writ. dodging classification

Well its 2 weeks now till I start my terminal leave. Then I’ll have about till the beginning of September where I’ll basically just be doing my own thing. I’ve been thinking about this time off today. I think I’ve got a plan for what I want to do. People keep suggesting I take some trips and such. I really don’t know what I’m up for though. I know I need a plan. I don’t want to just sit around and do nothing. On the other hand I really don’t think i need to feel obligated to be traveling, just because I have the time. I’ve done my fair share of traveling on my own, and honestly I like to share traveling with someone else. It doesn’t mean as much to me if I’m just going to go on my own. With that in mind, anyone I’d want to travel with, isn’t really going to just be off work like I am for a month and a half. So i feel like I need to do things more towards my own personal betterment. I plan to golf some. I plan to take on some projects of my own, with either computers and electronics. I feel like I’m obligated to build something. I just have that itch. I want something to show for this time off.

Also, i think my most appealing idea so far, is to take a few solo biking day trips. Something like seeing how far up the Potomac Canal Path I can get.. or ride my bike as far as I can up into Pennsylvania on the bike path near my apartment in cockeysville. Something akin to when I road my uncles bike for an almost 40 mile trek up and down the coast of southern California from Oceanside to Del Mar and back. Maybe if i can figure out how to transport it in my car, i could even drive it over to Ocean City, MD and ride up the oceanside highway.

Anyways thats what I’m thinking of this morning…

So I figured the title of the post would be able to set you up for just exactly what I was gonna write about today. I saw i [heart] huckabees last night. Its one of the few movies I have ever seen where upon leaving the theater I really felt genuinely good about the universe and everything around me. I can’t really explain why this happened. I really can’t explain anything about the movie that gave me that feeling. The convergence of all of the events in the movie just snuck up on me, and when the credits rolled, i felt damn good. The movie itself was just really deep. It has a lot of stuff to think about, and just a whole lot going on in it, that I know I haven’t caught, and I’ll be thinking about for days. Overall, the acting in the movie was excellent.

I do know one thing about seeing that movie. I saw exactly the reason why i kept on having people tell me specifically that I should see this movie. I can’t really express how well done and thought provoking the movie was. On a second level it almost seems a little simple to me, with the philosophy it presents. In the end, yes it is a philosophical type movie. It makes you think about existence (but then again you should know this if you read something about the movie and it talks about a group of existential detectives). I say simple because alot of the things it brings forward are things that I think I’ve thought about and wrestled with for a very long time in my search through these sorts of philosophical issues. I’m no philosopher, by any stretch of the means, but I do from time to time delve into my own thoughts and others on what the heck everything means in that sorta sense.

I think watching that movie was well timed with events in my life lately. Sometimes you need that thing that makes you realize nothing really ever happens out perfectly but it does happen for a reason, and in the end something better can come out of it. Maybe. Sometimes you gotta put some time into things at a different level than you really were thinking, and sometimes it really makes much more sense to do it that way after having it made apparent. You just gotta know what you want. I think i do, and sometimes thats a scary thing.

I wrote this today when I was at work and feeling a little scatter brained. It took me about two minutes. I hardly could keep up with my brain spitting out words to type.

my head is racing i’ve got a clash of brains
running into each other and i don’t know
i don’t know where you’re going
you keep telling me but i keep forgetting
i’m sorry i’m sorry for my mind running pushing
phasing crazing jumping leaping stopping and reversing
you called out to me that day and you told me you wanted something
and i can’t remember I can’t hold on
but i want to and i think
but there i go i’ve lost it
i can’t stay with it i’ve got my own ryhthym
and its stopping and it starting its going through the motions
its planting the seads its crazing the house
its going off and mowing other peoples lawns
while my head is just right here spinning inside my skull
jumping forward where my body can’t go and where I can’t let it go
taking that leap and jumping years ahead something comforting and perfect
as I see it and I know thats not reality
its not the place you’ll see but its safe
its controlled
its not life but
it makes me feel better
it makes feel
it makes me read
it makes me fantasize
it makes me move
it makes me go out and I don’t know
I’ve lost it I can’t seem to focus.
The focus on the bearing I’m dodging myself
and i’m dodging you and i’m dodging the ball
the point
the places
the cold crass coalesce of a piece of metal
splitting the skin as it rips through you

but where was I
its not quite clear
its not quite focused
its a little off
but perfect.

I’ve made a cash cow come out through the cold trials of a lime light. Break me down to the people who make up my personality. They break into fights and call my name wondering who they are and they don’t realize I am them and they are me. All those people who seem off the distance calling me in the voices in my head coming through the cold true love of a side show slideshow gone bad and making it right off the head of bottle that breaks off to the side and sprays its insides out onto the floor. Thats the feeling its the feeling of a cold clean crack, Thats the feeling its the feeling of me coming through time.

Some days i guess i just come up with weird shit to write down. Completely stream of thought.

Due to my previous entry about the noises I was hearing on my walk to my car after work I figured I’d actually put up the piece I wrote a few years ago about a great silence I experienced for a short period.

I stepped outside onto the walk and began down the street. Something struck me as very odd when I walked out into this spring night. It was silence. Maybe it was the lack of wind or the light mist which filled the night air. Possibly both were responsible. That need not be a concern though. The main thing I focused on was the silence. I stopped dead in my stride and just listened, to nothing. It left me in awe. This silence took me by suprise. It made me feel good. The silence was not that of a vaccum but it was devoid of any resonant sound. Background noise. The mist in the air and lack of wind muffled any resonant sound into a peaceful white noise. It was a cushion of silence. From this realization I began to walk again down the street. On through the silence I had urges to speak aloud because of the great awe I felt from my situation. I did not, I kept a silent admiration of my situation. I could not break this beautiful silence. It made me look into the void and see how safe it could be. In this silence I could almost look into my own soul. I got to my car and stood in front of it realizing what I must do. I had to break the silence. Not just because I needed to get home but because these types of things can only last a short time and it is better that I broke the silence myself, instead of anything or anyone else. I sit in the driver’s seat of my car and pay my last respects to that comfortable void. I turn the key, the fuel injects into my engine and a combustion of gasoline brings my car to life. Breaking the silence and bringing me back.

Last night for no good reason, except that I was playing a game and watching Sunday evening Football on ESPN, I stayed up a bit later than I think I really should have. I know this because my whole day at work I was completely dazed. I just felt like I wanted to lay my head down at my desk and go to sleep right in my cubicle. So fastforward to the end of the day. 4:00pm hits I split and I begin my 1/4 mile walk to the overflow parking lot that I’ve had to park in most days while I’m at work. There’s a cheesy bus that comes around but shoot I’d rather walk gives me a little exercise and half the time I arrive at my car before the bus would have gotten me there anyways.

Ok to the point. I was walking to my car, and for some reason, my mind decided to take this walk and really pay attention to all the sound going on around me. I don’t know whether i made a concious decision to hear everything, or if it just happened. All i can say though is that it made that walk i’ve done a 100 times a completely different experience. It was amazing how much stuff you could hear just on my way. It was noise. It was that background filler that everybody blocks out and ignores. I don’t know why anymore. I don’t know why you’d wanna block that out. Hearing all those sounds made me feel the most alive I had felt all day. Hell that short 1/4 mile walk was the most alive i’ve felt in a while. From the start of the walk I was hearing first the hum of the highway that is about a 1/2 mile off to my left. Then I was hearing some jet plane sounds from BWI airport. Now all of these sounds were distinct. My brain was parsing them. I knew what direction they were all coming from. I’d hear the cars driving up the road from behind me and I’d distinctly recognize the ones coming towards me. I’d hear the cars around the corner before they came into view. All along I was also hearing the bugs. The crickets chirping in the grass. The beetles humming in the tree. Something that sounded like a delapitated cicada ( I say this because if you took a cicada sound and made it non-constant and only had the sound chirp out at 1 second intervals every few seconds). Furthermore I heard some birds off in the trees that I couldn’t see. But i knew just about where they were (I should know what these birds were just by the sounds, at least I know my father would, and probably would expect me too as well ;) ). I have to say I was pretty speechless for how much sound I was percieving for my short walk to my car. I almost wanted to stop and just listen some more. Even then I couldn’t stop because one of the sounds that kept the whole experience going was my own footsteps adding there own rhythm into the mix. Even if I could have spoken or said anything, I don’t think I’d want to ( not to metion talking to yourself while walking alone isn’t quite the sanest looking thing lol).

That whole experience brought my day into a good spin, and I needed that. Its one thing i can take away from an otherwise very mediocre day, a monday if I ever saw one. It was a really interesting thing. Half way through my walk I began to think about writing this entry on here. One of the biggest reasons is because it is very much the antithesis of an experience I had a few years ago, that I wrote about in a journal later on that night. The journal entry I called “Of admiration of silence”. I think may transcribe it onto here as soon as I’m done this entry. It will create a good balance to this current piece. The basic idea (and possibly you’ve read it already by the time you get to this entry) is that I had an experience of almost no sound. Somehow I was walking down the street and sound just dampened to utter silence. There wasn’t any wildlife, cars, planes, hums of electricity. They may have been there, but something in the air that night dampened it all out into a void of sound. It was very much the opposite of todays experience, though they were both very refreshing and good.

Well speaking of Noise. I got a whole lot of Dischord today. Whole bunch of Fugazi CD’s, the Minor Threat compilation, and a book called Dance of Days by Mark Anders(e)n. Dance of Days is about the history of the DC Punk scene. Should be a really interesting read. Its gonna be a punk month I can feel it. I think the way my last month has gone, things will definately be different. Even going back to normal, whatever that is, would be different, since the last month has been quite a rollercoaster ride.

rock it, believe it.

There are just some days when you need to take a walk. A walk to clear your thoughts. A walk to list all those things you need to do. A walk just to get your mind and body moving again. So many reasons with just this one outcome. Really, walking, by yourself, is it really that powerful a ritual that it can solve whatever it is that put you out there in the first place? Hey, you’re asking me? I’ve got no clue. I guess its all perspective. We all end up curing ourselves, maybe we just need a catalyst. Walking can be that catalyst. Well for me at least.

Its dark, the moon is full, and the stars are bright as ever. I don’t really know why i notice this, and maybe my minds just hypersenstive, or i’m making it up. I find myself thinking about fast food. A spicy chicken sandwich. My mouth begins to water just a little. Wait, no thats not what i’m out here walking for. I have a reason. I have some great metaphysical controversy i need to work out of my life. With this realization I start to walk a little faster, but then slow down to a saunter.

The slow hum of an underpowered foriegn economy class car starts riding its way into my senses. Why do I know this? I just do, they make a distinct sound, just like any type of engine. It sounds more akin to a go-cart or a sewing machine than it does to what a car is stereo-typed to sound like. Well i guess i’ve done it again, I’ve wandered my mind away from what i really wanted to think about on this walk. That pressing topic that put me out of my apartment and onto the street walking with no particular direction.

You ever have a dream that was so real in a good way, that you just wanted to wake up beacuse you realized you didn’t want to tease yourself with it only being a dream? That happened to me the other day. I just decided at one point in the dream that if this isn’t real, i just wanted to open my eyes and end the dream right then.

So I did.