Date:	2006-07-04 02:18
Subject:	The word is NINETEEN...
Security:	Public
Mood:	discontent
Music:	"Marrakesh Express" -Crosby, Stills, and Nash

a tale in nineteen parts

ONE) My summer so far. On an optimistic note I would call it relaxing; on a more discontent one, dull. The days have been like "Homeward Bound" by Simon and Garfunkel (sad, slow, but almost lilting) and the nights have been like "The Passenger" by Iggy Pop (wild, lifting, mysterious; your car window is open and the cool night air hits you like a syringe). I've been working at Ridgeland Commons as somewhat of a custodian. I have no real idea why I do it. I dislike it a lot. I don't feel like it's very suited to me. The only perk is its integral impersonality; I don't have to deal with people so much. My coworkers are more or less a mixed bag of personalities, some I can deal with and some I can't.

Jonathon is standing around a school bus, parked in front of his old elementary school. He doesn't know how old he is. He knows the school-bell is ringing, but doesn't hear it. The children come out the school doors, running, ecstatic. They're coming towards him, but suddenly they're very far away. Jonathon falls backwards very quickly, into oblivion, leaving the bus and children behind. The ground is gone (Was it ever there?) and his eyes slap open after a bright white light clouds his mind. His terror and confusion sting his forehead as sweat pours out of it. He is alone. A streetlamp outside illuminates his window, and the light dully shines off of his desk nearby. He lies in his bed, completely still, seized by the fear that the dream gave him. He does not trust his bed to stop him from continuing to fall backwards; any minute now it might give way, allowing him to tumble down further into the blackness. That nothingness. That absence of anything. He is hot and afraid and does not dare move. He waits as his eyes adjust to the darkness of his room. He waits for the assurance of being somewhere sane. He waits for the assurance that he is not alone.

TWO)
i got a call recently
on the phone
from a person i wasn't expecting to get a call from
that person may read this
may not
i haven't interacted with this person in a long time
not seriously at least
this person has never seen my room
or my drum-set
though i joked one day that i would give this person drum lessons
did this person think that i was being serious?
maybe i was
no, but that's bullshit
bull shit
Bull Shit
B S
my initials are D J
what are yours?
^can YOU guess who "this person" is?
this person was the reason our relationship was a sham
anyways
this person is gone right now for a while
in a different state
i said we'd get some breakfast when this person gets back
and i know we will
but what will we talk about?

THREE) Back to my summer. Yes, it's been uneventful. I haven't gotten to see Mike very much while it was just me and him. I've seen more of my new love interest. My new girlfriend. Things are going well with her. We are soon to be exiting that awkward phase of a newly started relationship. Sometimes you never get out of that phase.

The guys are back, now, though. Chuck, Mark, and Tim. So perhaps the week that they are here for will be a little more saucy.

I've been getting into a few new musical groups since summer has started, as that's all I really have to do. I've been listening to Simon and Garfunkel, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, and Crosby, Stills, and Nash (and sometimes Young). That's pretty interesting I know.

During the days that I do not work, sometimes I hang out with my new girlfriend, sometimes I drive around town doing the unmentionable thing, and sometimes I do other things. Like, about a week ago, I woke up at 8:30 (Yes, you heard right), took a run (From my house to North Avenue and back), took a swim at the pool (Rehm), showered (and shaved), lounged around the pool and then sat in the park outside. It was really great. Running gives my life a vague sense of meaning, like playing the piano and writing do. It's hard to find meaning in your life when you know you'll never truly be happy again because this person is never coming back and your father is an alcoholic and your mother is buying you a ticket for an English whodunit play in the city and you sleep until 3:00 every day you don't have to work. But if you try hard enough, you can.

FIVE) ings that you've seen me do haven't been that bad, but it's what those things imply about what goes on in my mind that worries you. Like you know there's so much fucked up shit going on inside of me that's only hinted at in what I do. And at one point of another, it's all going to come out. And who knows what I'll do then.

what goes ooooon in your heart?
what goes ooooon in your mind?
you are teeeeearing me apart
when you treeeeat me so unkind
what goes ooooon in your mind?

SIX) Jonathon passes his old elementary school on his way to high school the next day. He cannot shake the dream. And the falling. It is a seed, growing under the dirt of his subconscious and the sunlight of his anxiety. He walks the halls of the high school, friendless, seeing the blackness of the dream in every set of eyes that meet with his. He walks through the school with his head down. Jonathon is sick and he knows it. The walls at his sides bend and curve in harmony with each breath he takes. They ripple and settle like waves in a pool. He feels like his life has become some kind of maze. A headache pulls at his temples while he tries not to think of the dream. The blackness and oblivion. The solitude. Jonathon lifts his head to turn a corner and wonders if the boy walking right in front of him worries like he does. Does he dream of falling, too?

bold for good measure

SEVEN) A feeling I usually have is one of powerlessness. I feel like I am not really in control of my life. Not because of fate or God or anything like that, but as a result of my own short-comings. Like my decisions don't have consequences; like I don't have the power to create any change. Like my destiny has been written by my failures.

There are lots of characters in movies who exhibit this feeling. I see them and feel that they are lucky. Movies have a way of glorifying meaningless, powerless individuals. They can turn suburban hipsters, nerve-less geeks, and general anti-heroes alike into fairy-tale heroes. I have no doubt in my mind that if I were a different person but essentially the same, and a movie were made about Dylan Joyce, I would want to be him. But that's just because he is in a movie. A movie that will end in less than two hours. In that period of time, that character Dylan Joyce will have, effectively, lived out his entire life, no matter how long he is supposed to be alive for during the movie. Because once the movie is over, we are given some amount of closure to his character and an idea as to what the rest of his life will be like. He has been wrapped up, and in seeing both the beginning and the end- the entire span of his existence- he is given meaning. Because it is just a movie, I can envy that character because there is no uncertainty left to be attached to him. My life is so uncertain, I can hardly put any faith into myself.

EIGHT) This is part eight, and you're still reading. I guess that's somewhat impressive. How interesting can all of this be? Are YOU still reading, Bull Shit?

I have concocted a theory that is kind of charming. My new girlfriend is very much so into theatre. She is an actress and singer, and does many shows. She is a junior company member at Circle Theatre, and does several shows a year there. She also does shows at the high school, and is in our school choir. I am no real critic at all, but I think she is pretty good. She was Cinderella in "Into the Woods", which is *arguably* the biggest part. She also plans to pursue theatre once she goes to college, which leads me to think that she is pretty good. She is too sensible to delude herself from a lack of talent so much that would allow her to continue theatre work in college. The fact that she does so many shows is also somewhat of a testament to some amount of talent in itself. The point there I wanted to make was that she is very involved with theatre. Back to my theory. My mother is aware of the fact that my new girlfriend is involved heavily with theatre. We talk about it a lot, and my mom knows I went to see one of my new girlfriend's plays. And now we get down to it. The actual theory. I think that my mom has purchased me a ticket for the English whodunit play in the city as a starting point for involving ME more in theatre (as an audience member only, though) to help my relationship with my new girlfriend in her subtle, motherly way. See? I think that that is rather charming.

NINE) It has been a week now since Jonathon had the dream. And the seed has been growing. As Jonathon does he daily errands; carrying out his various routines; he feels that dream just behind him. He feels himself lurching backwards, even now as he stands in line at the grocery store. His eyes have become somewhat unsettled, and Jonathon somewhat paranoid. His stomach churns as he recites Bible verses in his mind. Over and over again, to wash away the dream. "Hi," the cute blonde girl at the register says to him kindly, taking the first of his groceries. Jonathon smiles uncomfortably and unloads his cart. His hands are trembling and laced with sweat. He hands her the loaf of bread and all of a sudden, he goes back to his childhood. He thinks of the times at night, when he was seven or eight years old, when he'd have terrible nightmares. Jonathon can't remember much about the nightmares anymore; only that they involved carrying a large, unbearable weight through an eternal maze. He remembers, in his dreams, he would look at the map of the maze, and feel the heavy weight pulling his stomach down, and start screaming and crying hysterically. "I can't do it!" he would scream. "I'll never make it. Please mommy oh it's so MUCH so FAR make it go away!" Jonathon could never remember when he'd stopped dreaming, as the screaming and crying lasted long after he was awake and in his mother's arms. Those dozens of dreams that riddled Jonathon's childhood flash through his mind in the blink of an eye. "My God," Jonathon says now, looking at the girl at the register, each of them having a hand on the loaf of bread. "You look just like my mother."

TEN) I've also been reading a lot this summer.

And cracking my fingers. Especially my thumbs.

Ten's a lame number anyways

ELEVEN)
“If you see her, say hello, she might be in Tangier
She left here last early spring, is livin' there, I hear
Say for me that I'm all right though things get kind of slow
She might think that I've forgotten her, don't tell her it isn't so.

We had a falling-out, like lovers often will
And to think of how she left that night, it still brings me a chill
And though our separation, it pierced me to the heart
She still lives inside of me, we've never been apart.

If you get close to her, kiss her once for me
I always have respected her for busting out and gettin' free
Oh, whatever makes her happy, I won't stand in the way
Though the bitter taste still lingers on from the night I tried to make her stay.

I see a lot of people as I make the rounds
And I hear her name here and there as I go from town to town
And I've never gotten used to it, I've just learned to turn it off
Either I'm too sensitive or else I'm gettin' soft.

Sundown, yellow moon, I replay the past
I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast
If she's passin' back this way, I'm not that hard to find
Tell her she can look me up if she's got the time.”

If I could meet one living person right now, it’d be Bob Dylan. I want to ask him what his favorite album of his is, and his favorite lyrics, and songs, and everything. I want to know him. AGH!

TWELVE) Hm I really don’t have much of an idea for what I’m doing on the 4th of July. Obviously I’ll be with the guys, and I’ve invited my new girlfriend and one of her friends to hang out with all of us. But I don’t really know what we’re gonna do. I guess we’ll see some fireworks, somewhere. But I’ve really lost my interest in those. Or at least, the ones at OPRF. They’re just not as exciting as they were when I was a kid. They have to be really good these days to entertain me.

Jonathon’s been sleeping in his living room lately. The dream hasn’t come back, but the prospect has scared him away from his bed. He’s been trying to keep himself busy, to forget it, but the harder he pushes, the harder it pushes back. The falling. The lurching. The loneliness. He hasn’t said more than five words to his parents in the past week. One day Jonathon was walking out on the docks of his city, and he glanced down at the ocean water. But he saw nothing. The water wasn’t only dark, it was completely black. Like his dream. By the school bus… Jonathon screamed at fell back onto the dock, and his leg was snagged by a nail in the wood. He winced, and then started into a fit of laughing. Laughing hysterically. He had no idea why, but he kept on laughing, lying on the dock, looking up into the sky, blood spilling onto his shin. There was no darkness there, only light. That was when Jonathon learned that pain was an escape.

I was thinking the other day about the old 4th of Julys. Those were real fun. I’d go with my family and the Primaks to some park and we’d sit on blankets and watch the fireworks and they’d always AMAZE me and I’d always ask my mom to buy me one of those glow-in-the-dark rings people are always selling on the 4th. Then we’d all go to the Primaks’ house and some of the other kids on the block would come and we’d like sparklers and other small private fireworks things and it was great. I used to love the black snake things that would get bigger and bigger.

THIRTEEN)
This is what happens when fantasy becomes more real.
Living in a ghost town.
When the pot and kettle have left.
When the subway grids feel like arteries
spilling into the ocean.
Like a number you forgot-
Like a checkerboard painted on the floor-
Like a ring of smoking birthday candles-
Living in a ghost town.
Under a stormy sky harlequined with clouds,
Above a mad-dog Earth,
We’ll make our home.
Tonight, the rain falls for you and me,
but we’re living in a ghost town.

FIFTEEN) It has been two weeks since the docks and Jonathon’s arms look like graph paper. He keeps a razor in his pocket, and when the dream becomes to much, when it starts to hurt his head and he gets nauseous, Jonathon slips into a bathroom and slides it against his skin. Deeper and deeper each time he goes. Like a drug, he’s becoming tolerant to the cutting. Deeper and deeper. He cuts and forgets the blackness. He cuts and forgets the children running to the bus, foreshadowing the backwards lurch. He cuts and forgets the school bus. He cuts and laughs his fucking head off. His parents are becoming worried but shrug it off as just a phase. His mother came in to his room last night to talk, but Jonathon closes off when she gets near. He crawls away and fingers the razor in his pocket, dying for a cut. She leaves and he digs in deep. He sits with his back to the wall and basks in the warm feeling of losing himself. The warm feeling of pouring blood.

SIXTEEN) I've been thinking about what you told me a lot, lately. I wish that you would unblock me on AIM, or come back on your old SN, or stop whatever you're doing to avoid me. It is sad that this is the only means of communication I have with you right now (I could email you I guess). You probably do not want to talk to me, but I want to talk to you. I feel that we need to. I do not have the courage to call you. I am not mad at you anymore. I appreciate what you last said to me, before we stopped talking. You know, that last straw that broke the camel's back. That very unexpected, very (I thought) bewildering comment that I got mad at you for making. You are right, you are supposed to speak your mind. But you should support what you say with some context. More than you have given me for that comment. I am sorry that I got mad and scared you away, but I feel that we need to talk about it. It has been painful thinking about it. Thinking about you ___ing about me when, for the longest time, I had thought that you had stopped doing that. I want to talk about it. It is unfair to let that comment go untalked about. I know I am stupid but please just talk to me.

SEVENTEEN) So I was just talking to Mark online and we’ve decided that for tomorrow (the 4th) we’re going BOWLING! Amazing news, if you ask me. I love bowling and it’s been a while. My new girlfriend may also be joining us. I can’t wait for the guys to meet her. I think it’ll be a real fun time.

Oh and SPEAKING of amazing news, Chuck. got. a. Facebook:

atomic toaster2: btw ---- Chuck is now on face book
organlady4: EWHAT THE FUCK
organlady4: omg
organlady4: omgomgomgomg
atomic toaster2: i take a bit of credit
atomic toaster2: for inviting
organlady4: ejsus cunt mother fuck vagina dickcheese bitch slap shit fuck fuck fuck GIZZ bitch
organlady4: this is amazing

Personally, I’m blown away. It’s just so un-Chuck, and he’s been so anti-Facebook. But then again, so was I (you guys remember that shit?). Ahhh, this will be strange, I think. But fun. He’d better hurry up and friend me so I can wall post my shock. And possibly poke fun at him.

I hope we’ll be putting money on our bowling games.

I also wonder what my nickname will be…

EIGHTEEN) This is a poem Derek wrote a long time ago that he said was about me:

Shohei Imamura

I’ve seen a juggernaut sleepfaller trenchcoat time
Lapse
I have seen
The significant ovum, wrapped into itself
The shimmering lachrymal starfish of our bodies wrapped in milk
And tied off with the bow of piano dust
I’ve seen so much and have studied it so well that I needn’t ever leave this place again I will die here in this place this library this town this Earth
I have
Seen leather and other fabrics made from the skin of dead nightmares
I have sent forth with myrrh and tapir meat
I was well-received in the capitol.

Ugliness of lace, laced with horrors
It is the only secret that I can trust my doppelganger to keep, when he ends up coming to town dressed like a Russian monk
The ugliness of my

It is the only secret I have
He will definitely ride in
On a tapir-drawn carriage
And I will nod to him like they do in death

I am definitely a nightmare of his


I still read it over and over to this day, and I know I’ll never really understand it, or what it has to do with me. But I like it.

FOUR) What goes on in my mind, huh? You don't know, but I think you wonder, sometimes. You've all seen me do some pretty crazy shit. Actually, I feel like you've exaggerated the crazy shit I've done in your mind. Because you feel like you've only seen the tip of the iceberg, you know? Like, the th

NINETEEN) underlined for better measure

oh yeah jonathon eventually gets too used to cutting himself and it stops helping him to forget his dream, and he realizes that instead of resisting his dream, his only solace lies in accepting it so he gets in his car and drives his car into the ocean by the docks, killing himself. the last few lines would have been something like:

Chaos and terror controlled everything until Jonathon heard a splash, and he finally had relief. He sank down slowly into the quiet oblivion, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing. Except relief. Relief to finally end the madness, and accept the blackness. The never-ending darkness.

FOURTEEN)

epilogue

TWENTY) I have to go now. Mark got a big head-start into dreamland, and there’s just a sliver of hope I’ll catch up to him. We never say never in dreamland.

Date:	2006-03-06 01:38
Subject:	A Small Death
Security:	Public
Mood:	scared
Music:	"Thieves in the Night" -Blackstar

     The building looked a lot like a normal, fairly upper-class house, and if there hadn’t been the sign on the front lawn telling me that it was actually the Caulfield Funeral Home and Chapel, I probably would have made the mistake.  There were three round bushes on both sides of a small white set of steps, leading up to wooden porch whose roof was supported by six simple white pillars.  The curtains were pulled down on the two windows that looked out onto the porch, and between them was a large oak door.  The dark blue roof of the building was almost flat, and the pinnacle of the angle the roof barely made was right in line with the steps and the door.  In fact, the whole front of the building was perfectly symmetrical, except for a little hanging bench on the right side of the porch.  It was a nice looking place.  The whites were all very white and the darks were all very dark.
     Walking down the sidewalk past the sign and towards the steps, I checked my watch one last time.  Once inside, it wouldn’t be polite for me to check it too many times, and I would have to ration my glances.  It was 6:25, meaning I would be done with all of it in less than two hours.  I had purposefully arrived late (but not too late) with a prepared excuse, and scheduled my flight for early the next morning, justifying my early departure from the wake and ultimately minimizing the total amount of time I would have to spend at it.  Having to fly tomorrow morning also meant I would have to miss the funeral that following afternoon.  But of course, these things happened, and people would understand.  My reputation as a businessman would hopefully make sure of that.
     I hustled up the steps and walked up to the door.  I gave myself one last lungful of the brisk evening air and then knocked loudly on the door.  Waiting, I looked first over at the small porch bench, and then out to the setting red sun behind it.  I stood there for half a minute, knocked again, waited for another minute, and then decided that it was probably customary to just walk in.  I had only ever been to one other wake before in my life.
     Inside it was simple and nice.  I walked from the front door into a narrow hallway that opened up a short way down into a larger room.  There were lots of brown doors on both sides of the hallway, and in between each pair of doors was either a painting of a scene from nature or an esteemed-looking man with a small caption below.  The carpet was light blue and plain, and the wallpaper had small, repeating pictures of roses on it.  As I walked past the only open door in the hallway, I looked in and saw a man unplugging a lamp in order to move it.  I winced a little and kept walking towards the bigger room.
     I heard the murmurs of a large gathering of people, but felt that they were pretty far off, and continued confidently into the room.  Fear hit me suddenly like a punch to the gut when I realized that, to my right, the wall of this room greatly didn’t exist, and instead served as an entryway to the next room, through which I saw a portion of a crowd of people.  They, like me, were here to see my dead grandmother.  I acted on impulse and dodged off into some hallway to the left before anyone could see me.  I was not quite ready for this.
     I found a bathroom and quickly locked myself up in it.  I turned on the light, looked around the small space, looked into the mirror, washed my hands, dried them, washed them again without soap, dried them again, leaned back against the wall opposite the mirror, closed my eyes, and sighed.  I opened my eyes and looked at myself in the mirror.  My name was Jacob Lebowski.  I was 39 years old, but could honestly have passed for 25.  My face was clean and simple with skin colored like sand.  I was thin and shaky at average height, and my eyes were brown like my hair.  I had all my hair, but kept it short.  It was my little way of being modest, for all the guys my age going bald.  Good genes were nothing to brag about.
     If I had to choose three words to describe myself with, I would probably say bitter, shy, and divorced.  Bitter and divorced may be the same thing, but those are still the three words I would choose.  People usually assumed, when they heard I was a rich businessman, that I was either one of those howling, gun-toting Texans with huge wads of cash in their pockets or a strong, brisk, and efficient kind of man who walked with a pace and was always looking forward.  Of course, I was the antithesis of both of these.  It’s not that I was weak, and in fact I was very smart and strong-minded.  I was just also shy.  But people always had different expectations of me before we met, which I never managed to live up to, and so if I cared enough, I had to work hard to get them turned back on to me.  But I usually didn’t care enough.
     I pushed all the fear out of my chest and exited the bathroom.  I started walking back down the hall, and in the distance I could see the people.  I had been almost completely detached from my family since the death of my son, seeing only my parents and two brothers on major holidays, and walking back from the bathroom, I thought about how I had felt when I had first received notice of my grandmother’s death.  My mother had told me, about a week before the wake, over the phone.   
     “Won’t you please come to the funeral?” she had asked.  She didn’t cry, at least not over the phone with me, but her voice was wavering.  It was her mother that had died.  “I know things, well, you know, were never really good with you and grandma after Michael and all…”
     “Come on, ma.  You and I both know that she wouldn’t want me to be there,” I had replied.  Like I said, I hadn’t seen the larger part of my family in a very long time, and to be suddenly thrust into its company again would be very awkward.
     “Oh Jacob.  She was old, and lonely,” Mom had reasoned.  “And besides, this will be your last chance.  Afterwards it will be all over, and you’ll never get to make your peace with her.  That’s the whole point of funerals.  It gives us a final opportunity to make amends with the dead.”
     “Ma, I’ve already missed my last chance.  I mean, really, with all respect and all, she’s dead.  Going to her funeral won’t change anything between us,” I said, annoyed.  “Besides, I had always been willing to make peace.  And you know that.”
     “Please, just be the better man and come for your old mother.”
     I had then lied and said that my next week was going to be very busy, but I would try to free up some space and make it out.  Now here I was, about to confront the lot of them, nervous and fidgety, the fear in my chest back at full force.  It had suddenly become very stuffy inside the building, and I was generally all types of uncomfortable.  But I knew I had to do it, and so I just sort of blocked out all thought from my head and walked in a straight line, not stopping until I was inside of the room.
     My feet gave up about a foot past the entrance, and I looked around me.  And they were all there, to be sure.  The Kowalskis and the Gorskis I saw; the Nowaks and the Wisniewskis; a large group of Wesolowskis with a Dorociak or two behind them; some Krygowskis and the Jachowiczs; my favorite branch, the Lewandowskis; Morawskis, Podolaks, Teppers, Literskis; and of course a whole mess of people I had no idea what to call, though I’d be willing to bet their last names had a Polish suffix on them.  Keep in mind, I hadn’t met even a quarter of these people, but I’d seen lots of pictures, and you could mostly tell by the noses.
     Most of the people there did not appear too mournful.  My grandmother had lived to be 95, and so it was decided that she had lived a long and fruitful life.  Some of the women sat on chairs in groups looking sad and wiping their eyes, but the rest of the women and all of the men stood around respectfully and reminisced with smiles and laughter.  The biggest disappointment was probably that she had not lived five more years and reached stolat, which meant “100 years” in Polish and was commonly offered up as a wish for long life.  At each of her recent birthdays leading up to her death, the family had counted down how many years was left until stolat, hoping she’d make it.  Of course, I had not been invited to any of these parties.  Thinking about them made me sad, and I pushed it out of my head.
     Paranoia had brought me to believe that at the moment I entered the room, everyone would turn to look at me go silent simultaneously.  But I came in barely noticed, and the eyes that did glance over at me eventually turned away, uninterested.  Perhaps I was not as notoriously unpopular in this family as I’d thought.
     I was standing there awkwardly, trying to predict which pore on my forehead would spit out the first drop of sweat, when my heart was suddenly seized by terror.  My eyes had caught the casket, open, on the very far and opposite end of the room, with the barely perceptible body of my grandmother inside of it.  I started a bit and lost my breath, then blinked my eyes until they were watery.  I was terribly afraid of dead bodies.  What had brought me to cry at my son’s funeral was not the overwhelming sorrow of the loss, or the depressing anticipation of life without my child, but the moment when I had to go up to his dead body and say my final goodbyes.  It’s not as though I was scared that the bodies would suddenly jump out at me with life and grab me at my collar or anything.  I can’t even describe it.  It’s just one of those terrible, deep, and unaccountable fears that stick with you for all of your life and make you their slave.  I was thinking of leaving right then and there when my obnoxious older brother Jim materialized out of thin air, as he tends to do.
     “Jake, there ya are!” he hollered, pulling my body hard into his and laughing.  He was a lot bigger and stronger than I was, and had a thin moustache, but otherwise looked like I did, with longer hair.  He looked funny in a suit, I thought, as that was not his preferred type of dress.  Jim was a construction worker, and stupid, but at least friendly.  “We were thinkin’ maybe you weren’t gonna come.”
     “Yeah, hey,” I said meekly, shifting my grandmother’s body to the blurriest section of my peripheral vision.
     He pulled me out to arm’s length, gripped my shoulders with his hands, and looked me over.
     “I swear you get younger each time I see ya, Jake,” he said with a smile.
     I smiled a fake one back and asked where our parents and brother were.  It would be with them that I would feel least awkward.  Still awkward, but the least so.
     “Ahh, well Mom’s over somewhere cryin’ her heart out with Aunt Rose, and I think Dad and Theo are checkin’ out the picture displays over on the walls,” he said, looking around the room.  I didn’t understand what he meant by “picture displays”, but before I could ask about them, he continued:
     “Yeah but come on, you have to meet our cousin Philip.  I’ve been tellin’ him all about you for the past ten minutes and he wants to meet you.”
     He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me along, and I knew I was helpless to resist.  I really just wanted to stand quietly next to my Dad and brother for the next few hours, but when Jim wanted me to do something, he usually got me to do it.  I was too passive and he was too aggressive.
     “Ah, Jacob, cześć,” Cousin Philip said as we approached him, shaking my hand firmly and smiling.  “So nice to meet you.”  Cousin Philip was average height with black hair and too many white teeth.  He was wearing a black suit with a white shirt, and looked very accustomed to being in it, like he wore it every day.  He looked fairly young and certainly enthusiastic.
     I began to mumble something polite-sounding when Jim interrupted me:
     “Yep, this is him.  Jake, Phil here is, umm, what did you say it was, Phil?  Estelle’s second daughter’s son, making you our third cousin?  Is that right?”
     “No no,” Philip said, turning to me and explaining: “I am Estelle’s sister-in-law’s second daughter’s son, technically making us second cousins-in-law.”  He smiled at the complexity of the whole thing, and Jim proceeded:
     “Yeah yeah, right, second cousins-in-law.  Sorry, genealogy really isn’t my thing, and our family is so big I really can’t keep track of half of it.  Anyways, Jake, tell Phil here all about your company and what you do.  I mean I don’t really know too much about it, and I can’t really keep track of all your promotions seeing as how you never call us to tell us about them, ha ha ha!  But tell him all about it, Jake, he’s very interested.  Phil’s into business himself, also.”
     Jim was having a grand time at the wake, I gathered.  I quickly and modestly explained to Philip my job.  That I was the head financial planner of a branch of a large computer software company called “Polytech” (he smiled his seven-thousand white teeth and nodded, recognizing the name), and that I didn’t really know anything about computer software, but just that I planned budgets, handled major deals with other companies, and otherwise told people what to do.  He was (or at least acted) very interested.
     “Very impressive,” he said smiling.  There was a pause that Philip spent looking around the room, and then he sighed.
     “It’s a shame, isn’t it?”
     “What is?” I asked, feeling stupid as I realized, immediately after speaking, what he meant.
     “Her death,” he said, looking somewhat sad.  “And I never got to know her as well as you two did.”
     Here he stopped himself, and a slight look of guilt manifested in his eyes.  I realized that Philip probably knew about the former drama between me and my grandmother, and that maybe Jim had even already warned him to be careful when talking about her with me.  I felt bad for him though, and saved us all from the awkward pause:
     “Yes well, she lived a very long life, and I know most of the family will miss her very greatly.”  I slyly left this line open to interpretation, and Jim, understanding that I didn’t want to talk about the deceased any more, shifted the conversation to lighter topics.  I then stopped listening, agreeing with either one of them from time to time, and instead worked my attention towards examining Philip.
     When I meet a new person, I customarily try and find a problem with them as soon as possible, so I won’t have to care about not having the opportunity of getting to know them any better.  Philip’s problem was that he had way too many teeth.  And Jesus, was he annoying.  All he ever offered up to the conversation was smiles, nods, compliments, and fake laughs.  Of course, that’s all I ever did, as well, but that was only because I cared very little about other people and generally just wanted to mind my own business.  But Philip wanted to climb up peoples’ ladders; make as many connections as possible and further his own purposes.  He was a shark all right; there were plenty of them in the business world, and I knew the type well.  I hated Philip already, and that was a bad sign.
     Jim was helping us to understand the many complexities of laying a foundation for a building when I decided to excuse myself, apologizing several times and explaining that I had to go find and console my mother.  I promised that I would see them both again during the night.  Philip shook my hand again, even firmer, and Jim barely mumbled a goodbye, wanting to get back to his construction.
     I walked around through the crowd quickly, pretending I had a destination, and hoping no one would recognize me.  “There must be two-hundred people here,” I thought, amazed at the number of faces I didn’t recognize despite the fact that they were probably related to me.  My great-grandfather and his wife had come to America from Poland circa 1895 and had eight kids here, all of whom eventually brought at least another three people into the world, and some as many as seven.  Carry all of that down another two generations, add 95 years worth of friends, and you got this room of people.  And the worst of it was that Poles loved their families.  Just another stereotype I didn’t live up to.
     Among all these people and sounds, I was very uncomfortable.  I could deal with people at work because I kept all interaction strictly business.  If one of my coworkers ever attempted to lace any kind of familiarity on top of our day-to-day necessary contact, I immediately shut him out and made it clear that I required no such sentiments.  Business talk is easy, because it’s all just facts and numbers.  It was when things got opinionated that I had trouble.  I really was antisocial.
     I was suppressing the urge to check my watch, unable to find my mother, father, or brother, when I accidentally made eye contact with my Great Aunt Lidia.  I looked quickly away and started to turn around, but she shouted my name, and I couldn’t help but look over.
     She smiled when we saw each other and grabbed my arm.
     “Jacob, darling, I haven’t seen you in years!” she exclaimed, overjoyed at the opportunity to see and talk to me.  “My God, do you look like something!”
     She had fuzzy brown hair, thick red lips, and small beady eyes.  She was very short, like all of the old women in the family, and had a kind face.  I could tell she had been crying, and in the hand that she was not holding my arm with she had a balled-up tissue.
     She led me through the crowd, spouting out questions faster than I could answer them.  She was a lively old woman, and wanted to smother me, like all old women do.  I smiled and answered all her questions, smelling her thick perfume.  I didn’t mind her so much.  In fact, most old women I was fine with.  What you have to understand is that I was not a man.  Far from it.  I projected outwardly a somewhat-manly personality, but deep down inside I was very much a child, afraid of my responsibilities and expected tasks.  And I knew it, too.  With my experience in those responsibilities and tasks, I had decided that I wanted nothing to do with them.  And old women, they liked to treat you like a child, because essentially that was what you were to them.  Other men spent all their time trying to gauge how much of a man you were, but old women were fine with you being a child, and in fact preferred it.  Talking to old Great Aunt Lidia was at least better than talking to second whatever-in-law Philip.
     She dragged me out through the crowd to a less-populated spot of the room where there was a small circle of chairs.  In each of the chairs, besides two empty ones, was an old lady not unlike Aunt Lidia, none of whom I recognized, but all of whom got out of their seats and gave me kisses.  They were all very excited to see me, and Aunt Lidia and I sat down in the two empty chairs.  She did not let go of my arm.
     “So this is my group of friends, Jacob,” she said, pointing to each one of them as she said their names.  “This is Patty, Cookie, Halina, Basha, and Sabina.”
     I smiled and waved to each one as she named them, saying it was nice to meet them all, not feeling daring enough to try out my Polish.
     Aunt Lidia pulled me in close and pointed at the group of women, talking as if she thought I would have trouble understanding her:
     “Now, every Thursday night, your grandmother and the girls used to all get together and play cards.  In the more recent times I used to go with your grandmother ‘cause she was so weak, ya know, and I’d play with ‘em all too.  Normally we like to play Gin Rummy, but sometimes we’ll play some Poker, too.   You understand?”
     I nodded and told them I loved Poker.  They all laughed and I could tell they liked me.
     “Now, how’re exactly are ya related ta Paulina?” one of the old women, I think Cookie, asked me.  She was referring to my grandmother, and she closed her eyes and made the sign of the cross on her chest when she said the name.
     “He’s John and Melinda Lebowski’s second boy, Jacob,” Aunt Lidia explained, and all of the women knew me at once.  My grandmother for sure had told them all about me.  About how I had taken away what had been most important to her.  How I had made her suffer for years, alone and desperate, without a soul left to really care about her.  Yes, she had probably told them all of that, and even more.  It was ridiculous.
     I now understood these five old women to be at least a few examples of the people my grandmother had referred to when she had screamed at me that none of her friends really cared about her, and that my son was the only beacon of happiness in her world.  “That conversation was eight years ago,” I thought to myself, finding it hard to believe.
     Two of the old ladies whispered to the ones next to them, but my Aunt Lidia shushed them up and gave them scolding looks, then looked back at me and squeezed my arm very tightly. 
     I knew that she didn’t blame me for anything.  In fact, none of the family aside from my grandmother ever had.  During the time after my son Michael had died, several members of my family had gone to my grandmother and tried to reason with her.  But she had remained stubbornly persistent in holding her grudge, telling the others off, and claiming that they had no idea what it was like to be old and completely alone.  She held that grudge to her death, and now the responsibility had been placed on to me to be a man and reconcile.  It was really very unfair.  I glanced over to where the open casket was, shuddered as if taking a nasty drink of whiskey, and tried to put it all out of my mind.
     Things were awkwardly silent with the group of old women now, but suddenly I spotted my mother walking by and quickly excused myself from the group.  Aunt Lidia said she understood, and that she’d see me later.  The other women all politely said goodbye.
     “Mom!  Melinda!  Melinda Lebowski!” I yelled.  There was so much talking and laughing and crying going around it was very hard to hear, but eventually I got my mother’s attention.
     “Oh, Jacob!” she exclaimed, smiling, and she gave me a big hug.  “Jim told me he’d seen you.  How are you?  Oh, thank you so so much for coming, dear!”
     My mother was more than 70 years old, but I thought she looked pretty good.  Maybe that’s just because I wasn’t willing to accept that she was getting old, but I still thought she was a very beautiful woman.  She wore her brown hair short and curly and she had on her thin, square glasses.  She was chubby from age, and her neck was beginning to wrinkle.  She had been crying a lot, I could tell, but it made her happy to see me there.  As we hugged, I checked my watch.  It was nearly 7:00.
     “It was really very nice of you to come, Jacob,” she said, smiling and looking around.  “You never do get to see your family very much, and it should be very important to you.  You’re Polish for Christ’s sake!”
     I smiled and shifted my feet around on the floor.  She noticed that I was uncomfortable and gave me a look that told me that she was very grateful for my coming to the wake.  She understood that I was not a social person and respected that.  That was what I liked most about my mom.
     “I’m not going to be able to make it to the funeral tomorrow,” I told her.  “I mean, it was hard enough for me just to make it to this, and I really have to be back in the office as early as possible tomorrow.  I’m really sorry.”
     I was lying through my teeth, of course, and she probably even knew it.  But she said:
     “Well, that’s okay.  I mean, I really just wanted you to come and see your family again here, and to see your grandmother one last time.  Your family is really nice.  Trust me, I know most of it, and I know that if you’d just open up into them a little, you could get to like them.  A lot.  Maybe you’ll meet some people here you like, huh?”
     At first I didn’t understand why she was taking my early departure so well, but then it hit me.  She was treating this whole wake thing as a kind of “re-entry” into the family.  Slowly but surely, she was hoping that this one event would bring me back in close to the family.  Maybe I’d call up some of my cousins over the next few weeks, get to know them better.  Maybe I’d attend the next family reunion, or come to some of the lesser holiday celebrations.  Christ, mom was getting hopeful in her old age, wasn’t she?  My plan for after the wake was to return to my usual schedule of showing up only for Christmas and Thanksgiving with a fruitcake or something, and never giving half a damn about the rest of those strangers.
     What good was family anyways?  Why should I have to spend my time getting to know and generally bending over for people I didn’t know simply because they happened to marry the second daughter of my Great Aunt’s cousin?  It was ridiculous, really.  I can understand honoring your parents, and your siblings, because you grew up with them, and they took care of you, and they knew you the best.  But really, I had better things to do with my time than sit around in some stuffy funeral home for two hours just because an old woman, who hadn’t liked me anyways, and who happened to birth my mother, had died.
     “Yeah, maybe,” I told her, and glanced at the ground.
     We sat down and talked together for a while, not about anything too special, with her doing most of the talking.  I met a few of my relatives there, including my cousin Jan and her husband, Nick.  They were a young, happy little couple, which annoyed me.  They had a little daughter, too, but Jan told me that she was with her grandpa right now, and that I’d have to meet her later.  Jan assured me that her little girl Hannah was just the cutest thing I had ever seen, and that she’d find me later when she had her.  Despite my best and most subtle efforts, Jan had taken a liking to me, and I figured I would be seeing more of her before the end of the wake.  A part of me wondered if my mother had hired these people.
     After a while of sitting, talking, meeting people, and smiling, my mother told me to go find my brother and bring him to her.  She said she thought he was over by the picture displays.
     “Oh yeah, Jim mentioned those too,” I said.  “What are they?”
     “You haven’t seen them yet?  Well some of your family wanted to make some nice things for your grandmother’s wake, and so they made some big posters with a bunch of pictures of your grandmother with different parts of the family on them.  They’re really very nice.  From all different periods of time, too.  You really can see the scope of your grandma’s life all up there.”
     I wasn’t very interested.
     “All right, I’ll go look for Theo.”
     I got up and looked around and saw some of the posters hung up on the wall on the other side of the room.  But then I noticed that they were very close to the open casket; closer than I’d been to it yet.  With each step closer to the casket I felt my chest get a little heavier, and a small coating of sweat began to appear on my forehead.  I looked over at it and saw an older man kneeling down before the body, his hands clasped in prayer.  He looked very somber, and not depressed, but respectable.  “Mom will expect me to do something like that,” I thought.  “And she’ll know if I’m lying if I tell her I’ve done it already.  God dammit, mom.”
     Everyone there expected me to go up to my grandmother, eventually, and “make my peace” with her.  I felt like I was a kid back in high school, being peer-pressured into doing things I really didn’t want to.  This whole place stunk of hypocrisy.
     When I reached the wall with the posters on it, I very firmly put my back to the casket and then carefully looked down the wall and saw my younger brother Theo.  He smiled and walked over to me.
     Theo, as opposed to Jim, didn’t look much of a thing like me, but was a lot closer to me in personality.  He was 35 years old and had long black hair.  His eyebrows were thin and his eyes were shy, and he usually maintained a stylish five o’clock shadow.  He was pretty short, though, and he looked almost Italian in his pinstriped suit.  I embraced him warmly.
     “I really can’t believe you came,” he said, smiling with his eyes.  It always felt to me like I was the only person Theo could really open up to.  Maybe that was just me being selfish, but whenever I saw him speak to other people, he was like I was to other people.  I liked him best out of my entire family simply because he reminded me the most of myself.  The only big difference between him and I was that he was generally very successful with women, and I was generally not.  He always bragged about how many girlfriends he had, even though (and I can’t say that I completely blame him here) he had never brought a single one of them home to meet his family yet.
     Theo was now looking closely at the pictures hung up on the posters, and so it felt right to join him.  It was actually pretty depressing; seeing all those old pictures of my grandmother with all her friends and relatives.  There was one picture of her and her husband, both fairly middle-aged, smiling and standing on the edge of a pier next to a light house, the wind making their hair go crazy.  Another showed her, now only ten or so years old, with a large group of kids around her, all of them standing outside of an old-looking house and smiling goofy smiles.  But as I studied the photos, I could not help but notice that the overall cheerfulness of the pictures decreased as the date the pictures were taken at became more recent.  The older my grandmother got, the smaller her smile became and the duller her eyes got.  Even more noticeable was the lack of people with her in the more recent photos.  All, and I literally mean all, of the ones taken from her childhood showed her surrounded by friends, family, and even pets, now long deceased.  But in her older years, it was plain to see that she was generally around less people, and her attitude reflected it.  I was getting pretty affected by it, and was trying to figure out why she had become more and more isolated as she got older , when all conscious thought was destroyed by a single photograph my eyes managed to catch.  It was my grandmother, looking pretty old, sitting on a recliner in the house she lived in until her death, with my boy Michael, no more than four years old, on her lap.  Both had contagiously large smiles on their faces, and as I smiled with them, I felt tears coming quick.  Of all the pictures I had seen up there on the wall, it was in this one that she appeared the happiest.  I felt I was about to burst out weeping very soon, when out of nowhere, the voice of my father said:
     “Hey, there they are: my too youngest boys.” 
     He came up from behind me and Theo and put one of his arms around each of our necks, kissing both of our heads.  Then he let go of Theo and turned to face me, smiling warmly.
     “How are ya, Jake?”
     “I’m good, dad,” I said and smiled a bit awkwardly.  I swallowed down my tears and gave him a hug.
     My dad was a big, strong man like my brother Jim, but was smarter and understood me pretty well.  He was a laid-back kind of guy; had been all his life.  When my mom sought to change me, my dad begged her to leave me be.  He had always been fine with whatever decisions I chose to make, including my big one with Michael, and though he offered me advice from time to time, he generally went with the flow and allowed me to be who I was.  I could tell that what my dad really wanted was a big major-league baseball-playing son, but I knew that he loved me still.
     “How ya liking it here?  Lots of phonies, huh?” he joked, knowing that “phony” was one of my favorite words to use to describe people.
     “More here than at the family reunions, I’ll bet,” I said, trying to smile.  I told about one joke every two years, and none of them were ever laughed at.  This one was no different.  I looked over at Theo.  He was concentrating on the photos on the wall, trying his best to not be a part of the conversation.
     My father’s relationship with my brother Theo was one of the saddest things that I knew in my life.  Since we were kids, Theo had always shied away from his dad; for some reason completely unable to bond or connect with him.  I mean, back when I was a kid, I wasn’t quite the cynic that I am today, and me and big brother Jim would always play games and stuff with our dad.  We were actually very close with him, and every day when he came home from work, he’d play whichever sport that was most appropriate for the weather with us until dinner time.  But Theo just never wanted to participate.  We all felt the disconnection between the two, and whenever I thought about them, it brought me back to a particularly strange incident of Theo’s adolescence.  I was visiting home from college while Theo was still in high school.  I, he and our father were sitting around watching some football game, and dad had decided to start wrestling with Theo.  Dad had been a fantastic wrestler when he had gone to high school, and since he was a very playful kind of guy, he liked to pick fights with us sometimes for fun.  Theo normally just refused to fight back and dad would stop, but on this day dad was feeling particularly playful, and really started getting into it.
     “Dad, please stop.  You know I don’t like to do this,” Theo had said very seriously.  “Dad, come on.”
     But dad persisted, and finally Theo just completely blew up: he kicked his foot up hard into dad’s chin, wriggled his way out of his grip, and ran upstairs, crying.  Mom came into the room to see if dad was okay, and I ran upstairs after Theo, following him into his room.
     “Hey… uh, are you all right?” I had asked him, stepping slowly into his room and finding him on his bed with his face down into his pillow, crying.
     “Theo… what, what’s wrong?” I asked.  I felt pretty awkward with the whole situation, but tried to be mature.  I was also very confused; I had no what was going on with the kid.
     Theo didn’t say anything directly to me, but, muffled by the pillow and diluted by his tears, I heard him yelling words, thickly strung together.  He was practically hysterical at his point, and I thought he was going to explode.
     “…I don’t want it no I don’t it’s too close I don’t want I don’t want it to be so close I’m not that I can’t be I’m not like that way doesn’t mean I can’t do it that I won’t stop it God Jesus Dad stop stop it stop it so much so close…”
     After a few minutes he seemed to remember I was there.  He stopped yelling, took his face out of the pillow, and asked me very calmly if I would please leave.  His face was very red from all the crying and screaming, and I simply nodded and left the room.  My dad’s jaw had been broken from the kick, and I’m pretty sure he and my mom had heard him going crazy from downstairs, but none of us directly referred to the incident ever after.  I still didn’t know what the deal was with Theo, for I hadn’t the courage to bring the subject up to him, and to that day my dad still tried to connect with him.  I think by then he knew it was hopeless, but he still tried.  He was a good dad.
     And this is all partially why I didn’t want to come to this damn wake.  I’d been living my life for the past eight years very contently with half of the United States between me and my immediate family, hardly giving any of this negative stuff a second thought.  Being among all these people only reminded me of how screwed up it all was, and how much I really enjoyed not participating in the family.  It’s true, sometimes, at night when I couldn’t sleep, thoughts of my grandmother would make their way into my head and haunt me a bit.  But I got over those by the next day, needing only a healthy dose of boring work to keep her off my mind.  Yes, living apart from my family was definitely a good thing, I had decided.  I didn’t need any of this in my life.
     I then told Theo that our mother wanted to see him, and dad went off with him, leaving me alone with the photo displays of my dear Grandma Paulina.  “I wonder if it would be impolite for me to step outside and have a cigarette,” I thought, glancing through all the pictures.  “Of course it would,” I replied to myself.  “Everything is impolite when someone else has died.”
     When Theo and my father left, my solitude made me aware of the casket right behind me, and the dead body of my grandmother inside of it, plain as day for anyone to see.  Feeling daring, I slowly inched my head around towards the body, wondering if maybe I could withstand at least looking at it from a small distance.  Slowly, slowly I turned my head to look behind me.  I had turned more than half way around when all of a sudden, icicles shot through my heart and I quickly snapped my head back to face the wall.  In the corner of my eye I had caught a piece of her long, dead gray hair, not ten feet behind me, and I was so frightened of it that goose bumps ran thick across my entire body, and I was shaking.
     I hurried myself to the other side of the room, feeling stupid for harboring such an illogical phobia, and sat down on a small green sofa.  I tried to keep my eyes down so that nobody would recognize me and at the same time not look too sad.  The sadder you were at one of these things, the more attention you got, and I didn’t want any of that.   I checked my watch: 7:21.  I spotted Jan and Nick in a corner of the room to my left, still without their Hannah, and I got very angry at them.  I hated young women because they reminded me of my ex-wife, I hated young men because they reminded me of myself, and I hated young happy relationships because I had never been able to be a part of one.  Or at least, I had never been able to stay in one.
     My marriage with Paige was now just one big regret, and I normally preferred to deny from myself any thoughts about it.  We had met and fallen in love during college, and after graduation we decided to get married and have a kid.  It was all so fast and exciting, and I remembered those years after Michael’s birth as the happiest of my life.  I was so different back then, it was hard to believe all those things had really ever happened.  Paige and I worked together as a couple fantastically, and Michael was my entire life.  We were barely hanging on financially, but that was okay.  We were having fun and living.
     We both worked hard to pay the bills, so we had my grandmother baby-sit Michael five days a week, almost every week, for the first few years of his life.  And when I finally was working high up enough to support us all and Paige stopped working to take care of the house, we still dropped Michael off at her house every Sunday for the afternoon.  He liked his great-grandmother, and Paige and I appreciated the alone time. 
     Michael’s death destroyed everything.  I was shocked to numbness not only by the death itself, but by the weight of the decision I had made.  That was what being the man got you: decisions like that; that kind that nobody wanted to make.  Right after the death, I was practically a vegetable, and Paige divorced me three months afterwards.  She didn’t blame me for it, not in the slightest, and I knew that.  But I had changed, greatly, and I was in no state for a marriage.  And for those three months, whenever she looked in my eyes, I could tell all she saw was her dead, lost son, and it made her miserable.  So just like that, the two best things in my life had been taken away from me.  And on top of it all, my grandmother held it against me.  She actually blamed me for doing what I had to do.  I’ll never forget that terrible conversation I had had with her at Michael’s funeral.
     So I ran away.  I moved to Seattle, away from my family and friends, and focused on working.  The death and divorce had turned me into a hard, cold creature with no real will to live.  I had contemplated suicide, but I realized I didn’t have the guts, and so I figured I might as well just go on supporting the economy until death eventually came for me.  It was a sad kind of lifestyle, up all alone in my loft every night, waiting for the next day of work, but it was surprisingly comfortable.  I grew accustomed to it.  And now, eight years after my divorce, I was bitter and shy.
     I was sitting there on the couch, thinking all about my past (that’s what being around my family does to me), when a man sat down next to me and put out his hand for me to shake.  He was tall, bald, and somber looking.  I thought he must have been in his fifties.  He looked like he might have been a reverend, but he had on no kind of attire to show of it.  I shook his hand, a little grossed out to discover he had a bad case of spider veins across it.
     “Hi, Jacob, my name’s Randall Walec,” he said, finally putting a smile-like curve to his mouth.  “I’m your Great Uncle, being one of Rose’s brothers.  Remember me?”
     He gave me a second to look him over, and though I had no real intention of trying to place him, I humored him and put my eyes up and down him.  I shook my head.
     “Yeah well I guess I can’t really expect you to.  We met only once, about twenty-somethin’ years ago at Joyce Morawski’s wedding, and you couldn’t have been older than 15 at the time.”  He smiled at looked around the room.
     “Ha ha, well I’ll admit though,” he went on. “I expected somethin’ different from you, hearing that you were such a big businessman now and all.”
     I smiled politely and gave him the middle finger in my head.  I really disliked him.
     “But look, I know you don’t like talking too much, I heard that straight from your mom, so I’ll just get down to what I wanted to ask you,” he said.  My interest rose.  “Well, see, I’ve been the main arranger of the funeral and all, settlin’ all the bills for all the older women, pickin’ out the coffin and all of that nonsense, and well, when I heard you had come down here all the way from Seattle, I thought I’d ask you if maybe you’d like to say something tomorrow, at the funeral.”
     My heart sank.
     “What do you mean, ‘say something’?” I asked.  This was the only thing I’d said to him so far, and my voice sounded strange to me.
     “You know, like give a little speech, sayin’ basically whatever you want about Paulina to all of the funeral,” he said.  “It doesn’t have to be long, but I thought it might be nice if you’d say something.”
     I looked around the room for my mother, and I spied her watching me and Uncle Randall talking on the couch from across the room.  She had put him up to this, or at least steered him in the right direction, and she hadn’t told him that I had been planning to not attend the funeral.  She was sneaky, all right.
     I told him I wasn’t going to be able to make it to the funeral and apologized sincerely.  He then very quickly left me, telling me that it was quite all right, but looking a little hurt.  Polish people can really make you feel terrible.  But I deserved it, I suppose.  I really should be attending the funeral, and I didn’t have one honest reason not to.  I felt very guilty.  “Oh, fuck it,” I thought.  “I’m having a cigarette.”
     I walked very quickly through the crowd towards the exit.  A few people called out my name, and I waved at them and smiled, but kept on walking.  I went back down the hallway to the front door and then through it out onto the front porch.  It was dark out, now, and a little chilly.  I walked over to the porch bench and sat down on it.  I probably looked a bit silly, as it was really a bench meant more for children, but I didn’t care.  I lit up a cigarette and took a puff, looking ahead of me with my eyes unfocused.  I felt very depressed.
     I had started smoking decades before to impress my friends, but now I had no friends and I was addicted.  Pretty bad deal.  But I had the money for it, and somehow felt that a longer life in which I wasn’t able to smoke would be significantly less satisfying than the shorter life that resulted from smoking.  I smoked two cigarettes, ascertained from my watch that it was 7:49, and lit up another one.  I was getting very anxious about my inevitable confrontation with my grandmother’s body when a little blonde girl ran up the steps onto the porch and sat down next to me.
     “Hello,” she said, smiling very widely.  She was a very pretty girl, and was wearing a cute little outfit for the wake.  My Arctic heart was somewhat thawed.
     “Hi,” I said, smiling back and continuing to smoke.
     “Who are you?” she asked, accenting the “you” and smiling almost mischievously.
     “My name’s Jake, and we’re probably family,” I responded, then had a thought.  “Is your name Hannah?”
     She nodded her head goofily and giggled.  “How did you know?”
     “I met your mommy a little while ago.  Aren’t you supposed to be with your grandpa?
     “Uh-huh.  We’re playing a game.  He closes his eyes and then he counts and when he opens his eyes he has to find me!   He’s somewhere right now.”
     She was full of glee and I couldn’t help but smile.  I remembered playing hide-and-go-seek with my grandmother.  I felt very bittersweet.
     “Do you like your grandpa a lot?” I asked her.
     “Huh?” she asked, and I repeated the question.
     “Uh-huh!” she answered.  “Mommy and dad mostly let me play with him all the time, and sometimes I sleep with him ‘cause I don’t wanna leave him.  He likes to do stuff that mommy and daddy don’t like buy me ice cream and play games and stuff.”
     “Yeah?  I remember, I used to get ice cream a lot with my grandma and grandpa, when I was your age.  I loved-”
     Suddenly, she saw something, screamed from excitement, and jumped off the bench.  She ran down the steps and off around to the other side of the funeral home laughing and flailing her arms.  Then I saw, coming up from behind me on the sidewalk, the man I presumed to be her grandfather.  He was slow and somewhat crippled, and he waved his hand and smiled at me to thank me for watching over her for a little bit, following his granddaughter around to the other side of the building.  He was limping, but smiling, and again I felt very bittersweet.
     Then, suddenly, the scene hit a chord in my head, and I had sort of an epiphany.
     “Of course,” I said out loud to myself, softly.  “How could I be so stupid?  The kids.  It’s all about the kids…”
     My mouth was open and I had dropped my cigarette, and I was staring at the spot where I had seen Hannah and her grandpa run off to.  It was very strange.  It was like I understood everything.  Or rather, it was like I realized just then that I had understood it all my life, but ignored it.  There were butterflies in my chest and tears at the edges of my eyes.  I felt terrible for every bad thing I had ever done to my family, knowing now how stupid I had been.  Something was pulling down very hard on my chest.  I guess I can’t completely explain it right, but I was amazed.  I instinctively stood up out of the bench and went back into the funeral home.
     I walked into the room where everyone was.  Everything looked so much more… simple.  Black and white.  I felt so confused, and yet unafraid.  I bumped into my mom.
     “Oh!  There you are, Jacob.  I was just looking for you,” she said.
     “Hi, mom,” I said, looking into her eyes, and then I gave her a tight hug.  She warmly accepted it.
     “Well what’s come over you?” she asked and laughed a little bit.
     “I love you, mom,” I told her.  “Really.”
     “Well I love you too, Jacob,” she said, and then gave me a hug.
     “Do you um…” she then started.  “Look, I think it would be really nice if you, well, you know, said goodbye to your grandmother now.  The wake will be over in about a half hour, and I know you have to leave early.  I really wish you’d make amends with her, you know.”
     “I know, mom.  I’m gonna.”
     I kissed her on the cheek and walked past her towards the casket, slowly.  I felt different after my moment on the porch, but now reality was slapping me back into shape.  I wished that I could speak with Hannah again.  Something about how innocent and carefree she was.  I think a bit of her perspective on life had reflected onto me, and a child’s perspective was something to be treasured.
     Losing the grip on my nerve, I arrived at the casket, and seeing that my Aunt Rose was kneeling in front of it currently, shuffled quickly back over to the posters of pictures.
     “Okay,” I thought.  “As soon as Aunt Rose is done, I’m going step up to the casket, kneel down in front of it, and tell my Grandmother Paulina what’s really in my heart.  This will be my last chance to talk to her, and I cannot blow it just because I’m afraid of her stupid lifeless body.”
     I kept the casket in my peripheral and focused on the photos on the wall.  I had already seen most of them now, and I tried to find a new one. 
     After a few minutes, the sobbing form of my Aunt Rose stepped away from the casket, and I knew I couldn’t go up there.  Even though I’d had the plan solidified in my mind and thought that I had been ready, when it was finally time to act, my nerve was all gone.  I was sweating like a pig, knowing my mom was watching me, trying to think of an excuse, when I found a new picture on the wall I hadn’t noticed yet.
     It was me, as a five-year-old boy, sitting at a table in an ice cream shop with my Grandma Paulina.  I had chocolate and strawberry ice cream all over my face and was looking at the camera, and my grandmother was helping to clean me with a napkin.  I was smiling with the entire bottom-half of my face, and I couldn’t remember ever seeing a picture in which I had looked any happier.  In my child’s face, I saw the reflection of little Hannah’s, too, and with my epiphany from the porch in mind, I turned around to face my grandmother.
     Inching towards the casket, now, I examined the body.  It was dressed up nicely in a purple and black dress, and several crosses and bead necklaces had been put around its neck.  Its face looked old and wrinkled, yet plain and frighteningly white.  Its hair was gray and straight, and it came down past the body’s shoulders.  The absolute void of life in the body terrified me, but it was much too late to turn back now.  There was no expression on the body’s face.
     I knelt down in front of the casket now, around which there were several lit candles.  I clasped my hands together, quickly glanced at the head of the body, and then closed my eyes.
     “Hello,” I said to her, in my mind.  I paused for a second, trying to find the words.  “If you are now in death as you were in life, then I know that you would not want me here today, at your wake.  I was very reluctant at first to come, but now I understand that it is good that I did.”
     I felt a sort of force in the back of my head which made me feel like she was listening.  It was probably only psychological, but it affected the way I talked to her.
     “What you never understood about what happened between us was that I was hurt too.  I understand why you felt I was being selfish, but I think perhaps your sorrow blinded you from the fact that I had lost something as well..
     “I was never able to believe you when you claimed that the loss of Michael was much more painful for you than it was for me.  He was my son; my seed.  I had been there when he was born, I taught him his ABCs.  His first word was ‘daddy’.  You saying Michael meant more to you never made any sense to me.  But just a little while ago, I was looking at the pictures they put up on the walls here of you, and I think I began to understand a little.  You were lonely, in your old age, and you had nothing but your memories with you.  Michael was, and I quote you, your ‘only beacon of happiness’ in your life.”
     Now I started to whisper my words, not being able to contain them solely in my head.
     “But how can you blame me, Paulina?  What would you have done?  We waited an entire year, and you know we weren’t rich.  I realized, while we had been waiting for a sign from Michael, that there comes a point when you have to decide how much is enough.  And that was impossible for me.  It would be impossible for anyone.  How can you gauge something like that?  How do you measure the units and make the calculations and decide exactly when the right time to act is?  You can’t, grandmother.  You can’t!”
     I was starting to get very worked up, now, and I felt like there were a million different sounds going off in my head at the same time.  I had no idea whether I was whispering or screaming.
     “But someone had to, nevertheless!  It couldn’t go on forever, and the way it was looking, it was going to go on forever without someone taking some action.  Someone had to say, ‘Okay, that’s enough, now pull the plug’!  And of course, that person had to be me.  Me!  You have NO idea what it was like to make a decision like that.  NO idea.  When a man’s son gets thrown into a coma just because the son wanted to learn how to ride his bike and make his dad proud and some IDIOT just happens to be driving drunk on the same block, you THINK that would be enough!  But no!  A year later, a year of pain, and suffering, of lost hopes and unanswered prayers, that man has to decide to SENTENCE HIS OWN SON TO DEATH!  His SEVEN-YEAR-OLD son!  I, alone, had to choose to take away high school from him.  And college.  And a career.  And LIFE!  My son would never get to have a first kiss, or learn how to drive, or have sex, or get drunk, or write a book, or get married and have kids and live happily ever after, because I had to decide to pull the plug on him!  And I have to live with that on my conscience for the rest of my life!”
     I could feel the sweat and tears running down my face, but I was not inside of the funeral home any more.
     “And so after all of that.  After watching my seven-year-old son get hit by a car and nearly bleed to death, standing by his bed for hours every day as he lay there emotionless for a straight year, making the decision to pull the plug on his life support system, effectively taking away his entire potential life, and three months later signing the divorce papers to the one and only woman whom I’d ever in my entire life felt any kind of romantic attachment to, YOU get upset with me because you weren’t going to have your little Sunday playmate anymore.  I understand that you loved him and I understand that he meant a lot, maybe even everything, to you, but no matter what you’ll ever think, he meant WORLDS more to me than he ever did to you.  At least you got a happy life for a while.  I was 31 when this happened, and I don’t think I will ever recover.  My life might as well be over.”
     I was crying very hard now and the words were difficult to put out.  I took a deep breath.
     “But I feel as though I’ve learned, today, Paulina, ironically at your wake.  A family may not be perfect.  It may have its problems, plenty of them in fact.  Everyone needs support in life from someone who understands them, and that’s why families stick together.  We hold each other up in times of need and we learn to accept each other for who we really are.  But above all other things, a family sticks together for its children.  Because a child without a family is lost, and a lost child is a terrible thing.  The children are carefree, and loving, and feel a profound and immeasurable attachment to their relatives.  Some of them forget about this when they grow up, but it never truly leaves them.  And when they finally learn to accept the attachment; that inescapable and undeniable bond to the people who brought them up; then they know that no matter what comes up against them, they will always have a net to fall back on.
     “I apologize, grandma.  For not realizing this until it was too late.  I wish you could be here right now, so we could embrace this connection I’ve just now found.  And I also forgive you, for not embracing our connection either.  I wish, that instead of running away from each other and becoming defensive after the death of Michael, we had embraced each other and mourned together.  I feel that it would have been better, and that maybe both of us could have come out of it at least somewhat stronger.”
     I was becoming more lucid now.  I coughed a bit, as my throat felt hoarse, and I wiped my eyes a little.
     “I hope you can hear me, grandmother.  Because I want you to know, that I’m sorry, and that I love you.  I love my family.  I hope that your soul and mine can both now have peace.”
     I opened my eyes and stood up.  My face and coat were both wet with tears.  There was a soft ringing in the back of my head, but it was starting to fade away.  I looked down again at my grandma one last time.  She looked different than she had before, but I could not quite place how.  Was she smiling?
     I turned around from the casket.  Everyone in the room was dead silent, and staring at me.  They had all heard at least most of what I’d just said to my grandmother.  Heard me crying and screaming, like a child.  They had heard my most deep and inner thoughts, ones I hadn’t dared to express in all of the eight years I had held them. 
     My first idea was to sprint through the crowd for the door, and never see any of them ever again.  But I looked into their eyes.  I saw faces familiar and unfamiliar; people I knew by name and people I don’t think I’d ever seen before.  But in all of their eyes, I saw the same things: love, and understanding.  They were my family, and past all of the strangeness and unfamiliarity, we all felt the connection of our blood.  I saw my mother, and father, standing next to brothers Jim and Theo.  They all looked very proud of me.
     I checked my watch, and saw that it was 8:11.  I thought that maybe I would go to the funeral tomorrow.

Date:	2005-12-22 23:10
Subject:	Chapter One: Winter Solstice
Security:	Public
Mood:	crazy
Music:	"When Good Dogs Do Bad Things" -The Dillinger Escape Plan

                The two of them were walking along through the snow.  A recent blizzard had turned the place into a regular ghost town.  Harrison felt that the scene deserved a kind of music box melody, but the silence outside was so complete that even your own thoughts seemed to echo throughout the streets, as loud as the voice of God.

                “So… where are we going this time?” he asked with reverence.  Harrison had never felt entirely comfortable talking to Dylan.  It was as if he was always preoccupied with something other than the situation at hand, and every word Harrison said was a waste of his time.  Harrison’s mind would become riddled with anxiety for Dylan to respond every time he chanced starting a conversation.

                “Hell, you know where we’re going, man,” said Dylan.

                Even though Harrison really didn’t have the slightest clue as to where they were walking, he felt severely relieved that he had been answered.  Dylan’s voice was like a drug, and Harrison was addicted.

                The two reached a corner, and Dylan led the way to the left, east, away from the center of town.  Not for one second did a look of deliberation cross Dylan’s face.  He knew exactly where he was going, and he had planned every step of the route beforehand.  Harrison stared at Dylan’s forehead and wished he knew what was going on inside that crazy brain of his.  Surely he knew something that no one else did.  He was wise beyond understanding, and the only reassurance Harrison needed of that was a look at his face.

                Dylan fit in well with the winter weather, because most of everything about him was white.  He had a mop of fluffy white hair on top of his head that, even though Harrison knew Dylan never touched it, looked perfectly neat, and his thin, simple complexion was downright lurid.  His expression was neutral yet certain, and his stride was confident yet inoffensive.  If he had to guess, Harrison would say he was about twenty-two years old.  What really nailed Harrison about Dylan’s appearance, though, were his piercing, bright green eyes.  In those two emerald discs existed all of the beauty, truth, and knowledge in the world, and whenever Harrison’s eyes met them, he felt as though Dylan could see all the way down into his soul; his secrets and his sins naked and exposed for Dylan to judge.  Harrison tried to avoid making direct eye contact, but Dylan often seemed to enjoy forcing him to.  Dylan knew the power he had.

                “Let’s take this alley, huh?” said Dylan, and the two turned and made their way down one of the town’s many anonymous back streets.  The buildings on either side were very tall, and Harrison suddenly felt very isolated.  It was a dark and lonely alley, and it made him feel sad.  A train somewhere far off blew its horn.  They continued along their course.

                After another ten minutes of walking they emerged from the tall towers of East Valley and arrived at the beach, which served as the town’s eastern border.  They would probably have continued building this damn town out for miles if it weren’t for that ocean, thought Harrison.  Thank God for it.

                Dylan led the way out across the snowy beach towards a small peninsula of rocks.  A fair wind came out from the sea and tugged at his hair.  Harrison wrapped his coat tighter around himself, and, when he was certain that Dylan intended for them to climb out onto the rocks, had the funniest idea that Dylan was plotting to murder him.

                Harrison thought it was strange seeing a beach in the winter.  Icy winds and a foot of snow really aren’t what you think of when the word is spoken.  If anything, this was much more of a shore than a beach.

                There was less snow on the rocks than there was on the ground, but Harrison was still very cautious as they finally reached the base of the line of boulders and made their way along it towards the ocean.  Dylan was very fluid in his strategic use of each rock’s distinct shape to make his way down the promontory, and Harrison admired the sheer natural beauty of his movement as he shakily crossed the slippery path.

                Dylan reached a high rock near the tip of the peninsula and stood at the top.  Harrison saddled up onto a lower rock right next to it.  He looked out into the ocean but could not find the horizon.  The dark, icy waters of the Atlantic became duller and duller the farther you traced them out, until eventually they blended perfectly into the grey winter sky.  He looked back out behind him where East Valley should have been, but saw only the silhouettes of its buildings, shrouded in the mysterious mists of the falling snow.  It was a dull, grey place, with only the wind serving to him as a reminder that he was anywhere at all.

                Dylan spoke to the ocean; his eyes unfocused, as if they could see things all the way on the other side of it:

                “It’s strange, to observe, how simply a person can confuse his past experiences with his dreams.  Memory is an unreliable tool to define reality with.  When drawing from his mind’s memory, a person might also draw from the dreams he’s had.  This distorts his reality, and makes him think the impossible plausible.  It causes him to act irrationally; against all of his reason and logic.”

                Harrison was interested in what was being said, but was listening only absent-mindedly.  He usually found that it was easier to understand Dylan by not thinking about what he is saying, and just letting it soak in.  He focused his attention on the churning sea, and allowed Dylan’s melodic voice to orchestrate the scene.

                Dylan pulled a cigarette out of his pocket and closed his eyes as he lit it.  He took a long drag, let it out, and continued:

                “I don’t think that… that this confusion of dreams and reality is accidental.  I think instead that it is a function of the subconscious, to allow the conscious mind to do this.  The subconscious mind holds, among other things, a person’s most basic and primalistic desires.  It is childish and blunt.  It is the summary of that person’s most fundamental and forthright hungers, though of course, the way the subconscious functions is anything but forthright.  But when the conscious mind is put to rest, the subconscious is let out to play, and express its truth.  And it does its best to… to hide these truths in terms that the conscious mind can understand, and remember, when it wakes up.  Our dreams are often set in familiar locations, or are about subjects that the conscious mind may have been obsessing over recently.  The subconscious blends its truths about its owner with scenes not unfamiliar with the conscious mind, in hopes that upon waking, or even in attempts to remember past experiences, its truths will be expressed in the consciousness and duly acted upon.”

                Harrison took a chance.

                “But, well…” started Harrison, but then lost his nerve when Dylan turned his head to look at him.

                “No, go ahead,” Dylan said, giving Harrison a reassuring smile and taking another drag from his cigarette.

                “It’s just that, well, it’s like you’re making the subconscious out to be some kind of creature living inside our head,” Harrison explained.  “I mean, it’s not like some little devil in all of us trying to get what it wants.  It doesn’t have desires to be fulfilled.  It’s not conscious, and it can’t make decisions.”

                “That’s a good point, but you’re taking what I’m saying a little too literally,” Dylan replied.  “It’s useful to personify the subconscious when talking about it to better explain what I’m trying to say.  But you’re right; it is not a conscious being, but simply a big bundle of thoughts and ideas that we can’t completely acknowledge consciously: an iceberg just below the surface of the ocean of conscious thought.”  At this Dylan smiled and pointed to the very ocean they were standing at the brink of to comically illustrate his point.

                “Well then how can you explain the idea that the subconscious is ‘hiding’ ideas in our dreams without personifying it?” asked Harrison. 

                “It is simply carrying out its function as a part of the mind, which is driven by the basic human activity of trying to obtain for itself what it wants,” was Dylan’s answer.

                Here there was a pause, and Dylan took a long, thoughtful drag on his cigarette.  The waves lapped up against the snowy rocks.

                “I believe that the subconscious mind is more directly in touch with the soul than the conscious, and that the subconscious draws its truths from the soul,” Dylan continued.  “Or perhaps, even, the conscious is equally in touch with the soul as the subconscious, but because of how it operates, is disabled from identifying truth from the soul as clearly as the subconscious does.

                “Dreams are crazy little things, Harrison.  They can make places you’ve never been to feel familiar, and they can turn your best friend into your worst enemy.  They can tell you more about yourself than your parents can.”

                Dylan turned himself towards Harrison and looked him straight in the eye.  Harrison was powerless.  He couldn’t for the whole world break eye contact with him now.

                “Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you, Harrison?” said Dylan.  “I’m trying… to explain.  Explain why I’m doing what I’m doing.  Why I’m here, and what my intentions are.  You know what I believe the meaning of life is, and you know what I believe about the soul.  Our dreams: they’re hints!  Clues to what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives!  They are pure, and true, and full of beauty.  Do you understand?”

                “I… I don’t know,” Harrison nervously offered.  Dylan had made less sense before, but Harrison didn’t know what was wanted of him right now.

                Dylan sighed and finished his cigarette, flicking it off into the wind.  He looked again across the ocean, and he talked now as if in a trance.

                “Every day, Harrison, I’m letting go more of my memory and taking in more of my dreams.  I’m accepting them: letting them inhabit me.  The two are twisting together like a double-helix.  I’m trying to do what’s right, Harrison, but it’s so fucking difficult.  It’s confusing and it makes me want to hurl.

                “I am depressed and I am lost.  And I am confused.  But I know my purpose, and I will chase it down to the bitter end.” 

                Harrison considered this, and suddenly realized how strange it all was.  He hardly knew Dylan, and could rarely relate with, let alone understand, what he had to say.  But here he was, during the dead of night on Winter Solstice, sitting on a bed of rocks with him and listening to what he had to say.  Though intensely touched by and sincerely curious about what Dylan was saying, Harrison felt that the best he could do was only humor him.  Dylan was infinitely more complex than himself, almost God-like in proportion, and it was not for Harrison to understand him. 

                “You’re leaving East Valley soon now, aren’t you?” Harrison asked.  “You… you know that you’re beyond me.  You’ve taught me and I like to think that I’ve taught you, but we’ve reached our… our limit.”

                The wind that now whistled between the rocks complimented the stillness of the scene well.  That was the most honest thing Harrison had ever told Dylan, and he could tell that Dylan had felt it.  A strange grin stretched across Dylan’s face.  Nostalgia, maybe?  Harrison could not tell.  It was the smile of someone who had the ultimate wisdom.  Dylan spoke to him:

                “I imagine a day when my purpose will be fulfilled.  When I will have no use for dreams anymore, because I will be living them.  My conscious and subconscious minds will vibrate in harmony; fact and fiction unified.  I will align my mind to my body and soul, and finally I will be able to rest…”

                Harrison felt his heart tremble under those big, green eyes.  Deep down, though he did not understand it, he knew what Dylan was saying to be true.  Completely and uncompromisingly.  All at once, Harrison understood.

                “Follow your dreams, Harrison,” Dylan pronounced, and looked out over across the ocean.

                Harrison looked out there with him, and through the snow and clouds; through the mysterious and the unknown; he saw it, too.

Date:	2005-12-09 23:49
Subject:	For the great hereafter, this looks a hell of a lot like Utah...
Security:	Public
Mood:	curious
Music:	"Glory and Consequence" -Ben Harper

Well Christmas certainly seems fast approaching. Funny though, I used to start and quickly finish my Christmas list within a week after my birthday, with minor alterations through the next few weeks. Now we've but three weeks until the day and I don't have a single present asked for to speak of. I'll think of some things when I get around to it, but I guess it's just become so much less of a priority, it's strange. And of course it won't feel as special as it did when we were kids, but that is well established. I don't really like getting presents. I mean I like having them but the actual receiving process has always felt awkward to me. I hate having to say I like something and express emotion and stuff towards it. Even if I do really like the present. I don't know. All I want for Christmas is the filling I know must be out there.

I hate those stupid things the Coldplay main guy has on this fingers. Thinks he's so cool. I don't like Coldplay in general. A handful of their older songs are nice though.

Oh, and I have decided to end it. Permanently. I'm tying the last loose end there is, and leaving it for good. I WILL just screw things up more, so I am ending it now. Soon, at least. (EDIT: Oh God, NO, I am not talking about my relationship with Caroline. Sorry if it sounded like that, which it probably did.)

Beauty. I don't know how to describe what it is.

Wait I'll try.

Beauty is truth. But that isn't all it is. Beauty is so much more, and though I can't think of what, I know there is more. Maybe it's just one of those things, like love, that no one can quite define, but you just know it. Beautiful things are examples of everything that is good about humans. Nature can be beautiful, but it's more about how something natural reflects onto the person that observes it that makes it so, and not it itself. Something inside of me tells me that beauty is intrinsically human. Beauty is goodness manifest physically. Beauty lets us see through the mirror. Cracks in the wall of the Earth that let us glimpse the ultimate truth. The Ultimate Truth. God, even, maybe. Humans create beautiful things, like art. The beauty is inside of them, though, and the art is their best attempt of showing others that beauty. The beauty from inside of them. And where does it come from? Beauty is the only evidence I can find (other than that anything exists at all) that there is some purpose to us being here on Earth. It tells me that there is more to us than just flesh and blood, bone and brain. That there is something bigger going on, that drives us. Beauty is not physical. It is a concept, a feeling, representing something more than something physical. Physical things we deem beautiful (nature, art, even other people) are not, by the definition I am trying to get at, beautiful. They represent the beauty within people, or they trigger the beauty within ourselves. A painting is the physical representation of the painter's beauty within himself, and it helps us to not only understand his beauty, but to find similar beauty within ourselves. When we see a gorgeous landscape of mountains or a green, lush field near a pond, we think they are beautiful only because the feeling of beauty that the natural scene reminds us of is so abstract. Beauty cannot be completely defined (In that one would not be able to tell someone else exactly what it is. They may very well though define it for themself in their head, but would not be able to fully explain it to others.) so we pin it on physical objects. Perhaps beauty comes from the soul.

And what is the soul? Does the soul even exist? It is possible. I define the soul as everything that every person has that is neither physical or mental. It is the final piece of the human puzzle that makes one complete. Let us refer to "God's Magical Cookbook of the Universe" to better understand what I am talking about.

RECIPE FOR MAKING ONE FULL, COMPLETE, BONA FIDE HUMAN BEING:

1 BODY
1 MIND
1 SOUL

Bake for 9 months.

Let simmer for 18 years.

NOTE: Will probably not be good for more than 70 or 80 years.

The body's purpose is to allow humans to exist in the physical world and interact with it. The mind's purpose is to allow humans control over their bodies and to serve as a proper media for making decisions. The soul is a bit trickier, and of course, like the rest of this, I am only speculating. First off, an important function of the soul is to give humans the ability to make choices. The deterministic argument that because the brain is in it's entirety a physical object and operates under completely physical rules can be disproven by the existence of the soul. Yes, the mind appears to operate in a systematic manner and people will consider their options before making a choice in a way that may appear determinable, but I believe that one purpose of the soul is to give humans (in a completely abstract and almost incomprehensible manner) the ability to, when it all comes down to it, make a choice freely. And in that way, free will can exist. The soul gives us free will. It could also theoretically give us other abstract ideas we can't completely explain yet, like love, or reason. Basic human goodness. The truth about what is actually good and what is actually bad. The soul is exactly what makes us human. It tells us that killing other people is bad. But then perhaps free will collides with this in a sometimes uncooperative way. People DO kill other people. And perhaps that's the way it needs to be. Forcing a person to do good gives no insight into whether or not that person is actually good. Giving him a CHOICE to do good, or to not, does.

But if we were to then suppose that there ARE universal human "laws" (like "Do not kill other people"), then we might come to say that everyones souls are the same. Or that maybe even each persons soul is one part of a larger "soul". Like, there is this one, big, ultimate soul thing, and everyone individual persons soul is just a chip off of the bigger one. I think it would make sense that everyones soul is the same. That would give everyone the same set of values as everyone else, and could be applied practically, for example, in creating a set of universal human rights. But then why do people act differently? Some obey these laws, and some don't. (We don't actually have to define these laws to use them practically. To just assume that there are a certain set of laws out there somewhere that all humans should follow is enough to say that some people obey them and some don't, since the spectrum of human action is huge.) So why do some people obey them and some don't? Perhaps differences in the mind. Or even body. Maybe... but both of them seem less likely then differences in the soul. Even more compelling though is the idea that people act different because of their surroundings, and the things they've experienced. This sounds plausible (maybe even OBVIOUS). And then you could even draw from that the purpose of life, which would be that, every humans purpose in life is to, no matter what their environment has presented them, find their soul. No matter how hard the world around you presses you in the opposite direction, you must use your soul-given reason and soul-given free will of choice to find out exactly what is right and what is wrong. To discover the truth of humanity, and the truth of the world. Theoretically, this is an inward journey. The truth is inside you. And me. In ALL of us. It is in our souls.

This doesn't necessarily prove the theory that everyones soul is the same. It is very possible that every persons truth is different. But it seems likely that at the very least, everyones souls are similar. That they all have at least some properties in common, but depending on each person, have other properties unique to them. Everyones body is different, and everyones mind is different. Why should everyones soul be exactly the same, as well? But also, everyones mind and bodies have inherent, necessary properties that exist in every single body and mind on Earth. So I think we could draw from that that the same is true about the soul. Take it that our purpose here is to find certain truths from our souls. John Q. may find different things in his soul than Jane Q. might, because their souls are different. But assuming their souls are SIMILAR, some of the things John finds from his soul may be the same things Jane finds from her. And so then what determines what is in one soul and what is in another? Necessity? What John needs from his soul may be different from what Jane needs from hers, and so they find different things. But then does this imply some sort of predeterminism? How can it be known (by God??) what John and Janes souls will need if it is not known what will happen during their lives before their souls are "created" when they are born?

And so I come to an idea that, right now, in my tired, almost delusional state in front of this glowing piece of technology, sounds most likely to be right, from what I've drawn out already, at least. It is that everyones soul is exactly the same, and holds all the exact same things as everyone elses, but that, during the course of their lives, because of differing external forces and environments, different people are supposed to discover different things from their soul. There are parts of the soul, therefore, that other people are meant to discover (I say meant to because, though this may be our purpose, this purpose is not necessarily always fulfilled. People are supposed to find truths from their souls, but perhaps often a person will choose not to try to, or will ignore or deny anything they might find.) that you are not meant to discover. So in a sense, you are missing out on the entirety of the soul. But that is okay, because it is not your purpose to discover the entirety of the soul, but only the parts that are necessary for you to carry about your life in a way that is RIGHT. Perhaps there is someone who is meant to discover the entirety of the soul, because it is necessary for him to do so. Or perhaps the world of people on Earth is meant to come together, and share what we know (If that is possible? It may not be. The fact that the soul is so abstract when thinking about it with our minds may render it impossible to correctly explain truths we may discover from it to other people.), so that we can discover the Ultimate Truth of the world. The one, master soul, from which all or our meant-to-be-discovered-parts of our souls are taken from.

Oh yeah, beauty. That is where this all started from. Right? I went off on a rather capacious tangent, there. OR DID I? Beauty is the truth that we are supposed to extract from our souls. Like I have said several times, this truth is abstract. The soul is abstract. It is not easy to understand, and it is not easy to put into words. So what else can you do, to express it? You can paint. Or draw. Or even write (just, not directly about the truth). Use colors as your words. Change your environment. Use what you are given to get what you have in your head out into the world. It can help you understand yourself, and it can help others understand yourself and THEMselves. Beauty is not physical, art is physical. The physical attempts of representing the truth we cannot understand in our heads in the physical world.

We can only make the best of what we have. We have the physical world. Some of us have some truth. What have we done? We have done our best to merge the two, and have created ART.

There is the soul. From the soul we can obtain truth about the world. We interpret this truth as beauty, because it is too abstract to easily understand. We transform this beauty in our heads into art in the world. There is art.

Soul becomes truth becomes beauty becomes art.
SOUL BECOMES TRUTH BECOMES BEAUTY BECOMES ART.

Date:	2005-11-27 00:50
Subject:	We'll drape the world in thin perfumes, we'll hide ourselves between twin moons...
Security:	Public
Mood:	okay
Music:	"Willie the Pimp" -Frank Zappa

Aleia said she liked reading my updates, and I'm a snip bored, so I figured I'd saddle up and write something worth ignoring.

Honestly, lately, I've felt like something is wrong. With my life, with everything. With what state I'm in, and how I'm carrying myself along. It's like things have been changing so subtly that I haven't been noticing, but now that I have finally focused on them, they're all completely different. At any point in my life right now I could step out of my body, look at myself, and think "Who the fuck is that?" I just... I don't know, should I be here? Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing? Am I denying myself the things that I sub-subconsciously know I need? Fuck I don't know. I never make sense anymore.

A MESSAGE TO ALL OF THOSE PEOPLE WHO INTERPRET MY SOFT-SPOKEN-NESS AS WISDOM OR HIGHER CONSCIOUSNESS: Go piss off.

Is it bad to look back in life?: What good is having experiences if you can't look back on them, and learn from them? Who we are and what determines the way we act is based almost completely on how we have acted towards things that have happened to us in the past: subconsciously or not. What's the point of something even happening if it isn't at least somehow remembered in the future? I mean, this is life. This is YOUR life. And mine. But then I suppose looking back on life, and living in the past, are two very different things. Wanting things you can never have back is a complete waste of time. The future is the only hope for any of us. You have to walk forward, but be mindful of what has already happened, if you wish to do any considerable amount of good. Maybe.

I love making up inside jokes with myself. I just did. I've "Amsterdam" by Guster stuck in my head, and in my head I replaced the chorus with "Gonna knit you a sweater, gonna knit you a shirt." I think it's really quite funny.

So lately I've been thinking about college (this has stemmed from the overall feeling of different-ness I talked about above). And not just college but also after college. Gettin' a career, building a home, possibly creating a family. I'm afraid of all of this for mainly two reasons. The first is that I am afraid that these experiences will change me. My perspective, to be more specific. As much of a fuck-up as I honestly am, I rather like my level of consciousness. My self-awareness, and my feeling of duty and place. But I'm afraid that college and all that may completely change that. I don't want to be a different person. And I want to be in control of my actions, which I don't feel, if the change I have in mind occurs, I will. I never make sense anymore. The second being that I don't want to leave Oak Park. Or the feelings that I have attached to it. I like it here. I enjoy the simplicity of my life that can essentially be found completely within the 8 square miles of Oak Park. I like the people that I know here, and I enjoy a level of notoriety that pretty much any person has in his or her hometown. To put it in a more cliche way: It's a big, bad, scary world out there, and I don't want to leave my home.

But not-knowing is life, and so is risk.

Third time's the charm: I never make sense anymore.

Third times the charm: Third time's the charm.

No technically then, that would be the fourth time.

Cash: You know, it's a free country, Tango.
Tango: Yeah.
Cash: And people are free to do whatever they want.
Tango: So?
Cash: Well, your sister is very, very free.
Tango: I'm going to kill you.

One more cup of coffee for the road
One more cup of coffee before I go

To the valley below.

Date:	2005-10-24 21:18
Subject:	A big ol' house anna aligator...
Security:	Public
Mood:	bouncy
Music:	"Gone Going" -BEP

Wow! It's really quite amazing.
And nice.
So relieving!
I can think about her now and not get that crazy pulling feeling in my stomache.
I feel great! Like I can do anything!!!

And she really likes me...

No Sarah's 80's party for Dylan. He is not smart. Poor Dylan.

Aside from not getting to play World of Warcraft, and making myself look like an idiot in Math, I'm enjoying school right now. The massive amounts of homework give me stuff to do, and I get to see people I normally wouldn't. I'll lose it soon, but I'll take it while I can.

And aside from being pretty depressed right now, I'm kind of happy. I have to write Julia a letter.

Teehee they played that song at the pool today and it reminded me of Bethany and Ashley and of how much I hate my life right now.

But lifeguarding has been okay. It's sorta fun being at work, just because of the community.

And I have about 700 bucks saved up, now. Cha-ching.

but i do miss that feeling


Did Abbey mean "pseudo?"

AGH! This is KILLING me! Bethany just signed off, and I have NO ONE to talk to Harry Potter about! Everytime a new HP book comes out and I read it, I get re-obsessed and my mind is constantly focused on it. I need to know who everyone's favorite character is! I have theories on the last book I need to tell people!! DON'T YOU PEOPLE UNDERSTAND?! I'm dying. I need to talk about Harry Potter. I can't stop thinking about it.

Date:	2005-05-28 23:56
Subject:	All the nightmares came today, and it's looks as though they're here to stay...
Security:	Public
Mood:	tired
Music:	"Kooks" David Bowie

Today was my first day of actual lifeguarding. Exciting. It pretty much made watching paint dry look like the Kentucky Derby. All of 8 people in the whole pool the entire 3 hours.

So after that, everyone was at Aleia's party, so I spent a good few hours at the Harry Potter website looking up information on the new book. I'm basically REALLY pumped now, and the next month and a half is going to drag on like no other. AGH I can't wait!

Then I read the end of "The Goblet of Fire," and then the beginning of "The Sorcerer's Stone." I swear, Dumbledore is so much kookier in the first chapter of that book than in any of the others in any of the books. I guess maybe it's because Voldemort was just destroyed, but still. He seems so much wiser and respectable later on. I love him.

Actually it's really all about Remus.

Oh, not to MENTION the movie coming out in November. "Goblet of Fire" is my favorite of the books, so I've got big expectations for this one. I'm really excited for Moody, and the challenges, and (trying not to spoil much of anything, if it even matters anymore) the final scene in the graveyard.

You must have been phlegmatic in stature
The gates of thanos are a spread eagle wide
You let the shutters make sackcloth and ashes
Out of a blind man's picaresque heart

You take the veil
You'll take the dive
You take the veil

It's not over till the tremulant sings
These ides of march
Are they so make believe
How tempts the revenant
Slice up and not across

You take the veil
You'll take the dive
You take the veil

A mass of gallon sloth
As flys have walls for feet
A rapturous verbatim-someone said but who is to know
And when you find the fringe
The one last hit that spent you
You'll find the ossuary spilling by the day

Iconoclastics had it coming for years
They know the prisons that you have yet to fear
Where thumbs hide inside of sleepingbag mouths
Adlib your memoires by casting a drought

You take the veil
You'll take the dive
You take the veil

A mass of gallon sloth
As flys have walls for feet
A rapturous verbatim-someone said but who is to know
And when you find the fringe
The one last hit that spent you
You'll find the ossuary spilling by the day

Knife me in -hobbeling
Talking in it's sleep again
Knife me in-hobbeling
Talking in it's sleep again

The one last hit that spent you
And you will find
The greatest fucking lie
Of aneurysm vespers
The ones that pile
Up the greatest fucking lies

Knife me in hobbling
Talking in it's sleep again
Knife me in hobbling
Talking in It's sleep again

Virulent hives- of bedpost piles
Virulent hives

Who brought me here
Forsaken,depraved and wrought with fear
Who turned it off
The last thing I remember now
Who brought me here
Forsaken,depraved and wrought with fear
Who turned it off
The last thing I remember now
Who brought me here

Date:	2005-04-10 17:29
Subject:	His bedroom window, it is made out of bricks...
Security:	Public
Mood:	bored
Music:	"Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" -Bob Dylan

I was riding on the Mayflower
When I thought I spied some land
I yelled for Captain Arab
I have yuh understand
Who came running to the deck
Said, "Boys, forget the whale
Look on over yonder
Cut the engines
Change the sail
Haul on the bowline"
We sang that melody
Like all tough sailors do
When they are far away at sea

"I think I'll call it America"
I said as we hit land
I took a deep breath
I fell down, I could not stand
Captain Arab he started
Writing up some deeds
He said, "Let's set up a fort
And start buying the place with beads"
Just then this cop comes down the street
Crazy as a loon
He throw us all in jail
For carryin' harpoons

Ah me I busted out
Don't even ask me how
I went to get some help
I walked by a Guernsey cow
Who directed me down
To the Bowery slums
Where people carried signs around
Saying, "Ban the bums"
I jumped right into line
Sayin', "I hope that I'm not late"
When I realized I hadn't eaten
For five days straight

I went into a restaurant
Lookin' for the cook
I told them I was the editor
Of a famous etiquette book
The waitress he was handsome
He wore a powder blue cape
I ordered some suzette, I said
"Could you please make that crepe"
Just then the whole kitchen exploded
From boilin' fat
Food was flying everywhere
And I left without my hat

Now, I didn't mean to be nosy
But I went into a bank
To get some bail for Arab
And all the boys back in the tank
They asked me for some collateral
And I pulled down my pants
They threw me in the alley
When up comes this girl from France
Who invited me to her house
I went, but she had a friend
Who knocked me out
And robbed my boots
And I was on the street again

Well, I rapped upon a house
With the U.S. flag upon display
I said, "Could you help me out
I got some friends down the way"
The man says, "Get out of here
I'll tear you limb from limb"
I said, "You know they refused Jesus, too"
He said, "You're not Him
Get out of here before I break your bones
I ain't your pop"
I decided to have him arrested
And I went looking for a cop

I ran right outside
And I hopped inside a cab
I went out the other door
This Englishman said, "Fab"
As he saw me leap a hot dog stand
And a chariot that stood
Parked across from a building
Advertising brotherhood
I ran right through the front door
Like a hobo sailor does
But it was just a funeral parlor
And the man asked me who I was

I repeated that my friends
Were all in jail, with a sigh
He gave me his card
He said, "Call me if they die"
I shook his hand and said goodbye
Ran out to the street
When a bowling ball came down the road
And knocked me off my feet
A pay phone was ringing
It just about blew my mind
When I picked it up and said hello
This foot came through the line

Well, by this time I was fed up
At tryin' to make a stab
At bringin' back any help
For my friends and Captain Arab
I decided to flip a coin
Like either heads or tails
Would let me know if I should go
Back to ship or back to jail
So I hocked my sailor suit
And I got a coin to flip
It came up tails
It rhymed with sails
So I made it back to the ship

Well, I got back and took
The parkin' ticket off the mast
I was ripping it to shreds
When this coastguard boat went past
They asked me my name
And I said, "Captain Kidd"
They believed me but
They wanted to know
What exactly that I did
I said for the Pope of Eruke
I was employed
They let me go right away
They were very paranoid

Well, the last I heard of Arab
He was stuck on a whale
That was married to the deputy
Sheriff of the jail
But the funniest thing was
When I was leavin' the bay
I saw three ships a-sailin'
They were all heading my way
I asked the captain what his name was
And how come he didn't drive a truck
He said his name was Columbus
I just said, "Good luck."

Happy Birthday, Bethany. I hope you're having a good time in Florida.

I'd call your cell phone and wish it to you, but I don't know what I'd say, and you don't like me. But, I am in school right now, so I risk getting caught by this obnoxious woman who continually patrols through the isles in the computer lab making sure we're not downloading porn, and she's pretty scary.

So anyways, happy birthday. I love you. Get your license soon.

Date:	2005-04-03 10:53
Subject:	Girly so groovy...
Security:	Public
Mood:	distressed
Music:	"Army's On Ecstacy" -Oysterhead

You know, I've decided that I don't care if my mom can read this now or not. She probably won't again, anyways.

Ugh, I have a pain in my back. I slept on the linoleum floor of a kitchen inside of a house owned by a girl that I barely know, and only for about three hours, at best. And it looks (And FEELS, oww) as though I cut myself a bunch of times while I was drunk.

And I couldn't get that girl out of my mind.

New girl.

Well, not new, but different.

I don't have the patience so much anymore to write the really long, partially meaningful entries. I guess you'll all just have to go get some books. Or continue whatever you normally do.

Sin City: very enjoyable. Favorite guy: Dwight (See Mark!!) or Kevin. Favorite girl: Gail. Marv and Hartigan were both very bad ass. Actually, a lot of them were really bad ass.

So yeah, I think I want to see it again.

So Spring Break (Should it be capitalized?) is over. Yes indeedy. I knew from the start that it wouldn't be terribly exciting, but it didn't turn out half-bad. We beat Resident Evil 4, for one thing. Fuck yes.

Lose your dreams

and you


could lose



your






mind.



Okay, I have decided to relate Sin City characters to my friends. Here we go.


Dylan Joyce IS... Dwight!

Because I'm a selfish bastard who wants the best character. He SORTA looks like me!!


Caroline Condon IS... Goldie!

She reminded me of her from the start. They're both blond, pale, and look good with lipstick. Plus their hair is like, exactly the same.


Charles Jarasek IS... Jack Rafferty!

They both have longer, greasy hair, and both are creepy.


Elaine Riley IS... Gail! (I couldn't find one of her alone)

Me and Elaine are lovers, so I thought it only appropriate to make her character my character's lover. And they're both black. I think they look sort of alike. Haha..


Mark Olson IS... Hartigan!

Not sure exactly why. It just seems... right. Mark could be a cop, I guess.


Bethany Sluiter IS... Nancy!

I just wanted an excuse to put up this really hot picture. Haha, no, Jessica Alba has actually always reminded me of Bethany. Except for the whole, seductive dancing thing.


Timothy Mathieu IS... Josh Hartnett's Character! (Haha)

A small role, I know, but he just reminds me of Tim. Plus, Tim helped me figure out just what his role was in the movie.


Mara Stern IS... Lucille! (The one of the left, obviously)

I dunno, she sort of reminds me of her. Not much to say about that.


Michael Perna IS... Marv! (Left again)

They're both really strong, wrestler-type guys. You know.


Aleia Murrawski IS... Miho!

Because I'm a racist, racist bastard.


Kevin White IS... Manute!

Hahahahahaha


Ashley Broas IS... Becky!

Heh, just because Ashley really likes Gilmore Girls.


Laura Bates IS... Shellie!

Well, we needed a Shellie, and I saw Laura this morning, and she just made me think of her. I can see it.


And, just for kicks, here's a cool picture of me (Err, Dwight) from the comic book.



P.S. None of my friends are cool enough to be Kevin.

You are Donnie Darko! You are confused and mentally
unstable but you are a truly great guy who just
wants to love, be loved, and not die alone.
"I promise one day everything will be
better for you."


Which Donnie Darko Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Sweet. I wish.

But then I guess I'd be dead.

For 17 years.

Date:	2005-03-20 11:57
Subject:
Security:	Public
Mood:	groggy
Music:	"Providence" -Sonic Youth

Masturbation is the prettiest invention God ever reluctantly subjected himself to.

I watched "12 Monkeys" last night, and I've realized that I really, really like that movie. Damn it, today is going to be depressing. I know it.

I'm honestly getting worse. I was bad in 7th grade, then worse in 8th, then worse in 9th, and now I'm worse than I was in 9th. I'm gaining a lot of courage and tolerance to do things I shouldn't be doing. Like cutting myself, or drinking and smoking weed. Friday night, I cut myself deeper and longer than I ever have before. And I couldn't help but laugh.

My depression is forcing me to read a lot, too. I usually skip lunch to read, now, and a lot of the time when I'm not drinking, smoking, or being happy with the guys, I really just want to leave everything and read. I'm a fast reader.

-I've tried to make this entry shorter.{

I've made it sound like a drink and smoke a lot, though, which I certainly don't. I'm careful to use them in moderation. I'm just saying, I'm really happy when I do them. It's so much easier then to not think about the only things I think about when I'm sober. Or with the guys, of course.

And being with the guys, during the happy and un-boring times, makes me happier than anything.

So it turns out that Julia is the one that recommended me for the appointment with Mr. Larson, the school counselor guy. My mom was lying because I guess he told her that Julia didn't want me to know that she recommended me. When I found that out, I was half pissed and half relieved. Pissed because I hate therapists, but relieved because I love Julia. That's the ultimate decision, isn't it?

I promised her a few weeks back that I'd go see him again, but I didn't. I haven't gone back in a while.

Sometimes I really don't know who cares about me and who doesn't. There are only 4 people (Guess) that I can always be really sure care about me. Everyone else is more or less a toss up. That's why new and different people, even if I've known them forever, are scary. And I'm so ugly, too. That never helps.

How come no one ever comments on the stupid entries? 4 out of the 5 last updates have been stupid.

I'm becoming more and more comfortable with the idea of killing myself. Not enough to do it, though. Not yet. And I always figured I'd only have the courage to shoot myself, but now I'm thinking maybe something more like slitting my wrists.

I think my grandma is going to die, soon. If she does, I'm gonna get depressed for a while. If that's okay.

All these days are depressing. What's the point of carrying on if you're never happy? I want to just drop down into the middle of the street and drown myself in a shallow puddle. Sometimes.

So Bethany has a new boyfriend. When she told me about him, I decided the best way to go about dealing with it was acting immature about it, getting drunk the next day, and then cutting myself. Not necessarily in that order. It pisses me off so much that she can just go off and get another boyfriend only FIVE months after I'VE broken up with HER. The flowers put near my grave should be LONG dead before she goes off and starts fucking some other [person that I am not very well aquainted with].

Sorry, I'm just joking. I know she can move on. I'm just really pissed off about it.

I was a really bad boyfriend to Bethany. Like, seriously. This one isn't even for the attention, I mean it. I just, I don't know. I'd rather not say what I feel about this. But, I really wasn't worth her 14 months.

I was a really bad boyfriend to Julia, too. But I guess I was about worth her 3 months. Give or take 3 months.

Hahaha...

Things with the parents are bad.
Things with school are TERRIBLE.
Things with the bitches are as stupid as ever.
But I'm super, thanks for asking.

Hey, shut the fuck up!


*assorted screams and cries*


I SAID, SHUT! THE! FUCK! UP!!! *shoots ceiling*


*everything goes silent*


How many of you know this boy?? *points with the gun at the student, who cringes*


*silence, with a few girls crying*


How many of you know him???


*still no one says anything*


All right, you! *points with the gun at a nearby girl, sobbing* Come up here!


*girl staggers up and starts bawling*


Do YOU know this boy?


*girl looks at the boy and nods, crying harder*


Do you LIKE him?


*girl nods again*


If you had the choice, who would you kill, him or yourself?


*the girl starts to say something, when just then four policemen bust into the room through the front door*


SHIT! *shoots the boy in the head, grabs the girl, and jumps out the window*


*the girl breaks 7 vertabrea as she's used to break his fall, and he darts across the school football field as fast as he possibly can*


*breathing heavily* God damn it! *shoots the driver of a passing blue toyota in the face and hops in*

Date:	2005-02-19 14:23
Subject:
Security:	Public
Mood:	blah
Music:	"Desolation Row" -Bob Dylan

They're selling postcards of the hanging
They're painting the passports brown
The beauty parlor is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes the blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad they're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady and I look out tonight
From Desolation Row

Cinderella, she seems so easy
"It takes one to know one," she smiles
And puts her hands in her back pockets
Bette Davis style
And in comes Romeo, he's moaning
"You Belong to Me I Believe"
And someone says," You're in the wrong place, my friend
You better leave"
And the only sound that's left
After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row

Now the moon is almost hidden
The stars are beginning to hide
The fortunetelling lady
Has even taken all her things inside
All except for Cain and Abel
And the hunchback of Notre Dame
Everybody is making love
Or else expecting rain
And the Good Samaritan, he's dressing
He's getting ready for the show
He's going to the carnival tonight
On Desolation Row

Now Ophelia, she's 'neath the window
For her I feel so afraid
On her twenty-second birthday
She already is an old maid

To her, death is quite romantic
She wears an iron vest
Her profession's her religion
Her sin is her lifelessness
And though her eyes are fixed upon
Noah's great rainbow
She spends her time peeking
Into Desolation Row

Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood
With his memories in a trunk
Passed this way an hour ago
With his friend, a jealous monk
He looked so immaculately frightful
As he bummed a cigarette
Then he went off sniffing drainpipes
And reciting the alphabet
Now you would not think to look at him
But he was famous long ago
For playing the electric violin
On Desolation Row

Dr. Filth, he keeps his world
Inside of a leather cup
But all his sexless patients
They're trying to blow it up
Now his nurse, some local loser
She's in charge of the cyanide hole
And she also keeps the cards that read
"Have Mercy on His Soul"
They all play on penny whistles
You can hear them blow
If you lean your head out far enough
From Desolation Row

Across the street they've nailed the curtains
They're getting ready for the feast
The Phantom of the Opera
A perfect image of a priest
They're spoon-feeding Casanova
To get him to feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self-confidence
After poisoning him with words

And the Phantom's shouting to skinny girls
"Get Outa Here If You Don't Know
Casanova is just being punished for going
To Desolation Row"

Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row

Praise be to Nero's Neptune
The Titanic sails at dawn
And everybody's shouting
"Which Side Are You On?"
And Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot
Fighting in the captain's tower
While calypso singers laugh at them
And fishermen hold flowers
Between the windows of the sea
Where lovely mermaids flow
And nobody has to think too much
About Desolation Row

Yes, I received your letter yesterday
(About the time the door knob broke)
When you asked how I was doing
Was that some kind of joke?
All these people that you mention
Yes, I know them, they're quite lame
I had to rearrange their faces
And give them all another name
Right now I can't read too good
Don't send me no more letters no
Not unless you mail them
From Desolation Row

I really just want a girl that I can come to from behind, hug her around her neck, and kiss her on the cheek.