Beginnings of a Short Story

(note to reader(s): Maybe this is evidence that my mind is tapped out after seven straight months of schoolwork.)
Untitled and Unfinished
The man looked over his left shoulder at the onrush of people. Waving signs and sometimes undergarments, the mob resembled a hippie movement protesting the inhumane testing of bras on animals. Unfazed, the man continued on his lonely journey to the center of the mall.
Ever since his album had debuted at #34,593 on the Amazon best-seller list, his life had changed for the better. Women, he noticed, would now tilt their heads slightly to the left rather than upward as they had in the past. In other words, instead of looking to see if there was still a smoky trail leading to heaven to give evidence of his recent arrival (or to be snooty and superior to him…he was never really sure), he realized that he now was a library book to them: they couldn’t wait to check him out. Ever the mindful citizen, he made sure they returned him within three weeks.
This policy led to a series of intense yet short romantic episodes with a bevy of women. Sated but not satisfied, he wrote new songs describing his feelings. The songs and album, however, fell flat with the general public since they could not relate to him and his problems of having too many women who just wanted him for three week periods. Distraught he turned to the tried and true muse of all great musicians: Elmer. Elmer’s Glue had been with him since elementary school but he had sworn to get clean after a particularly rough episode in third grade. Crying himself to sleep now, he soon lost his sense of smell to the gooey wonder of Elmer’s Glue…

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
If you have any ideas about directions the story should take- ie romance, tragedy, end- leave a comment. The cynic says that since no one has ever commented the story will remain forever unfinished, a veritable Schrodinger's Cat in uninspired prose.
Maybe I should've written the 23 pages of papers I have to write in the next 36 hours instead of starting this...hm...

A Tribute to Coke

New York Times has a great article about the New Museum of Coca-Cola. Whenever I travel abroad, I always try to buy a coke or two because somehow, every coke I buy gives someone in Atlanta a job. Coke then is my tangible expression of my love of home. And so, here are some highlights of why Coke is the best ever:

Corporate goals of Coca-cola: "To Refresh the World, Mind and Spirit; To Inspire Moments of Optimism Through Our Brands and Our Actions; To Create Value.”

Andy Warhol's comment: “A Coke is a Coke,” he said, “and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.”

Founding Fathers: Coke lore is full of stories of the company’s leaders being obsessed with getting everyone everywhere to love it. “I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony” goes Coke’s classic jingle.

Community: “At its best,” a narrator explains, “Coca-Cola advertising opens hearts and minds.” From diversity, the ads assert, Coke molds a coherent community, bound together by shared experience and taste.

Author: "Coke adds more than life"..."I filled and refilled my cup, drinking with my fellow Cokatarians in faithful communion."

Conclusion: "All the effervescence didn’t allow too many cynical impulses to bubble up. Later that night when driving by Coke’s New World, I could see the glass pillar through which I first entered, illuminated in a heavenly blue. Within it a floating green bottle hovered, glowing with the promise that, yes, in time, everyone shall taste salvation. "

Frustration & Confusion Comic

On the same topic as that last post, I made my first comic tonight. Mixed signals are very hard to figure out. Tough tough tough.

Frustration & Confusion: expressed via my short story

Jan’s Predicament

The man sat resolutely on the floor of the tavern, arms cradling his besotted head and covering his eyes from the tragic scene surrounding him. Not two hours earlier he had been on the way home with the medicine he’d been sent to fetch for his convalescent mother when this same tavern’s sign had stopped him in his tracks. The ruthlessly plain exterior of the tavern only magnified the ornately designed sign full of Tartars rushing a Russian castle graced by a beautiful blonde princess in its uttermost tower. Her luxuriant hair billowed in the wind of that icy steppe and cried out for rescue from her rescuers. The scene captured Jan’s imagination as he imagined the Tartar chieftain, her former capturer and current lover, riding full gallop to free her from her autocratic noble husband. The flamboyant display of colors and passion in an otherwise nondescript street in a nameless borough of Hamburg compelled Jan to enter the tavern to inquire of the sign’s origins or purpose.
Two hours passed and Jan had no recollection of them. He sat now in the center of overturned tables and spilt mugs of German beer. In the corner stood a stricken barkeep surveying his ruined establishment. Two men dressed in red and white exited, one hoisting up his wounded comrade while the wounded gleefully chanted a German drinking song interspersed with an occasional bloody cough. Jan was puzzled and rightfully so. He had no memory of provocation nor retaliation; neither nationalist rhetoric nor hellfire sermons had ever departed from his teetotaler mouth and it seemed unlikely that an ethereal sign would’ve changed his temperament.
Rising slowly, feeling bruised all over and sensing the metallic taste of blood coming from his upper lip, he addressed his sole remaining companion, “Barkeep, what do you make of this unseemly mess? Who were those ruffians dressed in white and red and could I have done to provoke such an angry outburst?”
The barkeep remained in his corner, nervously twisting a broom in his white-knuckled grip. “Those men were no ruffians only regulars at this tavern, glad for a daily drink at Pete’s after a hard day’s work in the docks. They came for their drinks and the Poland-Uruguay football match when you came in here, in my opinion, seeking a fifth or sixth drink, if you know what I mean. You approached the three of us with a tale of Russian beauties, bedridden mothers, and Tartars smitten by love bent on destruction.
“We obliged you your stories since it was halftime of the match, but then you began to accuse us of being despotic thieves, intent on keeping in bondage the one thing you truly loved. Then you demanded we return Natasha or die like the Russian scum we are. My Polish friends, already tiring of your nonsense because the game had resumed, took offense to being called Russians and moved to the other side of the tavern. You went beserk, tearing tables out of their fixings, tossing chairs into the bar, ripping the televisions from their perches and triumphantly flinging them through my windows, and then you turned to attack the two Poles in their corner booth. Declaring that you had stormed their castle and freed the captive Natasha, you punched one of them right on the nose.
“The two of them turned on you then, provoked to rage only at your impetuous breech of personal space, and pummeled you senseless. They finished their pints and exited my ruined tavern just as you decided to come out of your wallowing self-pitiful position.” The barkeep finished his explanation, all the while keeping his eyes on Jan’s face as it contorted to differing emotions of wonderment, rage, shame, and mournful regret. The broom remained firmly in the barkeep’s grip, unsure of its duty as a sword or a cleaning device.
Jan looked around, mindful now of his role in the tavern’s ruined appearance, and edged cautiously to the doorway. “You said I entered under the auspices of asking about your ridiculous sign, but you never mentioned your response. Why did you paint such an exquisite sign for such a place?”
The barkeep’s eyes remained alert but softened at the edges as he realized something. “Step outside, young man, and tell me what you see.”
Jan stumbled uncertainly out of the tavern and into the sun-drenched street. All along the street, buildings rife with ornamentation greeted his eyes. Flying buttresses shaped like cherubim flew in motionless beauty next to gilded street signs and brilliantly crafted doorways of all shapes and colors. His eyes strove to capture the wonderful scene surrounding him and when they had had their fill, they slowly turned around to the entrance of the tavern he had just exited. Juxtaposed to the ornate architecture of the glorious buildings on this street, the tavern’s plain exterior stood in sharp contrast. The building lacked color or form. It stood solitarily as an industrial box painted in lackluster white. Instead of the romantic imagery he had seen not two hours earlier, Jan saw now a neon sign hung lackadaisically with the green letters of Pete’s Tavern blinking on and off haphazardly.
It didn’t make any sense. What had happened to the nondescript street? What of the sign? of Natasha? the swiftly approaching Tartar horde led by a love stricken chieftain? Jan looked quickly up and down the street. No limping Poles clad in red and white could be seen, no drunken anthems to be heard, nor anything else for that matter. Jan became panicked and felt for his swollen upper lip. Nothing; no swelling nor blood trickling. He staggered back into the tavern intent on getting an explanation from the barkeep for the strange occurrences. Where had the Poles gone? What had happened to his injured mouth? What of the sign? Why was his tavern so nondescript in such an ornately decorated street?
Jan barged in through the doorway. The tavern was untouched, perfect in its perfect nondescriptness. Two men sat at the bar being served by a barkeep, who alternated between bringing them beers and brooming the rest of the tavern while they watched the television. Jan, bewildered by his circumstances approached the bar uncertainly, resolved on getting an answer from the barkeep or the two men. Questions were filling his mind and his surroundings slowly faded as his confusion twirled around his head and thoughts of his ailing mother and the beautiful Natasha in her castle tower mixed with acrimonious thoughts towards the insolent barkeep and the cesspool of uncertainty into which he had cast Jan. He saw himself approaching the bar, inquiring of the whereabouts of the two Poles, of the nature of the tavern, of the impish behavior of the barkeep, of…
Two hours later, a barkeep stood in the corner of a tavern, clutching his broomstick and surveying his ruined establishment with windows broken, tables overturned, chairs strewn about the bar, television cords hanging frayed from the walls, and televisions lying shattered on the pavement. A man sat resolutely on the floor of the tavern, arms cradling his pulsing head and covering his eyes from the tragic scene around him.
*********
“But this story makes no sense!” exclaimed the old man as he sat across from his aspiring storyteller friend. “Where’s the resolution? What’s the point?”
His younger friend looked back with a twinkle in his eye and replied mischievously, “What did you expect? Do the stories of life come with meanings attached? Is there resolution in the commonplace, a narrator that explains the goings-on of our lives? Why does the evil man live while the good men perish? Why did God spare Isaac but not Abel? But since you ask, I will tell you. Jan’s predicament was that he had two competing desires: to help his ailing mother by fetching her medicine and to sort out the workings of his own mind. Obviously suffering from delusions and maybe an unknown to himself attraction to drink, Jan entered into a cyclical tale of curiosity, inquiry, delusion, destruction, and forgetfulness. What do you suppose happened to his ailing mother while he was continually trying to find out what the deal was with the tavern, eh? She died! Jan had two options, to take care of the needs of others or to sort out with own problems which we saw were never-ending. And so we are left with a despairing man crouching on the floor of a tavern, perpetually confused and curious of his own circumstances while his ailing mother passes away at home. So you ask me, what is the point of the story? Why isn’t there any resolution? The resolution, like many things in life, is hidden and only available upon deeper reflection. If there is no cud to chew, what would the cow ruminate on?”
Satisfied, the old man and the storyteller got up from their corner booth, thanked Pete the barkeep, and sidestepped over the man resolutely crouched on the floor of the tavern, arms cradling his lowered head. Laughing at the absurdity of life as well as the mental image of cow pondering what to do without its cud to chew, the aspiring storyteller supported his aged companion and the two walked out of the tavern and into the cool summer evening.

Ah, the third person

There once was a writer. His stories mixed reality with fantasy and quite unlike Fantasia, his world never materialized nor created a portal between the two. He tried to understand himself by making two-dimensional objects with his three-dimensional body in order to see his fourth dimension, his soul. Hypothesizing that the two dimensions would be able to penetrate his three dimensions like an incision made by a razor, he took to watching movies and reading books. He, the dutiful scientist, noted the effect that the two would have on him. Movies helped him glimpse what others may see, books moreso. His imagination roiled with fantasies and realities glimpsed by others. Could they mix? The tears and laughs, smiles and grimaces, and aches in his chest told him yes. Yes, there is hope that humans can connect with one another. Their minds can interact just as much as their bodies. They can communicate their souls to others, cast their cares and reel in understanding. But when he tried to do the same in the three-dimensional world, he was rebuffed. What separates us from each other? Is it ourselves, our desires or our dislikes, our thoughts of others or thoughts of ourselves?

Scars of Innocence

I'm writing a paper for class that I, on the spur of the moment, entitled "Scars of Innocence"... while dubious in relation to the topic of the paper, the title has an eerie profoundness that I find strikes deep within.

Scars of Innocence.

I tried to explain it to a roommate, but found I couldn't do it explicitly. What is a scar of innocence? Maybe it's only something that can be examined obliquely, like viewing the sun in an eclipse or seeing the wind by seeing its activity on a sheet hung on the clothesline.

I think the idea of scars of innocence is most evident when we see things that outrage us though we have no reason to believe it should never happen. My paper is about the war in Northern Uganda, one that has increasingly been characterized by the abduction of children who are subjected to extreme psychological and physical trauma and then forced to kill their own families and communities in brutal fashion. This should never happen but it does. And the realization that this has been happening in Central Africa for many many generations doesn't dampen the feeling of wrongness (read King Leopold's Ghost if you want). And even in this community that has known very little of anything else than these horrors, people still react against it instinctively.

Scars of innocence reflect this ambiguity between what is and what should be. However much we might try to suppress our innocence when we make really bad and irrevocable decisions, it's still with us in some sense. Our innocence scars itself into our bodies, our memories, and our imaginations. Trauma upsets what once was and it may feel that things can never again be the same. But for some reason, we have this wild hope that maybe, just maybe, we are merely snowglobes. Though shaken and jolted about by numerous outside forces, we too will one day settle to that once perfect past; that though things shake us and we're not in control of when or where they happen in our lives, everything will work out in the end.

While sin scars us too (as anyone who has regret over past mistakes will tell you), we still have the image of God seared into us. I like to think of us as zebras: Stripes of black(sin) and white(innocence).

The imagery gives hope.

There's that old African story of how the zebra got its stripes. And if you were the village elder telling it to a group of children, you'd lose their attention immediately (Parents take this to heart, tell the moral quick if that's the point of your storytelling...there's no telling what kids are thinking by the time you're finished) The first thing any child would wonder would be which color was the zebra to begin with: Is it black with white stripes or white with black stripes? The answer is one any painter would tell you: If you paint a room with black and white stripes, you paint the whole room white first then paint black stripes on top, thus the latter is true. For us, this means that though it seems we're striped with scars of innocence and scars of sin, that we experience both outrage and remorse when unspeakable sin is committed, that our scars of innocence points to a deeper reality. Scars of innocence point that our true identity is one of a white horse. And someday, we'll rid ourselves of our stripes and like a snowglobe that's been shaken, we'll be who we once were and pure white. Scars after all are snapshots of our own selves: skin that refuses to change while the rest moves along.
Hope: Who we once were is who we will be once again: Innocent.

Lyrics To A Song You Haven't Heard But Should

Well I live in America
And here is how it lies
Underneath my pillow
Are plans that God passed by
She said it’d be all right
If I had to walk away
The greatest view is from the edge
It’s always been that way

And I’m becoming, beautiful
So much harder than I thought
It only feels like losing now
I guess I’ll understand someday.

She opens up her pain
Becomes serene
If I could slip this vanity
That’s how I’d like to be.
Cause I’m staring at myself
As I’m Staring at the earth
It seems so unfamiliar
The way that things once were

And I’m becoming, beautiful
So much harder than I thought
It only feels like losing now
I guess I’ll understand someday.

If I could be alone
If I could be with you
I would stop a point and blame
Even though it’s true
And even though I said it,
It feels like just like losing anyway
And I sometimes half regretted it,
But I never ran away

Cause I’m becoming, beautiful
So much harder than I thought
It only feels like losing now
I guess I’ll understand someday.

But if you’re becoming beautiful,
It’s gonna be so much harder than you know
Then if you feel like you’re losing now,
Then I guess I’ll understand someday
I’m told I’ll understand someday
She’ll understand someday.
I guess I’ll understand someday.

--"The America Song" by Stephen Kellogg in South of Stephen

I just spent $55 buying everything he's ever recorded. I have a feeling it's the best investment I've made in... at least the last four hours. There's something great about songwriters who sing and play their own songs. I think their gift is putting the intangible feelings we have into verse. It can be like poetry on steroids: You have the great words, sure, but then you also have the mode of expression molding the words as they're being said. Do you read 'I guess I'll understand someday.' as hopeful, resigned, sarcastic, or what? Just the text and you're up for a lengthy discussion of the real meaning of the words. But, if the writer sings them in such a way, then you get a song that matches an exact emotion. It's something that you can bring up at any time or place in the future when that same emotion emerges from your heart again. If you don't understand it now, I guess you'll understand someday.


I think people feel most alive when they're full of pathos. Pathos doesn't have a positive or negative connotation; it just is intense. It allows for both grief and joy. We shouldn't expect one and not the other in life. And if we see intense feelings as two sides of the same coin, it gives hope to the sorrowful and temperance to the joyful. Paradox and change: If you see pathos as a coin, then you see how both sorrow and joy can exist and yet feel so opposite (and if it's a coin, then i guess you have some change. ha. ha...ahhhh, puns.) I believe that pathos gives us a glimpse of true reality.

Even in our darkest hours we have hope for a better day ahead.
Even in our happiest moments we realize that there's something even greater in store: the day when we have joy everlasting.
For me, it heightens the highs and dampens the lows. And that to me, is beautiful. You essentially change an oscillation around a base point of average (high, low, high, low, etc.=zero) to an increasingly above average point (high, low, higher, not as low, even higher, etc.=0,1,2,3...). Maybe?

Yes one day, no the next. Joy, sorrow, then what?

Once I went to a coffeehouse in Decatur and experimented with stream-of-consciousness poem progression

(note to reader(s): I think it fits as a whole poem, but I think it could also be broken into couplets and each would be fine on its own. The place was San Fransisco Coffee Company, and the start was a drawing of a fisherman catching a mermaid. So picture that...got it? Now read...)

Mermaids entertain thoughts of transformative love while Men fish for food. The cry of the mermaid full of inconsolable longing allows the hooks to capture her. A feast may follow but is anyone actually filled?

How does a catch become the one
that signals your fishing days are done?
Could it be that the hope that drives
me to fish lays in the murky waters
but dissipates when brought into the light?
Do lives lived in obscurity fade away
in the brilliance of the spotlight?
Maybe we live with artifical darkness,
afraid of the hue that'd expose us
as mere phantoms, here today and gone tomorrow
ghosts with big voices yet so insubstantial
Reality destroys us while revealing us
a moment of clarity ends a lifetime of illusions.
To live in the sun away from the dark is the dream
that once fulfilled will end all we know we know.

Once someone asked me to write a poem and I sent this 15 mins later

(note to reader(s): I really like and believe in dreams)
"It"
Awoken from his reverie, the man did rightly seem
to disdain his waking life in favor of his dream
So now the question lingers of what that world may be
found only with closed eyes that somehow still can see

a dream world transports us to another reality
where emotions are overwhelming be they full of fright or glee
This world is a place where a man can rule by fear
only to have his kingdom overrun by monkeys riding deer
In some nether regions of dreams where darkness seems a light
you may see a hippo and a tortoise engaged in quite the fight
for the honor of the title 'First to swim across the sky'
something clearly impossible since all know the pig was first to fly

But dreams need not be fanciful and in this case they were not
they can take us back in time to the ripe past before it turned to rot
A time when innocence was intact and taken as a given
when pursuing and receiving joy was our life's only mission
When love stood tall and was free of all the aches
that past relationships and memories seem to give and make
When life was a joy to live and not a death in slow motion
Before droplets of despair had turned into an ocean

And so the man wished, as many of us ought
to live his night-time fantasies and stay forever in his cot
rather than face the dismal turn of events that had left him so shaken
when his wife had left him last week and with her his only son had taken
Now alone in his mansion without progeny nor spouse
the vast empty spaces made him wish for a smaller house

But as far as poems go, this one has a happy ending
for this poet believes all broken bridges deserve a good mending
And so the man awoke, jolted back into his life in disorder
by a little boy's hand gently pushing against his shoulder
"Wake up Daddy! Come see what mommy and I've brought you!"

His wife stood by quietly smiling at their little boy
as his excitement grew about showing his dad his new toy
"Honey I know we went missing for almost a week
but without leaving you in secret, our chances of getting IT looked pretty bleak"

She smiled as he rolled up off the bed and picked up his son
"Now let's go look at what you two've done."
So out of the room the three of them did stroll,
out the back of the house and onto the grassy knoll.

And there in the lawn lay a present so good and so fantastic,
only a dreamer could understand IT.

(the lesson learned from this short poem is one everyone already knows
that while his rhyming is quite fun, Josh should probably just stick to prose)

What I Learned on the way to West Virginia

"For What Do You Come Here Seeking" (or First Reflection Poem)
My feet still tread the ground
though my hike's become a saunter
I was searching for what I'd already found
and yet my legs propel me onward

A quest without a purpose soon becomes a plight
a man has chosen to pack and leave rather than stay and fight.
Finding God in the wilderness betrayed my lack of knowing
that God isn't in just one place & what matters is that I'm growing.

So end the hike and learn your lesson now:
Life's to be lived in community, the question is only how?

One Time It Got Supercold when I was hiking to WV and I wandered around rural MD all night in the rain and caught a train back to DC the next morning

(note to reader(s): I have an unrelenting belief that poetry should rhyme. Maybe because Wordsworth was my favorite poet when I first started trying, or maybe because I mask my incompetency at poetry by hiding behind a need to rhyme all the time ('if only i could pair two words that don't rhyme, the whole of the english language would be available for my expression'). In any case, I also struggle with doing things in advance, so all of my "poems" are written sans editing or pauses...could that placate any perception you have of mediocrity?)


"Training Love"
The trains sways to and fro but head steadily straight
and the memories stil linger, but I'm too young to hate
anyone for taht kind of stupid mistake you made.
me leaving forever is the only price you paid

what had started out an adventure quickly turned to love
friendship so exciting was surely a sign from above
that though the two of us pretended not to see
this friendship would soon a romance be

and so we consented to the inevitable attraction
and moved in together as a natural reaction
and though I never gave us nary a second thought
this happy pairing, you apparently never bought

While I boldly threw my heart away
you hedged your bets and kept your out of the fray
of heart-rending emotions and differing commitment
and so thus began our lingering denouement

I argued for love neverending and thru every temperment
you said I love only if you're faithful, then you adulterated with several men
and though my love would've been forever, with that you went too far
and all that's left of us is a bitter memory in this swaying train-car.

Notes from Christian Assembly Church in Pasadena, CA on Nov 19, 2006

(done during service)
At Worship Service in Christian Assembly Church
Pants too short and ankles showing
but all around are faces glowing
absorbed in praising the One above
my pants' shortcomings pale before such love
so upward will look I
and let my exposed ankle worry pass me by

(done after service while trying to explain the above stanza to my fellow churchgoers)
An Ode to my Too-Short Pants
The hem and shoe were never to meet
four inches between my pants and feet
Exposed to the elements and other people's eyes
an empty testimony to how fast time flies
My first clothing purchase, not three years old
Oh, the memories and hardships these tan pants hold!
of the flight of Joseph from Potiphar's wife that cold November night
to the weeks spent in the closet because I was fat and they too tight
And yet in all this time of wearing these pants
I never once thought to dance
and have the legs they so artfully enclose
express the joy their owner knows
To dance before God and all His creation
To dance for joy of my infatuation
of having legs to put them on
to wear them happily even if my legs are too long
So let this poem guide the dance
that I'll do now to celebrate my pants

***
Those were so dang good pants. And while these poems make me seem shallow and overly concerned about my appearance in a church service, if you could have seen how well-dressed and manicured these people were and how I was in the middle of my Vagabonding Adventure 06, you'd understand the 'pant' angst, I humorously expressed.

Written on Command for the Glorious Occasion of Trying It

(note to reader(s)...when I have nothing new to post, I'll sift through memories of the past...This is my right because I titled the blog "Pseudomemories" which basically means I can write whatever I want from whenever I found/created it)

Yoga Tea Cold Season Organic (actual name of tea)
The constitution of your tired face
arms hang limp, eyes stare into space
reveal the effect the tea has had
though therapeutic, it tastes real bad
so, unsure of what your reaction should be
you mimic the pose of a human zombie

Sing praises to heaven for God's gift to mankind
Yoga Tea Cold Season Organic made with the zest of lemon's rind
Though it numbs your whole body and freezes your head
drinking its nasty flavor down is better than being dead
So sing a song aof thanks to Cold Season Organic
when you regain feeling in a few hours; if not, start to panic

I loved the tea so much I named my first kid 'Cold Season'
When she gets old enough to be sick she'll soon see the reason
for though it's certain she'll be picked on for ages
her health insurance won't eat up my hard-earned wages
Besides, imagine how proud she'll be
when she meets her little brother 'Yoga Organic Tea'

The lesson of the poem is without a doubt
Drink Yoga Tea Cold Season Organic 'cause really that's what life is all about

Once I sat at a Dennys across from SeaTac Intl Airport and read 500 pages without stopping

"A child can always teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires."
-The Fifth Mountain by Paulo Coelho

"I imagine the feelings of two people meeting again after many years. In the past they spent some time together, and therefore they think they are linked by the same experience, the same recollections. The same recollections? That's where the misunderstanding starts: they don't have the same recollections; each of them retains two or three small scenes from the past, but each has his own; their recollections are not similar; they don't intersect; and even in terms of quantity they are not comparable: one person remembers the other more than he is remembered; first because memory capacity varies among individuals (an explanation that each of them would at least find acceptable), but also (and this is more painful to admit) because they don't hold the same importance for each other. When __1___ saw ___2___ at the ______, s/he(1) remembered every detail of their long-ago adventure; s/he(2) remembered nothing. From the very first moment their encounter was based on an unjust and revolting inequality."
- Ignorance by Milan Kundera
Think about that next time you run into an ex-, a high school or college friend, or anybody you've ever met; ever.

Needless to say, yet somehow I still am saying it, I read Ignorance and The Fifth Mountain in full, and finished The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman at the Dennys. Though entertaining, the night will be remembered more for the mad dash across I-5 (why don't they have sidewalks to airports?) with an overstuffed backpack (part of Vagabond 06) and an unwieldy bag of 16 books I'd accumulated from DC, WV, CA, OR, WA, and Canada during said Vagabond Adventure 2006.

When Lent met New Years

Consider this a resolution. Seeing as I've written three real journal entries since January 2007 and seeing as this sad site has seen only seven snippets of pseudomemories in the past two years, I thought it time for a change. So, for however long this feeling lasts, I shall write. Since I write for myself and for a public that appears to me, at best, to furtively glance at my thoughts without commenting (maybe feeling guilty about reading it though I voluntarily relinquished these stories), I will continue in the great tradition of travel writing. Though I may not travel, I will write. I will put poems, ridiculous paints, photos (if I ever get my camera to work), stories from my life, stories I've appropriated from entertainment (movies, books, friends, strangers), and my imagination. This blog will truly be PSEUDOMEMORIES- postings from that exotic land between memories and imagination, past and future, reality and hope, dreams and waking life- in sum, where I live day-to-day.

The Saddest Paint Ever

Dang. Who knew Paint could make you misty-eyed?

If you have a broken heart, would you find this comforting or not?

I drew this a while ago, so save the concern for the rainforests.

Click it to see it bigger.

A Poem to Breakups

Mixing and matching to see how well we fit
struggling to move forward when all we think is quit
working out our problems has left the knot undone
broken ties whose tying had brought us so much fun

Poems only go as far as language will permit
imagination takes it further as through the words you sift
take good not bad and happiness not sorrow
for the poem is written with its eye upon tomorrow

so smile and don't imagine this relationship's at its end
we just moved back a step from prefixed friend to friend