Mining for Truth and Delusion

I'm offically home again, finally, and barely sane. Done with finals, ready to re-emerge into the world of social communications with you, my dear friends.

No, that warn't sarcasm.

And no, that "warn't" warn't no typo. That war New English.

For your entertainment, here's a picture I did. I call it "Crossing the Mesa at Twilight." Click on it for a slightly bigger view.

JUST SURFACING FROM THE SUCKING (PUN INTENDED) WHIRLPOOL OF FINALS TO SAY THAT I'M STILL ALIVE BUT JUST BARELY STOP GOT THIRTY PAGES OF PAPERS TO WRITE STOP WILL POST MORE LATER I PROMISE NOT LIKE I EVER KEEP MY PROMISES BUT YOU SHOULD KNOW ME BY NOW STOP ALSO MUST SAY THAT I'M REALLY INTO WOLFGANG PETRY RIGHT NOW ESPECIALLY THIS WONDERFUL SONG "VERLIEBEN VERLOREN VERGESSEN VERZEIH'N" STOP DAMN THERE'S SO MUCH GOOD MUSIC IN THE WORLD STOP HOW WILL I EVER LISTEN TO IT ALL STOP I WON'T STOP I KNOW THAT'S THE ANSWER STOP GOD THIS TELEGRAM IS GOING TO COST SO FREAKING MUCH I'D BETTER JUST SEND IT ALREADY STOP TELL WALLY AND THE BOYS I'M SICK OF THEM ALL AND THEY CAN GO SOAK THEIR HEADS STOP MUCH LOVE AND TELL MOTHER I'M THINKING OF HER EVEN IF I NEVER CALL

(ran out of money)

Happy birthday. No, I haven't forgotten. I remembered our anniversary on the 1st of Ventôse, and I remembered your birthday on the 1st of Floréal, just like I do every year. For the past... nine years? Holy shit. We're already almost a decade into the twenty-first century, and although you're older than me any way you look at it, I still feel like you're the future and I'm stuck in the past, wandering the fields of Saxony in the 18th century and unable to accept basic facts of life like Daylight Saving Time and Eastern Standard Time and Times Like These.

Coming home alone and empty, sick with retroactive promises and sweet liquor in my mouth, the taste of lies that are simple to tell and reverberate from the Jurassic Period through the Industrial Revolution up to the Mechanic Age, I still make a pretense of paying homage to you. It's unquantifiable, what you've done for me – to me – in my mind somewhere, somewhere where I can't always find you and have to put on a brave face anyways.

Sometimes memories float up like dead bodies in a pond, and I press my hands to my eyes as my stomach lurches and I sob and run to the bathroom. Disgusted by the unfortunate physicality of life but in love with it at the same time, I try to balance your Québécois chic (oh how you'd hate me for saying that) in my mind with this Teutonic bent of mine. Figuring things out at the last minute. I've always had this talent for balancing people. When you found out about it, you were all gorgeously offended in your peacock-mustang-revolutionary way, and probably said something along the lines of "What-are-you-doing-what's-your-problem?" to which I probably responded with an anemic yellow laugh.

But I was talking about these memories. Summers in the country, nights lying on the Earth, nothing I hadn't seen before but it was all so much more beautiful with you. We escaped the rustling dresses and martinis and trashy bangles and you teased me mercilessly all the way up the road as we ran like convicts in the corn. Once you suddenly decided that we ought to speak with Australian accents and drag chains behind us, and that reminded me of a funny moment in a taxi in Los Angeles, and I had to sit down suddenly. A little too suddenly, and you laughed, and I loved you because you knew how to deal with me. You knew that I need to be ordered around sometimes, just a little.

And now someone else is learning that about me, and I haven't had a heart-to-heart – you'd correct me, of course: "a tête-à-tête, my little cabbage," with all the accents in the right places just to remind me exactly whom I'm dealing with here – I haven't had a tête-à-tête with you in ages. It's not that you've left me, or I you... it's rather that I'm turning inward and outward at the same time, and maybe I'm discovering that you don't really exist inside or outside me. That doesn't mean you don't exist. It just means that I'm still living in two dimensions, and you're watching me wander this piece of A4 paper, biting your lip in sweet self-conscious appearance, always thinking about yourself even when you try to think about me. And really, don't I do the same thing? I think it's your wonderfully complex simplicity that I've always loved the most.

...if you haven't already heard of Susan Boyle, you should. Hear of her. And hear her. I am so blown away right now.

First of all, let me apologize. I haven't posted in forever, and now I'm not even "posting" per se, rather "bosting™." It's the new word for "posting just to boast." New, lively, fruit-filled and otherwise exciting LJ entries will be coming eventually, but it's the spring semester of my sophomore year, which means besides taking all the impossible classes I've been complaining about, I also have to "moderate into the upper college," which isn't as frightening as it sounds but still involves some extra work. So, yes, real entries will come soon. Meanwhile...

BOST™: Inbetween writing moderation papers and reading Heidegger, I just named all the countries of the world (according to one source) in seven minutes and fifteen seconds. I'm pretty proud of myself. Here's the proof:

( pictorial proof behind a cut )

The other thing about which I must bost™ is that yesterday I memorized the flags of Africa, and the day before that I memorized the flags of Europe. Flag-memorizing is apparently easier than it seems.

Okay, now here I go back to work. Gib-gob-god, I can't wait for summer. Although I don't want spring to end, either.

My homework for this week:

– read "On the Aesthetic Education of Man," by Friedrich Schiller (140 pp.)
– write response to the Schiller reading, in German (2-3 pp.)
– translate a short story ("Der Erfinder" by Peter Bichsel) from German into English (3 pp.)
– read and critique a classmate's translation (1 p.)
– read and compare six different translations of a Rilke poem (6 pp.)
– read chapter 4 of "Dada and Surrealism," by Matthew Gale (52 pp.)
– read "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego," by Sigmund Freud (116 pp.)
– read chapters 1, 2, 3, and 10 of "The Mass Psychology of Fascism," by Wilhelm Reich (158 pp.)

This is why I'm sometimes not online as much as you, my dear friends, might like.

I just failed six times at typing the word "we." Six times.

SIX TIMES.

Just thought I'd share that.

I just received a charming e-mail from a young French fellow who informed me he enjoys "original and hazardous people," and then proceeded to ask me if I physically resemble a black cat.

I ignore most random friendly one-line e-mails from people I don't know, but I can't resist responding to this one.  Let's just hope I'm original and hazardous enough to live up to his expectations.  :)

Sorry, long time no post. I got the last-day-of-February madness, and I'm freaking out down here in the country. Wrote a bunch of songs, gotta write two more before the day is out. The latest is called "Infinite Radio." You can listen to it and read the lyrics here, or just read the lyrics...

( here. )

BBC caption: "A woman prepares red carnations for export at a flower farm in Rafah, Gaza Strip, after Israel gave special permission for 25,000 carnations to be sent to Europe for Valentine's Day."

I find this really cute. Especially this part: "Israel gave special permission for 25,000 carnations to be sent to Europe for Valentine's Day." Countries and continents sending flowers to each other on Valentine's Day! It makes me happy.