Rebuilding…commence!

It’s raining.
Surprise, surprise.
I’m acutely unaware
        of a hand to hold,
        another body’s warmth.
Everything I see
        reminds me of her:
        the flower I wish I’d given,
        the grass I want to pad her happy footsteps,
        the forest bench and ocean air I wish I could share
                with her.
But somehow I’m reminded of you.
Yonder bench is overgrown,
        bright pink flowers wrapping their coils
                ’round its faded seat,
        perhaps reminders of its happy memories,
                a guarded relic,
                preserved,
                protected,
        and here I sit enclosed
                trees protect and hide me while I watch,
                        a solemn predator
                        after lonely prey.
Life goes on:
        tiny flies scurry in the breeze,
        grasses wave and dance,
        leaves whisper their endless tunes.
Still… I’m reminded somehow of you.
But I don’t miss you…
        I miss what I gave you…
        wish I could give it again…
        or just have it…
        or see it…
Oh, rebuilding…commence!
It’s raining.
I must walk home.
Maybe I’ll be cleansed.

also viewable @ DA.

In his lock-step schedule, he sets aside daily “Michelle time.” And last weekend, he fulfilled a promise to her. They got all gussied up and flew to New York, took a limo to dinner and a Broadway show, then flew home. Date night, just the two of them. Michelle and Barack. And their security detail.

As far as the comment about it being a “staging of matrimonial contentment,” I don’t care; it’s the image, the message of being happy, making time for romance and emotion and letting go of the routine and the job for a moment with your better half. Someone who’s clearly got solid good intentions in public and private office is setting an example for married couples all over at the same time, “and a man who can do that can plan my castle onslaught any day!”

via New York Times

“… If you have that much to hide, if you are living some sort of secret and embarrassing and family-endangering double life, if you are constantly burying images and hiding data or altering your persona to the point of endangering your work, if you cannot let someone, say, cruise through your personal sex-toy box without massive blushing and fainting and humiliation, perhaps you’re living the wrong kind of life. You think?”

Not that I have any opinion about it or anything …

The ending of that quote brings up and interesting point. When something about your personal life embarrasses you, how much is true embarrassment from it being hidden, and how much is actually shame? Of course this is a rhetorical question, and I have no answer, but it got me thinking. If we want to live the life that’s unabashed to share personal truths about ourselves, free from worry or guilt of our personal lives, despite the level of secrecy typically expected of such things in life, then we have to get over the typical feeling of secrecy about those things. I just was thinking that saying to someone, in person, that you like porn is much harder said than done for some people, despite how much they may want to live the carefree, open, honest life. I guess there’s no real point to this post other than to link the article and say I thought it was interesting and well-put, but the quote got me thinking that the blushing and humiliation may be more complicated than first percieved.

Maybe a better way to say it is this: we are socially pushed to think and act in certain ways, so when someone finds a drawer full of sex toys, to use the above stated example, we most likely are blushing because of their potential reactions, caused mostly by the social norms and expectations built up by simply living through every day society. So that was my reaction. Just thinking about why someone might have that sort of embarrassed reaction, thinking it’s not necessarily just their shame or embarrassment of having the sex toys discovered in the first place. Anyway… enjoy the article.

Vancouver.  Vancouver is awesome.  The city itself couldn’t be more gentle or fun.  The apartment I’m in is just the right size for three guys who don’t typically cross paths for more than a minute.  My room is nicely sized, comfortable and well-lit…now.  And the people… Canadians blow me away.  Why aren’t Americans this nice to random people?  Maybe it’s because we’re roommates or maybe it’s because they’re friend of my family, but everybody I’ve met so far has been more than willing to drop whatever they’re doing and help out in some way.  It’s shocking, but nice.

I start school in about a week and a half, so I’m still getting used to the area around the apartment, finding new places to get groceries, household things like tape, light bulbs, etc.  I just got the internet set up today, and the roommates will pay me back for the router when I see them later tonight.  So far it’s been pretty quiet days at home, since the roommates have school and/or work, and I’ve got neither, and then some movie and food later on, with the occasional interest of one of them.  Tim goes to the school I’m going to be going to, only he’s in the Game Design program, so he’s doing a lot of 3D modeling and texturing, making characters and stuff for games.  He’s almost done with his clay version of a character, he said, and he’ll be 6 months through the program once I start.  Andrew’s finishing his masters in Health Economics.  That was a shock to me, since when I saw him he looked like he was just out of high school and starting college for the first time.  It was also a field I never thought existed until he mentioned it, but it’s something I now can’t imagine not existing, even though I’m really not sure what it is.

I moved up on Sunday, and it’s Wednesday now, so I’ve got no good excuse not to learn the bus routes soon.  Tomorrow I’m taking the closest one down to my school to see where it is, and meet one of my brother’s friends or a brief visit in the middle of his work day (see what I mean, and he’s not even Canadian!)  I’ll wander around and explore the area a bit, and finally come back home when I’ve explored enough for the day.  I hope it’s just so exciting I go back again on Friday, only it’s supposed to rain Friday, so maybe I won’t.  I’ve always got the apartment to stay in.  It’s still surreal, being in the apartment, thinking it’s partly mine.  Walking into the kitchen thinking it’s my kitchen, my living room, I don’t know if it’s sunk in or not, but it’s an odd feeling.  It’s kind of a feeling like I have this freedom, this ultimate freedom where my life isn’t determined by the schedules of other people, my daily life is completely and entire up to me, down to the absolute minute details, and yet I haven’t changed anything about my habits yet.  Maybe I will with time, and maybe finding new friends will cause that, but for now, I’m happy to have a place to sleep and eat and a brand new city to explore.

I’ve heard it doesn’t hit you until you’re there, without your parents, and you think “When are they coming to pick me up?” and the inevitable response pops into your head and you think “Oh, right.”  I guess that might be what’ll happen to me.  Maybe it’s a sort of feeling that nothing in insurmountable.  Maybe it’s just that I’m not afraid.  Whatever it is, I feel absolutely normal.  Except I’m in the airport.

It’s going to be a good move though.  New people, new places, I’m glad to finally be getting away from the tiny-town Vermont.  I wrote in an email to a friend a day or two ago:

In my room, I can stand up straight, just normally, and flat-footed I can touch the palms of my hands to my ceiling. I like to think that’s how it is living in Vermont. I can touch the ceiling with no effort, but I can’t push beyond it to do what I want to do. A bigger city might have higher ceilings, but it’s definitely going to have more potential. So that’s what I’m really moving for the most.

Overall, I’m obviously looking forward to the move, and I’m looking forward to being closer to my brother who lives in Seattle.  I’m staying with him for a week or two before getting up to Vancouver, and that should be fun, since I rarely see him more than once a year.  But now, being closer, I should be seeing him more often.  In addition to that, I’ve got the opportunities abounding from the new city, the new people, and the new things I’ll learn and do when I’m out there.  If you can’t tell, I can get myself excited about the move, but I’m not overly zealous about the whole thing.

So I’m going to sit back, relax in the airport and enjoy my nice soygurt (just joshin’, I’m hardcore, I go for the real stuff) and wait for the plane to be ready to bear me on my journey through the heavens… err, the clouds anyway.  It’s gonna be a long day of traveling, but it should be fun in the end.

“She kicked her mother out of the pack, she’s already kicked her sister out of the pack, and she’s in the process of kicking another sister of hers out of the pack.”

And I was wondering if it really is the same kind of thing as a human kicking their family member out of their family, so to speak, since we’re obviously different from wolves. And is it fair to compare the standards of humans to the nature of wolves?

Oh damn… they just found out the Alpha male was killed, shot, and the pack is adopting a new wolf from a totally different pack into theirs. That rarely ever happens, apparently. They test the wolf, playing cat and mouse games, intimidation games, all kinds of things (the wolves, not the people). Wow. Nature is wonderfully amazing. And so many people have to kill it. I really don’t understand that.

“With a wolfish embrace, the deal is sealed. And everyone seems thoroughly delighted with the newcomer.”

My social interactions are limited, and mostly with my family.  The cold room where I sit, day after day after day after day, contemplating my life and how much I would adore soaring away from this cold, dark place.  I can’t bear to be here any longer.  I feel only unsatisfied with every moment, every second passes through me a dark and wintry second as if they were snowflakes passing through my veins, and the poison had frozen them up so cold that the snowflakes didn’t even melt through their journeys.

Something whispers to me in the night, and I perk my ears up to listen, only to find that it’s the simple longing for something new, for someone new, for some warmth that is not familiar, some strange loving care that caresses my shoulders, my head, my legs, my whole body and wraps me up, embracing me for a full twenty minutes with no selfishness at all, and nothing to tear it away.  Simply loving me.  Simply caring enough to exude the warmth of the sun a thousand times over with nothing held back, no otherworldly goals, no shadows in which to hide its secrets.  The only thing that whispers to me in the night is the lack of that warmth, day in and day out, again, and again, and again.

And so I wake up the following morning, retreating to me screen and my keyboard like someone out of the Matrix in their control room, ready to take on the world, only I am already full of the realization that the world has no knowledge of me, that I matter not to the way it functions, to the way it turns and spins.  If I simply disappeared it would not lose its course in the universe.  If I simply disappeared people would not fly to the streets with signs and banter about the right cause of the life and the necessity of the unity of man.  My leaving would cause no such fuss.  My leaving would simply be that: me leaving.  And I think that, day in and day out, that my leaving may simply be the best thing I could do in the world, for the world, for myself.  Maybe some time in some distant land that I know nothing about would be my savior, would find me that warmth, would bring me closer to the sun and to the cure for this poison that rots my insides as if they were already dead.

I’m wrapped up in my own private world.  Nobody sees it, nobody knows it, and yet I tell people almost every day what parts of life are like.  What parts of my life are like.  Hopelessness, the other poison, must be the fermented version of this green gooey obsession, this sadness that fills my being.  The inescapable torture that it brings with it, the desire for difference, for life, for something warm and something new.  The rotting insides of my cold, hardened body all completely unseen by any innocent bystanders.  The daily ritual is suicidal, and the urge for random, eclectic travel seems out of my reach, and so where do I possibly go to for a source of life but the digital fakeness of imagery and audio that is simply replication of the beauty I see in the digital versions of something that must in real life be utterly incomprehensibly gorgeous.  I’ve been told not to get too obsessed, not to let it get under my skin, to seek help if things get “out of hand.”  Life is already out of my hands.

I don’t want to fight this poison here, on my own ground, I want to fly away, soar through the clouds as high as possible, as close to the sun as I can reach, and to touch its rays with my hands, my face, my shoulders, my legs, as if it were holding me itself, as if I were simply a cloud on my own, floating around through the sky, oblivious to life and sorrow, obsession and poison, hardship and suffering.  As if they didn’t even exist.  I would much rather make a stand on foreign soil against this beast of green obsession than remain here in quiet isolation, joyless, friendless, loveless aside from what the typical family can give.  That almost doesn’t seem to matter.  I know it’s there, and I know I’ll at some time come out of this haze of infection and back into the world of reality, and I know they’ll only have noticed quietly, waiting for a word or a desire for help to be uttered from me, the quiet and isolated member of the family.  Only I won’t.  And so they won’t.  And I will move on into some other chapter of my life, into some new place of my life and hope that the poison will not envelop me again.  And I will strive for work or play in some foreign land where the sun always shines and the weather is always warm and the love simply flows from all people, smiles and friendliness are never surprising to find and the common sit-down coffee-shop really is the beginning of a long and blissful relationship, no matter who with, but someone who provides something of that warmth of heart, the beginning of the cure to the cold, hard heart that I’d acquired through strict obsession with the digital face of something rare and remarkable.

But until then, I suppose I just wait out the days and do my best with what I can.  Even if at times it seems that may be nothing.  I just travel on through the tunnel of life with the occasional beam of light bouncing off my now hardened and reflective surface, long enough for me to gaze in wonder and glory at the sight of someone else’s fortune, and then it’ll disappear, forcing my mind to race with methodical and spontaneous courses of action to achieve my own glory, to cast my own beam of light, and perhaps warm the hearts of others, less fortunate, who feel as I do now: loveless, lost, alone, cold, and empty.

I guess I feel the most proud of having met so many extremely talented people, from Ryan, to the crew over at Stick To What You Know, to ElizaAnne, to Cliff Burns, to Alejandro Lugo, and tons of others.  I’m proud to know so many talented and knowledgeable people that know their stuff and can get things done.  It’s the spirit of doing things and loving what you’re doing that can really get things done and that I love to find in people.  I guess the production compnay title AnimiVirtus (meaning “courage of the heart”) is very appropriate for this.  We would not only bridge physical gaps but age gaps, utilizing musicians and actors from all over the world, of all ages, through such publicity venues as Myspace, YouTube, and other such sites.  Whenever I need music, I’d look through YouTube and Myspace at the unsigned amateur artists, as both a way to get some great music, and give the musician(s) some publicity for their talents.  I love the independent, small-time, do-it-yourself spirit that seems to constantly permeate myself and now the internet filmmaker community.  It’s a wonderful thing to see people just go “Wait, screw the system, I love this project enough to get it done no matter what, and I’m not stopping until my story is told,” and then they go out and do it.  It’s the perfect age for a company like that to come around I think.  And I love thinking of the potential that we could tap into if we approached a project like that.  Alejandro Lugo said it great in a recent email to me when he said “You have to love what you’re doing… if not, find another job.”  And the greatest thing is that so far, out of all the people I’ve met that I mentioned here, they totally love what they do.  And it shows in the work.