’re saying is true. That type of truth worms it’s ugly way into my mind and pickles it. My own personal truths fight bitterly to the end with the truth worms until victorious, and then they lie freely to themselves about the mess they made in my mind. Returning the weird cycle again.

4. “And there’s no way we can be saved until the Holy Spirit sees we’re born again.” When was I born? When I came out of my mother’s vagina, blood red pulsing with life and screaming for air, that wasn’t enough? That wasn’t enough in the eyes of God? When I was little and realized that my mother and father weren’t married, that they never were? “According to the Bible,” I’m told, “there’s no way I can be saved…” UNLESS. Am I cursed to Hell unless I become born again to a man who has died on my sins?  Or do I mean for or against or upon or underneath or above my sins? I’m confused now.

And now he’s saying that if we only put the gospel singers in front of the fighters in Iraq, we’d win, because that’s what someone in the Bible did. And for the guy in the Bible it worked out pretty well. This triggers unholy thoughts. Very unholy. I am inoffensive to the Devil because I don’t believe in right or wrong or morals, you say to me indirectly with your watery eyes. Subjectivity, I’ve heard spoken by someone other than Jesus. Put your praise singers in front of the armies, please, as you eat your microphone and buy hair regrowth ointment. Do it, and I will watch from the far fetched sidelines.

5. “You look to people, and you will be let down every time.” Thanks for the warning, my human friend. It took me .34 seconds to realize that these words were falling out of your lips—your lips like sin smeared relics of pagan times. So why should I believe you? You are not my God. I depend only on myself now. That’s what I spit in the eyes of the unconvinced complacents sometimes, but I don’t really believe it’s true. Trillions of people, and the universe too, conspire for my happiness. That alone is more unbelievably meaningful and amazing and miraculous than I ever realized.

“Heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus, I receive these five things. And tonight, I make a vow. That tonight, I’ll make the changes that God requires.

1.    seek the lord
2.    listen to the prophetic the words in the bible and the prophet god sends my way
3.    worshup lord in spirit and truth
4.    believe in the prophet plant my seed and prosper in jesus name
5.    praise of lord shall be upon my lips

Repeat after me: Satan, take your hands off my property, take your hands off my soul, take your hands off my money, take your hands of me because I am God’s, paid for in full by Jesus.” But the return policy is valid within 100 years if you have the receipt.

Mom

 “Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee  

Calls back the lovely April of her prime.”

 

–Shakespeare

 

She sits here in front of me, eating a steaming hot loco moco and gazing out of the window.

“Burning.” she says,”Burning heat.”

My mother is the only person in my life that I trust completely. I feel safe with her. She will always be honest with me, which is the quality that I admire the most. I can ask her anything–be it completely shocking or mundane; and she’ll put thought into the answer.

“What’s a ? How does this work ? Why do guys do this ? Is this wrong ?”

“Well…” and she tells me. She tells me exactly what she’s thinking and everything that she knows.

My mom is the best gate crasher ever. She’s gone into the super bowl multiple times without tickets. She’s busted into private parties. She says that if she were to be a criminal she would be a long con artist. You get huge money. She’s an actress and she bends rules.

She once told me that she expects great things out of me.

“You have it all, honey. You have the height, the beauty, the brains. You don’t ever have to have a ticekt. I expect you to get on an airplane without a boarding pass one day. It’s been done before.”

We laughed hard at that.

“If you had to be a criminal, what would you be?” she asked

“I’d be one of those criminals that appears completely normal, but that lives above the law. I’d rob from the weakness of society.”

“But what would you steal? How would you pay rent and food?”

“I would rob from environmentally unsafe companys.”

“You’re so cute!”

Even now as I type this we’re talking about things that moms and daughters usually don’t talk about so openly and freely. I’m not going to enumerate what that subject is exactly, but it’s usually a large elephant in the rooms of moms and daughters. No subject is taboo for my mom and I, and this makes me feel comfortable. As David Sedaris says, “Parents forbidding something is the quickest way to make an addict.”

My mom says that she will never be angry with me as long as I’m honest with her. She’ll never hold something against me or stop loving me.

I’ve made mistakes in the past, but I’ve owned up to them, and she forgives me. Yes, I’m in the teen angst stage of my life, but no, my mom is not my worst enemy. She’s my biggest ally. I’m not her mirror so much as I’m her partner in crime.

Making this a habit

This is the second time this week (or was it this week? I’m confusing my days as they blur into sleepless blobs highlighted by hyperventilating happiness and the dull doldrums). I’m writing this after a SMALL coffee and a night at nextdoor watching movies. Er, I mean films. So I thought I’d be ok because it was a small coffee, and I really needed it. I woke up too late today, and my lovely living mates had already drunk all of it.

And right now I’m being followed by a insect. A large one. As I was about to lie down to not sleep in my bed, it crawled out of my pillow. I whacked it repeatedly with Hamlet, the brave, brave soul. (If you had trouble killing Uncle Claudios, babe, this insect is ten times worse.) When I thought I had at least subdued it enough to keep it in that corner of the room, I retreated to my desk again and to this sympathetic key board. But just now as I looked to my left, it was ON MY PRINTER.

“Stop following me you deranged insect!” I shouted to it as it hobbled feebly around the white printer paper.

“I am injured,” it seemed to say.

“Damn right you are!”

“Do you not take pity on me?”

“I will end you.”

Grabbing my to do list and attempting to end it, I hit the insect. Or I seemed to. Apparently it’s one of those super insects that move in the super speed dimension. Like those blonde dreaded guys in the Matrix Reloaded. As I thought this, it ran into the deep depths of my HP. EF THAT!

I can’t sleep now. No, that’s it. I’m done. I’m never sleeping again. Just call me Edward.

[Yay. I made my vampire reference for the day. Much like Kariume's crack jokes.]

My friend just IMed me, and I thought that our discourse (that’s my favorite word this week) is applicable to this post:

him: you there?

me: yes

him: 2am. go to bed crazy woman

me: yeah. no.

him: k

me: a insect is in my room. it’s following me.

him: eat it! kill it

me: I tried

him: which?

me: the latter. it’s a super insect

him: O RLY?

me: brb, killing

him: use kryptonite

Seriously, I can see the affects of humanity’s obsession with bug spray and immunizations right here. Genetic mutation has caused these organisms to employ Darwin’s theory of survival of the fittest. The fittest have survived the bug spray overdose of 2007 in the Lindsea Hood and have now mutated to become SUPER INSECTS. Dun dun dun. This is ridiculous. I’m calling the EPA. I’m calling the FDA.

And the worse part is, in my late night hysteria, I think that everything that touches my epidermis is an inspect. I am flinching and jumping like a heroine user going cold turkey (which, incidentally, I saw recently in Barnes and Noble). This is not ono kine grindz.

So this post was going to be about semi-intelligent musings. But no, the genetically mutated freak of nature that is hiding in my printer has ruined it.

[Edit: Ok, so then it ran out of my printer and somehow got under my bed. Yes, I thought, at least it's moved away from the immidiate vicinity. BUT NO. The genetic mutation obviously made it a million time stupider and gave it a death wish. It ran out from under the bed and onto my FOOT.

"What the ef what the ef what the ef??? What are you doing?!"

No response.

I ended up murdering it for good and then rolling over it with my chair a couple of times. I'm not certain this means it's safe to go to sleep. I'm thinking it might have a mate somewhere. If it does, IT IS GOING DOWN LIKE ITS WIFEY. That is all.]

Where

The golden goldfish are cracking under the weight of my teeth, and my salvia is rushing towards them like a tidal wave. I am here, sitting in the cold studio, filled with computers put here for newspaper and literary magazine editors. I am both. This place–with it’s distinctly student mess, and disgusting burber carpet–has become comfortable for me. I’ve been here as the sun goes down, well into night, and tumbled out with my fellow newspaper editors, our eyes blinking and unfocused. I’ve eaten Korean food and endless chocolates at the table to my right. I keep my copy of the O.C. season 1 here. I first joined Students 2.0 at this computer I’m typing at right now. I had a project global cooling conference with Korea using this isight.

It’s like this place has become a tangled web of memories, vaguely resembling what it once was. It’s become mine, and I love it.

Even the broken stapler and my old garbage.

This has become of big part of my “where.”

Combatting stress

Sometimes it helps to make lists of things that you have to do in the coming weeks, so I decided that I’d give that a try and make a tidy to do list.

Books that I have to read and projects that relate to them:

Hamlet- write a thesis paper on Hamlet (the title of my paper: Are those boobs real or fake? Seeming versus being in our modern culture)

Handmaiden’s Tale- write a book report-esque paper exploring any theme I choose.

Unvanquised- just read it

Franny and Zooey- just read it

Great Gatsby- write literature circle papers every week, paying special attention to the different scenes, the characters, and lexicography.

Faulkner’s short story collection, and various books on Faulkner- write a paper and have a presentation ready for the class the week of class.

Projects:

I. French projects-

• Listen to the audio version of Around the World in Eighty Days and record myself reading a chapter of it, paying special attention to pronunciation and inflection.
• Film myself making a French meal, and explain on camera each step (in French)
• Write an in depth paper on a character in Indochine, the classic French film.
• Prepare a response to 10 questions on a previously given list, and be ready to answer any two of these questions (orally), plus a question not on the list

II. American Literature projects-

• Get a 20 minute presentation ready to teach the class about Faulkner.

Tests:

AP U.S. History- A four hour long college board AP test, which includes a multiple choice objective exam, two free response essays, and one document based question.

Math- On Monday, a smaller test ranging 4 chapters, and then the next week, a quarter test.

French- A French quiz on Tuesday.

American Literature- Reading quizzes every week on the Great Gatsby.

And then objective final exams, the week of 27-30th:

Math

French

To combat my stress, I asked my tweeps about what would help. Here are some of the replies:

“Tea.”

“Booze?”

“Kavakava is good for stress, meditation, exercise…many things help stress.”

“Combating Stress: Engaging in Flow, Physical Activity, Proper Diet, Meditation, Medication, various vices I wouldn’t recommend.”

“Exercise, prayer, meditation–all ways to combat stress.”

“I use essential oils. Lavender is infamous for that among other things.”

“Oiling and lotioning, lotioning and oiling… smiling. I can’t take this no more!
-Sandlot (1993)”

“Sleep. Keeping busy. FRIENDS. Dance. Helping others. Cleaning house. Removing the root cause (I’m serious, and it can usually be done, if not easy). Hugs. *offers you a warm and friendly hug*”

“Valerian, skullcap, hops.”

“Aerobic exercise 20-30 mins, 2-4 times per week…it really does help.”

And my own personal antidote: Blast Iron and Wine and then watch this theatrical masterpiece on youtube (fast forward to 3:24 for the best song).

Stop-motion life versus live art: linear thinking and my post modern story

An idea got planted in my head the other day, about stories, and how they create a person’s identity. There’s this theory that because our cells regenerate every seven years, and we’re left with a completely new body, the only thing that ties us together is our stories or our memories. It’s all we have that makes us human, the theory seems to say.

When I explicitly think about my own stories, I think of afternoons with my friends. Particularly the phrase, “good story!” and it’s connotations. It basically means, wow, please don’t tell another story because that one was really boring. And it’s true–a lot of times my stories are hard to follow when I relate them to my friends. They’re nonlinear. They make so much sense in my head but seem to become like iron and rust when exposed to the outside atmosphere.

If I could tell a story to a group of people, which one would I tell?

That’s probably one of the hardest questions for me to answer, because I feel like my whole life (my history, present, and future) is wrapped into one thing. Non-linear. Time and I are acquaintances that forget each other’s faces as soon as we look the other way. I am just one continuous story.

I really don’t know what to tell people to amuse them and to leave them pleasantly introspective. A complete story (beginning, middle, ending, usually a bit witty) will often do that to people. I feel like the only story I could tell would be more of a fleeting glimpse into my life; a moment. It would be without plot and without direction. It would just be; a photograph of a moving object, just barely discernible and rough and speckled with dust.

If those are the types of stories that I am made of, what does that say about me? I have no plot, no ending, no beginning. Almost like a Beckett play but longer, much longer. “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead!” you tell me. In return I say, “I am just another pirate on the ship to your execution! Let him forge the documents and be done with it already!”

This none linear concept of which I’m jabbering about comes from a book that I just started reading, called “Dark Prophets of Hope: Dostoevsky, Sartre, Camus, Faulkner.” I started with the Faulkner section, because I am in love with his words. It talks about the American linear consciousness: “the logical, rational, sequential, progress-oriented, and technological mode.” It’s a concept/theme that comes up in many of Faulkner’s stories. Jean Kellogg (the author of Dark Prophets of Hope) goes on to say that Faulkner certainly in his own mind didn’t impose linear succession upon human experience as if time were space and could be laid out along a measuring tape, but experienced time both as permeated by the past and as holding in embryo what is to be. To give an example, there is the mentally stunted childlike man, Benjy Compson. He’s seen as “grotesque,” an idiot. Like most grotesque figures in literature, it’s an exaggerated reflection of ourselves. For Benjy, past was completely undifferentiated from present. Any sensory signal could set off emotions like love rejected, longing unfulfilled, happiness inexplicably removed.

Benjy’s brother, Quentin (under the obligations of a linear time perception), is given a watch in his childhood. His father says, “Quentin, I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire…I give it to you not that you might remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to conquer it.”

I try to conquer time, and I fail constantly. This morning I came late to my first class, because I slept in. It was rainy and voggy outside my window, and it felt like 5:00 am when it was actually 7:30. I stumbled out of bed, tugged some jeans and a t-shirt on, and ran out the door. I am always late. Sometimes I can bend with time, and I almost feel it drip slower through the hour glass. But it snaps back at me in retribution when I least expect it. It’s my perception of linear time that ties me down to the inconsequential nonsense that I can’t seem to escape no matter what I do. I said earlier that I perceive time nonlinearly–that’s true. But society doesn’t. My school doesn’t. The bus schedule doesn’t. The world as I know it is built upon linear perception.

It reminds me of Proust. You eat a cookie, you remember your past.

I am my past, even in my present. How can that be expressed in a story?

Edit: So I wrote this at 1:00 am this morning after drinking one too many cups of coffee post noon, and I just realized the stupidity of my last question. How can that be expressed in a story?? Well, um, correct me if I’m right, 1:00 am-writing-self, but isn’t that exactly what Faulkner did? *Sigh* Maybe I have yet to achieve the perfect story, not because it’s impossible, but because I am not a Nobel Prize Winning writer (yet).

Photo by Matthew McVickar

These are just a few of my favorite things:

Warning: This is by far the trashiest post that has ever graced the photons of Love and Logic.

1. Ira Glass

2. Slightly vapid, but with some quality substance, teen TV shows (i.e. the O.C., Gilmore Girls)

3. Nine Inch Nails

4. Radiohead

5. Sustainability

These things have made me very happy recently.
First off, if you don’t know that I want to marry Ira Glass and have his babies, then you have either been living under a hole, or your universe isn’t centered around me (how dare you!). He is perfection in a voice. I won’t wax on about his simpering vocals echoing from my radio every Saturday morning like clockwork. But they do simper. Very well.

They were simpering along last weekend, doing a very good job of it, too. The show started off great–Ira Glass talking about radio vs television, J.J. Abrams talking about the Golden Age of television, David Rakoff: a story about a man who lived without television, Sarah Vowell talking about Thanksgiving situational comedies with all situation and no comedy, Ira Glass talking about…WHAT??? THE O.C.?????????????? THE CHRISMUKKAH EPSIDODE? WITH A REFERENCE TO GILMORE GIRLS????????

Stop.

Have I died and gone to heaven?

No, really. I think I must be walking down obsession lane.

Let me transcribe:

“One Saturday night I was watching the O.C. with my wife [who is not nearly as mentally witty and physically attractive as Lindsea]. I don’t know if you watched the O.C. before it got taken off, but it’s kind of a funny, interesting show. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, go to season one and watch the Chrismukkah episode. And, uh, it was a teen soap opra on Fox network, and the main couple was Seth and Summer, not Marissa and Ryan. They could have killed off Marissa back in season one as far as I was concerned. And uh, so there’s this scene on this particular Saturday night where Seth’s in his room, talking to his girlfriend Summer on the phone, and a girl is in his room, Taylor, who is basically the same character as Paris on Gilmore Girls, but that’s a different story. So there’s this girl in his room, and Summer hear’s her voice in her boyfriends room. And this moment happens: [plays the audio recording of the O.C. episode]

Summer: That sounded like a girl.

Seth: Did it? Yeah. Well. Sure. Because I’m listening to the radio and This American Life is on, so…there’s a girl talking.

[Back to Ira Glass] And then Summer makes this reply which I have to say totally…

Summer: Is that that show by hipster know it alls that talk about how fascinating ordinary people are? Ugh, God.”
It goes on, but you’ll just have to listen to it yourself. I think at one point Ira Glass admits to belting along to the theme song to the O.C.. “Callliffooorrrniaaaa….”

Anyways, that made my weekend.

So that’s number 1 and 2 covered. Now on to number 3.

I love Nine Inch Nails. I went to their show when they came to Hawaii, and I’ve gone through the obligatory “I’m in love with Trent Reznor!!” phase. It was not my shining moment, of course, but it happened. As most of you know, I’m also a fan of web 2.0 and the whole I’m-John Vanderslice-and-I-support-music-blogs-and-free-mp3-downloads. Yes, I do.

If you don’t already know: Nine Inch Nail has made their album downloadable. Full quality. I love love love them.

And then Radiohead, same basic concept. But add sustainability.

I float on tag clouds and blog fog

Inspired by Clay

A little cloud poetry:

today wish world peace

want sounds music party

wish today heard

art body love happy

listening: life teachers, thanks

think. thinking. thought.

going, doing, writing

ideas “hows” hope

@cburell, life loved, education learning

@dmcordell favorite tutu

@ohcloudydreamer love the conversation

@bassman_sean band rocks, new music

@kevinwalter (heart)

@soojinlee learner.

@taylorteacher you’re real horrorshow

@jennyluca pgc learning

@jphilipson first real person!

watching makes learning

people discussion makes thinking

nice night nice life