Entries from October 2004 ↓

This one’s for Alexis; you know, because
I think she’s neat. *warning: sap content*

–

We sit untouching
but for the hairs on our arms
brushing together,
and this is bliss.
Kissing follicles, sensual molecules,
our skin flaunts what lips miss.

You shift,
lift your palm to your smile,
yawn a while,
limbs stretched, reaching
for stars in the nile-black sky.
You lean back, sigh,
high as the moon and
I’m just so high on your high
I could cry.
And I’d die right now,
content, because every moment
underwent a thousand smiles spent,
and each smile sent my heart
a thousand skipped beats.

–

I may lengthen it one day.
It ends rather abruptly, I think.

So, I’ve decided to take part,
for what it’s worth, in both NaNoWriMo
and NaNoBlogMo; so I’ll be doing my best,
in the month of November, to blog a novel.
The title is “City of Familiar Light”, and it’s
a quasi-existential (of course) sci-fi story.
I’m trying to set up the blog for it,
but Blogger’s giving me problems; hopefully
I can get those resolved soon.
[edit: is resolved, novel blog is here ] So …
who all else is going to take part in this madness?

Yesterday: coffee and trying to read
(still finishing “Winter’s Tale”, sadly)
overtaken by helping Alexis study for her
Western Civ exam today, which meant a slow and
mostly incomprehensible journey (for me) through
19 pages of her notes. Not enough coffee and some
hours later, we finished said “studying”, and took
a brain-break to watch “Crybaby“.
If you’ve not seen it, it’s a must, particularly
if you enjoy Johnny Depp (and that includes everyone!).

Post-movie we forced friends to make us tacos
(mmmmmmmmm, tacos), and hung out at their place for
an hour or so. They tried to rope us into staying for
“Settlers of Cattan”, but we had places to be,
namely at a concert including Romanteek, a duo of
drum and keyboard, with female vocals. They were
awesome, and made us all dance! I get nervous dancing
in public (swing-dancing doesn’t count), but definately
had a good time, anyway. Alexis looked very comfortable,
but later admitted she’s only danced in public three times,
and was incredibly nervous also. Go figure.

Natural progression: coffee –> homework –> movie –>
tacos! –> dancing –> ice cream! –> sleep. Food items
get exclamation because I’m hungry right now.

So, life’s good and the nerves have calmed.
There’s yet a butterfly or two, but they’re just
fluttering about now, rather than chewing holes
in my stomach, so I suppose that’s acceptable.

Tonight’s poker night!

It’s a happy, sun-shiny sort of day today,
odd for mid-October. We should be into monsoon
season by now, or at least feel the threat of it
more strongly. Instead, we had a few days of rain,
a few days of sun, then rain again, and now sun.
It’s definately getting colder though,
and it’s becoming damned hard to get out of bed
in the frigid mornings.

November is NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.
Blogger has adapted this to NaNoBloMo, which looks cooler
but is essentially just writing your novel using a blog.
Like Karla, I’m unsure of whether or not I can
muster the commitment to plunge so far into words.
I’ve got my idea, and even a fairly lucid story-line,
characters and plot twists, all worked out in my head.
Problem is, I’m already too busy to do half the things
that I’d like to be doing. I have enough of a problem reading
a novel in a month, with all my other activities, and I’d
hate to, in the midst of this, try and write a novel within
a month only to fail, maybe to never try again.
Oh, the horror! (Ha, I’m so dramatic.)
Seriously, though. I’d like to do this, but don’t think
I can balance my time well enough to pull it off.
But then the question that begs to be asked:
If not now, when?
November is just around the bend, so I must
focus on this with the most heavy of ponderance.

50,000 words sure does seem like a lot.

I feel as though I’ve swallowed
a nest of caterpillars, which have all
metastasized into hungry butterflies,
chewing at my stomach lining. Pleasant as
this image is, it’s entirely self-inflicted.
I had the pleasure this weekend of hanging out
with a wonderful girl who I’m very much interested in.
Turns out, she likes me too!

So, the butterflies are little envoys of giddiness,
and betray my nervousness. Normally confident,
I’ve begun to examine all my foibles and weaknesses,
waiting for the dream to end or the other shoe to drop.
I’m entirely aware of this, and that I need to relax,
and to enjoy. I’m not entirely loathsome, after all.
I think that a lot of this anxiety is owed in part to the
fact that I (fairly) recently got out of a near-four-year
relationship, and I’ve had little choice since but to
examine how I failed in that relationship. This is good
in a sense, as I’d like to think that I can learn from
my mistakes, but easily leads to me being a bit hard
on myself. I’m in the second half of being 24, and
last time I started a relationship I was 20. I’ve changed
a lot since then, and I’m still learning how this
new me works. Hopefully I can get the bastard to chill.

–

We’re to start poker nights on Thursdays,
boisterous evening of jazz, poker, and vin rouge.
I stayed up ’til two the other night, watching
celebrity poker, and though I realize it may mean I’m
a dork (who woulda guessed), it really made me want
to play some Texas Hold ‘Em. Anyway, poker night has
been an idea in the works for some time, but now we’re
gonna make it happen, so good for us. I had too many
evenings free as it was, so ha! (yeah right)

We’re also thinking of starting some sort of weekly seminar,
which would be great if it means getting me off my ass
and reading some more. I don’t know where the time goes,
honestly, but not into books! Theo keeps calling me
intellectual, and even uber-intellectual, but I haven’t
been feeling it lately, so hopefully some good reading
will help. I are pretty smart, after all.

Well well, new template.
Basically still just a standard issue blogger template,
unfortunately, but for a few touch-ups.
I never claimed to be a web-genius.
What do you all think?
Personally, I’m glad to be rid of the black.

–

Life’s been busy as usual.
I found out that I didn’t get the part-time
position for which I had applied downtown, which
is a major bummer, but life goes on. They ended
up having four internal applicants (for a part-time job!)
so I never even made it in to interview.
I did, however, have a good conversation with the head
of circulation down there. I think that I made a good
impression, and I cackled as I said,
“You haven’t seen the last of me!” Then I disappeared
in a cloud of smoke, and winged monke…
Oh wait, no, none of that happened.
I was perfectly nice, and picked up a volunteer form.
If they won’t pay me to work there, I’ll do it for free
for awhile so they can come to learn how kick-ass I am,
and eventually beg me to consider taking tons of
their money for my invaluable services.

That, and there’s a 10-16 hour page position open.
It’s low hours at crappy pay, but if I’ve learned
nothing else in the last couple months, it’s that there’s
nothing more valuable in getting a job than already
having your foot in the door when the time comes.
Besides, even low hours and low pay is better than
no hours and no pay. Can’t argue there.

–

Social interactions are complicated.
Sometimes I enjoy their intricacies, and sometimes
I wish we could all just get along in the simplest
fashion possible. I imagine that my prevarications
in this lend me an occassional air of confusion; one
moment hyperbolically obtuse, the next insidiously crafty
and dissembling. There is no reason to my rhyme.

Really, it’s no so bad as all that.
Mostly I’m honest and straight-forward,
particularly when it matters. Sometimes,
the monkey in me gets loose and rampages,
which can lead to no end of trouble.

Still, I wouldn’t trade my inner-monkey for anything.

Against the Night
(c)1999 by Jason Webley

Hold on to these words,
I’d like to think that they may offer
Some protection,
Against the night.

Against the night,
Your life can feel transparent,
A reflection,
A trick of light.

So when sleep just won’t come,
And you’ve got no occupation,
But nibbling at the fruit
Of the melancholy tree,
Just hold on to these words,
Hold on to me.

Just hold on to these words,
They’re the best I’ve got to offer
At the moment,
As a lullaby.

As a lullaby,
You can lay down by the tracks
And feel the world
Slip by.

–

Eighty people, give or take, sitting knee to knee,
shoulder to shoulder as one man woos us with
his melodies; voice changing from gravel to choral
between heartbeats. He sits just in front of us,
raised up so all can see him but within arm’s reach,
nonetheless. He’s got long, wild hair, a beard;
looks like a true mountain man, the pure kind.

He starts with a happy song, and continues,
until asking, he realizes how many of us have never
seen him before. He asks us to forget it all, start over;
puts on a crazy mask and sings a wild song, dancing about,
seeking to impress upon us his audacity. With this
initiation, we are taken into the fold,
and the concert begins. He picks songs randomly,
asks the audience what they want to hear, begins to play
Michael Jackson’s Thriller, stopping halfway
to ask if we’d like to hear a ghost story;
or perhaps a story about russians, or his worst gig ever.
Setting down his accordian, he raises his seat,
abandons his microphone, and begins to speak. His story
lasts a good ten minutes, if not longer, but none of
us bore. He’s got a stage-presence that transfixes, onstage
he’s a giant, impossible to ignore. But he’s humble,
fun, quiet about it; you can’t stop watching him simply
because he may be the most interesting man you’ve ever met.

He finishes his story, begins to play music again.
He makes us dance, makes us sing along, plays a Russian
birthday song for the two people with birthdays
(who’ll admit to it) in the audience, and makes them skip
through the crowd. As the evening winds down, he asks us
all to lay, each with our head on someone else’s stomach
(it doesn’t matter if you know them), and relax, eyes closed.
He plays us two quiet, sleepy songs; slightly melancholy,
slightly happy, as we, an ocean of weary strangers, are
carried way by melodies, lulled by the rise and fall of
the breath of whomever happens to be our pillow.

He rouses us with laughter, lightens our loads and then
tell us The Story of Blixie Bimber and the Power of the
Gold Buckskin Wincher. He holds the book that includes
the story, a relic of the 1920s, but he rarely refers to it,
having memorized the 20-minute story eons ago. Having read
the story, we asked what a “wincher” is, he replies “Yes.”
and moves on, leaving us forever to wonder.

He ends with a rousing drinking song and a happy song,
demanding we sing along, loudly, and sway side to side,
trapped in long lines of arm-locked strangers,
transformed to friends through a night of singing.

After the show’s finished, we stumble out into the night,
all a bit aglow, ready to preach the gospel of
a kick-ass man named Jason Webley.

I’ve already bought tickets to see the last show
of his tour up in Seattle on the 30th. If you’re
in the area, don’t miss it.