The Way Things Were / The Measure of Happiness

August 28, 2009 at 2:03 am (Thoughts)
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Memories are funny things. It’s one thing to remember something. I remember that Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States, or that my girlfriend’s birthday is in October. But memory, where just thinking of an event or moment can transport you back to it…that’s just a wondrous thing.

But what really intrigues me are the truly vivid memories of non-momentous moments. It’s one thing to have a vivid memory of your first kiss, or of meeting someone who would be your best friend for many years. I enjoy thinking about those moments that get burned into your mind even though they weren’t a milestone, a meltdown, or a miracle.

I have a memory of the time my first-grade friend cheated me out of a win the first time I played Life, getting me to go to Countryside Acres while he scooped up the Life tiles at Millionaire Estates. I have a memory of sitting on the kitchen floor in my old house, banging on old, unusable pots and pans when my Grandmother came in and yelled at little four year old me. I have a memory of being very young and giving an ungrateful non-thank-you at my birthday party when I received a book that I already owned. I still feel terrible every time that I see myself rip away the wrapping paper and declare “Oh, I already have this one. Well, at least I’ll have an extra.” I don’t think I’m as ashamed of any other moment in my life, but I know that no one else has a memory of that moment. I have a memory of getting in a fight with two girls in second grade, teasing back and forth until I got mad and pushed Abby into the mud (actually, that’s the only part I don’t remember, the push, but I have clear memories of how I didn’t even remember it at the time), and how I walked by her about five times later in the day, each time only to whisper, “Sorry.” I have a memory of when I was nine, playing Backyard Baseball in my basement, and yelled “FUCK!” when I gave up a run, yelled it so loud that my mom heard it upstairs. I have a memory of how after that, I walked by the boiler room where the repair man was working, and awkwardly said, “Sorry.” I have a memory of seeing my best friend cry when he thought we had left him behind, and my guilt at realizing we essentially had.

I have a memory of standing on the side of my bathtub, looking at the loop I’d wound around over the shower curtain rod. Well, yea, maybe that one was a bigger moment.

But I guess one thing that stands out to me now is that none of these memories are of times when I was happy. They are all composed of pain, or guilt, or shame. That seems to be what sticks with me. I remember times when I was happy, periods when I was happy, but in that vague way where the memory isn’t immersive, or when it is a blending of different events or moments. But then again, maybe the memories are solely related to intensity, and maybe, unless it is one of those milestone moments, I have not had the intensity of happiness to really make those memories. A few times, perhaps, the memories that come close to being truly vivid. And maybe more so recently, but I won’t know until enough time has passed for those memories to either fade or show their strength.

But I think that’s hard to do, to measure the relative intensity of happiness verses sadness. I feel like despair, shame, pain…it starts on a higher level, gets an edge. It makes the jump quickly from discomfort, whereas happiness seems to like to linger in the area we think of as contentment. Maybe I’m being tired and silly. Or maybe it’s just me.

Or maybe it’s a silly question, and you don’t need to measure happiness, because you feel it. Maybe that’s enough.

I’m going to try and remember that.

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The Best Songs Ever (Of Today)

July 27, 2009 at 12:07 am (Music)
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Here are a few songs that I have enjoyed recently. I’m putting them out there so that, hopefully you will get a chance to enjoy them as well.

The Twist – Frightened Rabbit

The video isn’t much, but the song has a kind of yearning intensity that really caught me. And the line “lift your dress enough to show me those shins, let your hair stick to your forehead” … it just seemed very sweet to me.

Waterloo Sunset – The Kinks

This song has a sort of haunting beauty to it. When I listen to it, sometimes it just sounds… delicate.

Ain’t No Sunshine – Bill Withers

I think this sort of speaks for itself. Even more than “The Twist,” this makes me think of a certain someone.

Murder In The City – The Avett Brothers

Come back to this recently. Even though this song touches on a rather dark subject, I find it very tender and relaxing.

Role Play Tournament – Baby Cakes

I got linked this as a joke, but the song, I think, is genuinely catchy. It will get stuck in your head. Although it is irreverent and funny, I think that it also ends up being a bit touching.

Also if you have the time, I recommend going to the website of I Come To Shanghai, an independent, start-up band from California. You can get there initial release for free, or pay if you want (they kind of have a Radiohead set up going on). I stole the title of this post from Robert Ashley, one of the band’s two members. I’ve included a link to the rather strange/trippy video of one of their songs, ‘Your Lazy Eye,” below.

I Come To Shanghai: Your Lazy eye from Adventureface TV on Vimeo.

Hopefully you enjoyed all, or at least some, of these songs. Let me know what you thought in the comments!

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Close Your Eyes And I’ll Kiss You / Tomorrow I’ll Miss You…

July 24, 2009 at 1:01 am (Thoughts)
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A week or so ago, the topic on NPR’s This American Life was ‘The Fear of Sleep.’ There were some funny stories, like one about a man with a condition that causes him to actually do what he dreams in ‘real’ life, and some gross ones (cockroaches and bedbugs). The first time I listened to the episode was, amusingly, between two and three A.M. on a night when I was, purportedly, still trying to Go To Sleep.

I’ve always found that construction, as common and banal as it may be, to be fascinatingly profound. It’s one of the very few times that we use the verb ‘go’ when the destination is not a place, event, or time, but a state. Of course one can ‘go hungry’ or ‘go without’ but those phrases, and others like them, are both far less common, and far more closely tied to human, physical reality, that I think that ‘go to sleep’ still stands alone. The mere fact of grammatically treating sleep as a destination, or at the least a departure of some sort, carries a suggestion of the mystery and otherness that still cling to this necessary, quotidian ebb of consciousness. The other popular expression, the equally fascinating ‘fall asleep’ still leaves me with this slight, tantalizing feeling of…well, more than departure, but perhaps a little less than…loss.

I have never liked going to sleep, departing the world of the everyday, the known, and sending my mind/soul/whatever little spark of Something off into the deluded domain of dreams, or, even worse, into the horrifying blank oblivion of unadulterated rest. I have struggled for many years with that act of surrendering the power to act, the supplicatory welcoming of night’s embrace. To different extents to be sure, and in no constant or orderly progression, but this years long contention with speech has been…recurrent, as is so often the case with certain dreams.

One of my clearest memories from childhood if of my weary, squinting, A.M.-stubbled father frustratedly asserting that “You don’t go to sleep because you fight it! You fight it and you won’t let it happen.”

You won’t let it happen. Aye, there’s the rub. Perfectly encapsulated in five simple words, a protagonist (‘You’), an action (‘won’t let’), an antagonist (‘it’, though not in the Stephen King sense), and a thwarted action (‘happen’). Put simply, I fought sleep because I could. As I staved off slumber to remain alive and in the night, I was existing, acting, being real. I did not, and cannot, feel comfortable with the deactivation at the end of the day.

C.P. Cavafy once wrote:

IN THE MONTH OF ATHYR

I can just read the inscription on this ancient stone.
“Lo[r]d Jesus Christ.” I make out a “So[u]l.”
“In the mon[th] of Athyr’ ‘Lefkio[s] went to sleep.”
Where his age is mentioned—“lived to the age of”—
the Kappa Zeta shows that he went to sleep a young man.
In the corroded part I see “Hi[m]…Alexandrian.”
Then there are three badly mutilated lines—
though I can pick out a few words, like “our tea[r]s,”
“grief,”
then “tears” again, and “sorrow to [us] his [f]riends.”
I think Lefkios must have been greatly loved.
In the month of Athyr Lefkios went to sleep.

I think that for me the association between sleep and death, between rest nightly and eternal, has been stronger than for most. In that radio show, when they discuss the fear of sleep, they use an approach that does not, and I might argue cannot, successfully wrestle with sleep. They are fated to be the Jacob to slumber’s angel, to struggle unceasingly until the dawn. And the dawn is so important to this struggle with sleep, it is the prize, the reward, the signal that once again you have made it through those hours of something-like-death and emerged again on the other side.

For me at least, the fear of sleep is not of falling asleep, or at least not entirely. As with that other Rest, the issue is one of trust. The convincing of myself that the universe, as large and scary and arbitrary as it is, does have a few rules, and that I will be there to open my eyes tomorrow, that I won’t vanish like the chipmunk pirate or the talking fish or any other figment of imagination do with dawn, that this exit stage left of my Self is only for a little while, and that I get to come back on stage for the next scene, the convincing required to make myself fall backwards, trusting, into Dream’s waiting arms, is the hard part.

I don’t want to not wake up, but I need to sleep.

So, given no alternative, I trust. It is an odd kind of faith, the belief in Tomorrow, but it lets me close my eyes to shadows, and come back from the stars again. So it is faith enough for me. For now.

As I write this, it is close to one in the morning, my computer screen is glowing, bright and warm, and an empty can of Pepsi sits by my mouse. Old habits die hard. But another lesson my sallies against sleep are teaching me is this: that faith is not (or at least, should never be) easy.

So I go to lay me down to sleep
And hope Something my soul to keep
And if I die before I wake
I hope I get another take.

For those interested, the This American Life podcast is available at their website, or via iTunes.

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Light Gleams and Is Gone

July 23, 2009 at 12:30 pm (Thoughts)

When I was walking around my house last night, trying to banish the sleep-defeating restlessness that had possessed me by shunting it into the floor via the soles of my feet, I noticed something. And while my noticing something is not exactly the biggest headline in the universe (I am outrageously talented when it comes to the ancient discipline of Missing the Obvious), this revelation struck me because it was so diametrically opposed to what I had long believed. Everything looks beautiful in the night, glimpsed in the rods-no-cones murk of midnight.

Perhaps it is strange to argue that the world can become beautiful precisely when you cannot see it, but in the darkness, with each object only marginally defined by the slighted difference in the shade of its shadowy form, even to the most adjusted eye…the viewer is invited into a new, mysterious world. And I am not speaking of that halfway spot, the crepuscular moments that bridge light and dark. I am talking of the wide expanse of the night, black as the pit from pole to pole. And to take the time to look at this new, shrouded world and appreciate it for the wondrous mystery that it is, instead of shrinking back in fear because of what the shroud’s folds may hold…no.

As a child, and even a high strung teenager, I would hesitate to even think of looking into the darkness, and if I had to head even to the bathroom just down the hall, I would move swiftly, streaking to get my back safely against a different wall, and keep whatever cloaked, deformed pursuers lurked beyond the edges of my vision from sneaking up from behind. (Once I let myself imagine opponents powerful enough to tear through walls, I simply ran like mad and prayed to Something.) And that misplaced, evolutionarily-held-over fear of all darkness is what protects the majesty of the night from devolving into a quotidian spectacle. It remains a masterpiece that many do not deign to gaze upon, and still more regard as surely a nightmare.

If they are to make the trip, most everyone goes to the beach during the day, when the sun can beam down upon them in fatherly approbation, the warm lake or ocean breeze can caress their sunscreened skin, and the water can wave at their reclining forms again and again, giving greetings that disintegrate upon the shore. Almost no one ever goes to the beach at night, when it is truly beautiful. The roar and lull of the waves reveal a rhythm to the heartbeat of the night, and grains of sand sparkle like gems when touched just so by a tender beam of moonlight. The immensity of the night, as it stretches out across the expanse of the ocean or lake, becomes so vast as to be personal, personable.

If you squint just a little, looking out past the shore at night, you can see the peacefully sleeping child of the world, the crest and fall of its wavely breathing, the silvered gleam of the stuff its dreams are made of. And as the water rises and retreats, with tremulous cadence slow, it does not bring any eternal note of sadness in, but rather breathes the faintest hint of possibility and mystery, letting its listener know all the glorious wonder that waits in that undiscovered country, over the Mountains of the Moon, and down the Valley of the Shadow.

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Panic Attack

June 22, 2009 at 7:50 pm (Thoughts, Writing)

Midnight at the Bridge
Green 1
Not a Through Street
Dead Camera
Stat Workshop ^ (Start Workshop ->)
Across the way, skeletons with Spirits
-> metal ribs, yellow souls whose lives leech out into the night
The moon goddess glares at me through her shroud, with her circo-^ eye. An angry owl eye, but no beak.
Time to move.
Gate 3 stands, secure under Achilles shinguard (greave?)
-> Nobody’s train station. Hope Nobody makes the 9 am
Anyway that road just leads to shit, shit encased in green/white plastic
A Grey ghost canters by, trying to tiptoe on his V8
The fountains are dead. The denizens of the night must cry their own tears.
1. The stars are come to earth…parlor trick lamps
Hewlett is yellow. Looks sick. (I’m sick)
A tree. A life. So many branches. So many paths. So many stumps.
A fortress and a penis and a landing strip.
The moon goddess is yellow. Jaundiced. Sick.

I find a map. A destination. Grief.
several 1/4 mile increments to go. 1st the landing strip,
then the counterclock. Maybe the snake.
But I’m playing for the angel.
The sky is smoldering — purple with red — and so is the night.
Life is shining through oh so many gaps
I give goodbye to the golden house of god
Night tempts me from the path, but it is a false snake.
(TOO AFRAID) <—————- I think?
I have found the true snake, but my light is
dead I will cross its depths with only my shadow as company (I hope)

Lo, I am across the serpent's spine. He slumbers still
Embers suspended in the dark; Car Alarm Symphony
I becoming afraid. What lurks at the edge
of my vision? Can I master it? Or is it
my time?
These woods are lovely, dark, & deep…
I am through the woods and I can see
it now. Lonely, erect, Grecian. The courtyard (the GBU)
Do these grey ghosts face god? (no)
And these are not Alexanders, but Ozymandii (sphinxes)

3 names, & doors I dare not touch
Away from the voices, the dealers or
junkies or irate late-night meanderers
I cross past three men, stuck in time and
bronze.
Through the trees, to the angel of grief.
But he hides behind iron bars, and buries
despair
in his face, & has naught to tell me.
We cry together. I leave him to his wreath.
his altar of despair
“It’s alright…alright to see a ghost

The three voices pass me by, and stare for
a moment at the statue. Perhaps at me.
I am quite afraid. But the angels of
death depart.
I turn back, and tell the angel
to not be so sad. The sky is burning
and all too soon, death thou shalt die.

SAVE US ALL, but don’t cry for us.
flowers on his altar. Proofs of life, yet
doomed to die. Dead.
I think that I might possibly
be insane. Oh well.

I love you momma.

Back to the morbid manner
I cannot bring myself to approach
again. It growls at me, the building
looming like one of the sphinxes that
decorate it.
I have seen death and gloom.
I turn my face to God, & light
I don’t look back. Yet
But I shall return

I move my mangled soul through myriad mangled
statues, & prepare for my return to Purgatory.

I stand alone before the Gates of Hell
their bronze buttresses reflect my inner airs.
But I have a shield, a flame against the
dark.
I go home 2 _______________.

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The Return

June 19, 2009 at 6:47 pm (Thoughts)

So yea, I haven’t been very good about posting here. As usual with writing related projects I started, and then faltered, and then stopped.

But now it is the summer, and I’m back at home in Chicago, and it’s raining outside. And since my summer job fell through, you could say that I have some time on my hands. So I’m gonna post here. Promise.

So far, my summer hasn’t been super-eventful. I’ve gotten home, but continued to live out of my suitcases. I’ve been reading a lot, and designing some classes to teach myself. I’m gonna explore some Russian literature, learn Perl, and try to remember how to do math.

But yea, so far it’s mostly been about catching up with people, trying to sleep normally, and reading. Three trashy Star Wars novels down (only six to go before I finish the Legacy of the Force series), and one “real” novel in The Brothers Karamazov, which I enjoyed and had fun reflecting on, but which seemed to fall a bit short of how I remember feeling about Crime and Punishment. I think that the next books on my list are going to be Reading like a Writer and The Writing Life, but I might delay those in order to read Home, the companion novel to Gilead (perhaps my favorite book).

Also, I tried to watch Do the Right Thing today, but I didn’t really get in to it. I think that I’m going to try and give it another chance later/tomorrow. It was kind of disappointing, since I’d been excited about it (I’ll probably try to post my book and movie lists a little bit later.

This is a kind of scattered entry, but I promise that I’m going to actually sit down and write some substantive posts over the coming days/weeks. This post was mostly just to get me writing again, and working on what I wanted to say.

Until next time,

Peace.

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I am tired.

April 22, 2009 at 8:10 pm (Thoughts)

That is all for now.

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A Video I’ve Recently Returned To

April 19, 2009 at 10:55 pm (Thoughts)

This is a little video that made me think when I watched it a couple of months ago, and recently it has struck me once again as being something interesting.
Not the happiest little short in the world, but oh well.
 

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In Bruges

March 28, 2009 at 5:07 pm (Film)

I was taking another lazy day today and ended up watching the film In Bruges, which had been recommended to me as a darkly humorous, if violent, film. And it starts off seemingly in that vein — following two hitmen, Ray and Ken, who are holed up in the Belgian tourist city of Bruges, and their squabbles while they wait for further instructions. The only reason I’m posting about it really, is that the movie was definitely not what I expected — from the revelation about why Ray and Kenare in Bruges to begin with, to the vital importance of suicidal subject matter to the plot, and the film’s ending, which, while I don’t want to spoil it here, was one of the most depressing I’ve seen for a while. 

I’m glad I ended up watchin it myself, since my mom had thought it looked like a fun movie, and that would’ve not ended well.

Also, since this is a film-related post: the Watchmen movie in theaters right now is a relatively good adaptation of the graphic novel, and the people I went with, who had not read the book, said they enjoyed it a lot. Personally, I can’t recommend it that strongly, especially because of strange, distracting music choices, a gratuitous, irrelevant, and over-extended sex scene, and it being long. I don’t look at my watch during movies I enjoy (even Lord of the Rings long movies), but this one had me checking it a few times. 

I know neither of those were very helpful reviews, but this was mostly an excuse to write simply because In Bruges made a large impact on me.

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Death Race

March 25, 2009 at 10:59 am (Film)

While I’ve been away at college, my Dad has been the only man in the house, and I think this has been hard for him. Especially when it comes to watching movies. After all, he can always flee to the basement or the attic to watch some NBA ball, but the movies the family watch come down to a vote. This means that my dad has spent the last few months sitting through movies like Nights in Rodanthe. So last night, when my mother and sister decided they wanted to watch No Reservations, my dad and I made a quick run to Blockbuster. We quickly skimmed the shelves until we found the movie to optimally fill the void of cinematic manliness that he has had to endure these past few months, the mindless summer action flick Death Race. 

Death Race has a plot, but it is basically an excuse to watch Jason Statham and some other guys drive cars decked out with guns and explosives in 2 or so hours filled with a series of races based on mayhem, explosions, death, and random hot girls serving as “navigators.” One of my favorite parts came at the end, when the first thing to show up on the screen after the last scene faded to black was a warning that the stunts were dangerous and not to be tried at home. Overall though, it was a pretty fun movie — it didn’t always make logical sense and was predictable, but it gave you a LOT of bang for your buck. 

However, I don’t think I will ever let Nathan watch it. ‘Nuff said.

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