Eloquency Also

Here lie the remains of profiles past, here for your perusal, and my embarassment.
Enjoy!

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9/06/06
Sometimes thoughts get heavy with thier own importance.



Sometimes they fall like fruit, overripe, to the ground below where they burst with colors many-hued; pulpy and warm and sickly sweet.

Sometimes you have to let go.

Sometimes all the purple flowers are in someone else's field.

Sometimes I'm terrible terrible horrible bad at people. At being kind to them. At loving them. At being loved by them.
Sometimes I want to divorce myself from them, with 'irreconcilable differences' as the official excuse.
Sometimes.

Most times I'm reasonably happy. I have friends. I have a job and the prospect of money and things and new relationships and something to do with my time. I have talent. I have a more-or-less everyday life in upper-middle class america to look forward to every morning. I have a dog who loves me unconditionally, a pair of cats who love me for food. I eat my fill almost every night.
And yet, I seem to fall just out of place in all things I come to. I eat my cereal with a spoon I salvaged from a box if frosted flakes when I was eight. Or a spork. I already don't fit in with my coworkers because I don't get wasted or stoned every weekend or pretend that a dead rapper is my 'homie'. I write semi-lucid stream of conciousness ramblings whenever I put a pen to paper, and use some measure of understanding of these distilled thoughts as a criteria for potential lovers. I judge people too often, and forgive them too easily. I love office supplies, especially pens. I put ever-increasing amounts of faith in my dreams. I want to go to school in New York. I hate Jack Sparrow and Napoleon Dynamite for the same reason... but love both of thier soundtracks.

Sometimes talking to me is a battle. You have to fight for my attention... give me things to ramble about and ideas to leap from and fodder for conversation. I will forget to answer. I will make it hard for you.
But I'd like to think that in the end, it might just be worth it.
Sometimes. Maybe.

http://improveverywhere.com/

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8/31/06
... you turn the corner and there's John Travolta in drag, taking a drag on an unfiltered cigarette, runnin' his finger down the run in his stockings. Just sittin' there. Starin' off into the infinities of space with smoke dancin' around his auburn wig, dancin' to the beat of the gay bar (gay bar) that sits just behind the brick wall at John' (Juanita's? you think) back in the dull, muggy, summer night of zero o' clock dreamland time ... Where J.R. Cash fell on that saw instead of Jack, who went on to travel all 'round the south preaching about the evil of rock & roll music and teachin' the bible to those who couldn't teach themselves. That is, right up until he starts having dreams about burning rings of fire and lines you walk on and eventually just shoots himself because life isn't any fun if you know you're crazy ... Where a young Hitler's dreams of becoming an artist weren't crushed by obsessive idealism but accentuated by it; where his acceptance to the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna was, by some mixup, accepted. Where he worked his hardest at something he loved... making it all the more difficult to handle when a critic called his work 'mediocre' and 'plagarized'. A dreamland where a still young Adolf, hands still stained by oil paints, was found dead of alcohol poisoning behind a Vienna pub. One in which the Nazi party rose anyway, with a different face at it's head, maybe with a leader a little less charismatic, but still powerful in the eyes of his followers ... Where Christains came up with the theory of evolution first, and scientists fought it tooth and nail ... Where there had been a North-West passage, and the British used it to colonize not just the East coast, but the West coast as well ... Where pigs bit like adders, and chicken tasted like snake, and Eve was seduced by a Lobster ... Where English never really caught on as a language ... Where Neanderthals had been a wee bit better at surviving, and subsequently men found women with a little hair on thier chests quite fetching ... Where John Travolta finishes his fag and stands with practiced ease on six-inch heels, winking as he sees me rounding the corner, taking note of my pains to avoid eye contact as I walk past him and the vibrant day-glo of the bar's interior, the too-loud strains of 'Keepin' Alive' driving me evere ever onward to see what's around the next corner ...

http://improveverywhere.com/

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8/8/06

QUOTE OF THE DAY!

(...or until I decide to take it down) -

"Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his Life."  -Terry Pratchett

...

[Hackworth] thanks YOU for not sending him stupid messages!

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Dramatis Personae

GOD;akaThe Almighty Father, ELOHIM, The First and the Last, Alpha and Omega, etc.,theCREATORof all things.

James;our protagonist

Jenny;a damsel and one with whom I share myinnermost PITH

Haylee;aka[Kalloe],a friend and confidant

Michael;aka[Peregrinus],akaJACK SPARROW,a friend of superior morals and connections within the costume industry

Julie;akaJu-Lay, [Particle Girl],an ex., now friend and barrista extrordinaire

Grant;aka[Nanerean],costume enthusiast. draws, sews, pastes and exudes sexlessness

Francesca;akaFrankie, [bodhranbabe],an ex. turned friend. the only jewish rower James knows.

Her;akathe ex,any number of James'romantik conquests that now haunt hisCONSCIENCE.namely,[dasvidanye], [NitroFlory], [a;fdjklv], etc.

Samantha;akaSam, Sammy,andsexy beast,a journal or one of many incarnations ofJames'female subconsciousness made evident on paper

...

* http://www.last.fm/user/GrinningJim/ *
MY MUS(za)IC


...

A lovely bit or randomness in a desperate attempt to give you (the reader) a somewhat more accurately biased perspective on me (the writer):

Alton Brown is my hero. Oreos are Manna. I rarely date... I'm too weird for most. European Nuttela is the purest thing that has ever come from a hazelnut. Athens is my favourite city. I spell things oddly if I think they look better, and I make up words. Sometimes my hearing goes out in my right ear for no reason, and I can hear the way my voice really sounds. My ear... is bleeding. I like the faint smell of cigar smoke.

I always find something to entertain me in my surroundings.

I watch people. There are almost always people around to watch, as the world is currently populated by 6,476,139,943 (give or take a few hundred thousand) of them.
Therefore, most of the things I loathe somehow involve me being alone, having to focus on something alien to my mind.
Namely, MATH.

I abhor those who intentionally ignore ignorance. I, for one, know that I'm an ignorant prat. But I'm an ignorant prat who reads for five hours out of the day and has no intention of ever really leaving a scholastic setting.

Update!

Meat Loaf (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meat_Loaf) rocks my world.
So do -
Benny and Joon
P. G. Wodehouse
L. Ron Hubbard's sense of humor
Downtempo beats
Continent-spanning friendships
Wikipedia 
Taboo, Risk and Mao (the concepts and the games both)
Brilliant covers of good songs (ask and you'll recieve)
Argyle
Italics
The Leningrad Cowboys (especially thier covers of 'What is Love' and 'Happy Together')
Pencil sharpeners
Katamari Damacy
Moosetracks ice cream

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11/9/05
I wake up in Athens in the wee hours of the morning, with a perfect view of the Acropolis lit up from beneath by spotlights out my bedroom window. The sound of traffic is omnipresent in the closeness of my room, but I'm so accustomed to it that I'll hardly notice.
I rise, take a long, hot shower, dress in something casual, and make my way downstairs to the lobby. There, my cab driver meets me, and we plunge into the awaiting stream of traffic as the sun rises behind us.
I meet my beautiful young editor for breakfast in a little café on the North edge of the Plaka. I have hot chocolate and a danish, and scribble idly in the margins of my notepad, watching her out of the corner of my eye. She smiles often, sipping at some dark brew. We talk.
The morning passes by. Tourists stream constantly, gawking and talking too loudly, and my editor and I escape down a small, narrow Alley between buildings. We walk for a while, absently admiring the architecture and the sheer ancientness of the stone foundations and crumbling cathedrals. We buy our lunch from a small shop, and find a low wall to sit on. She's new to the city, so I point out little details as we eat. A girl passes, selling carnations with fortunes rolled up in the stems. I buy one for my companion, and she attempts to refuse it... but I insist. The stem is easily split, and we unroll the fortune together. Unfortunately, it's in Greek. She laughs as I sound it out, my tongue stumbling over the letters.
We part, then, having appointments at opposite ends of town. She kisses my cheek, spouts some final witticism, and disappears among the crowd, carnation in her lapel. I walk back home in a daze, passing by the long block-long animal store without noticing the smell. A man tries to sell me a stack of stolen CDs, and I gently ignore him...

I write about my editor, finding inspiration in the memory of her eyes. The sun tracks through it's vast heavenly parabola as the afternoon waxes late, and becomes early evening. Lights in the street flicker on, vast strings of them strung here and there, interwoven with ivy on the trestles above open-air dining rooms. I make my way down to one of these, greeting a waiter by name and shaking his hand. He brings me some decadent Italian soda, and I order. His restaurant serves Indian cuisine, and I fidget idly in anticipation of the meal. When it comes, it smells heavenly, and I have to chastise myself for eating too quickly. A young man at another table asks if he can join me, for he, too is alone. I cheerfully accept, and we make pleasant conversation while we eat. I discover he's a member, visiting from afar. 'The rest of my tour group is insane,' he says 'and they've been drunk since six.' I laugh, knowing how it is all too well. I ask him if he wants to join me an a friend later, in my apartment, and he gratefully agrees. I give him the address, bid him goodbye, and make my way back to my flat. There's a message on my machine from my editor, wondering if I'm willing to do anything that evening. I immediately call her back, and make the same invitation made to the boy in the restaurant. She sounds mildly disappointed that the two of us won't be alone that evening, but agrees to come anyway.
They all arrive within five minutes of one another... a young Greek journalist who I'd met the year before, my editor, and the student. The journalist and my young friend hit it off immediately, and spend the evening trading anecdotes and book quotes, and my companion and I talk quietly in the corner.
The hour draws late, and we draw together. The other two seem to take it for granted that we're together, but it takes us almost the entire evening to figure it out for ourselves.
The student excuses himself, claiming the hour as his excuse. My journalist friend follows soon after, and the two of us are left alone. I take her to the roof of the building, and we watch the stars for a while, our backs to the Acropolis, and to the world. Somewhere in the city, a clock strikes midnight... and everything is perfect.

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10/17/05
He has heroes, like the rest, but his are uncommon. Men of the past whose lives have now faded and no pictures remain of, who can only be realized in flights of fancy built on the thin foundation congealed from the dross of other men’s memories and whatever physical monuments they’ve left behind.
Robert Hooke – Architect of post-fire London. By all accounts an ugly, twisted man… he never married, nor did he sire any illegitimate children on whores, as was in vogue at the time. He was a brilliant Natural Philosopher, a contemporary of Isaac Newton (the bastard) and good friend of Christopher Wren. He knew Leibniz, and supported his claims that he had invented the Calculus independently of Newton.
These things make him a great man… or at least a man of great accomplishments. But they do not make him a Hero. Much as giving money to charity does not make you a hero, or a firefighter doing his job makes him a hero. There are other qualities, most ephemeral, that shape the soul into that of a truly heroic person. These are qualities of character, qualities of spirit.
Robert Hooke is a hero of James’ because he wishes to emulate him. Hooke, while having discovered a great many things, having deigned a great number of architectural breakthroughs, having been a savant in the archaic sense… having done all of these things, he counted his greatest achievement and asset his ability to see; To watch; To look at the world with a child’s perspective, and not give in to the fallacy of knowing things. His was a world of wonders, and his time was one in which things were being discovered and re-discovered on a daily basis.

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10/15/05
Thoughts are muddled, true enough, but curously clarified in the late evening hours as mother sleeps on the couch and watches star trek recorded at two o'clock but only now released from it's hardware prison. Light and tinny sounds of the TV turned low drift down the stairs and pollute the corners of my eyes so that I go a little insane just trying to think beyond the moment and what's to do with tomorrow, and what's to do with my beating beating breaking heart that refuses to be silent in the wee hours when my thoughts should be quiet and my emotions tuned low to the frequency of sleepers and potheads and not the lovers who dance between the bedsheets and drive me insane with thoughts in the corners of my eyes that blend with the tinny sounds and the jumping lights on my bedroom wall. So I turn on the radio to drown one of my senses, and close my eyes against the others so that I am a bastion against the world, a prison of quiet emotions and pent-up thoughts requiring only the knowing eyes and listening mind that I know lurks somewhere out there beyond my cardboard walls and beat-up jeep that sits in the silent starglow and creaks with age and the heat of the day leaking through the atrophied metal and faux-leather seats, blending with the scent of borrowed cologne and ancient fries and dreams of escape etched into the windowshield like a spiderweb, each line reflecting the next. Especially in the sunrise, with the brilliant and deafening glow that creeps above the uneven horizon and the lip of my hood, shining through the cracks and spliting a million times to dazzle my eyes and leave mirrors of the spiderweb lingering in those corners that collect so much, including the strain of the days and the record of my opened-book face. The slate where my emotions shine through like a foglight through water, casting curious shadows around the crooks of my mouth and the flare of my nose, the cock of my head and the widening of my eyes with the influx of knowledge, chalked up with the other scores as lines that gather on my brow to meet in a phalanx of concentration and worry. Muddled thoughts pass like spectres, and my heart keeps beating a little-too strongly in my chest, pumping the dregs of the days emotion from the deep bilge of my kidneys and bowels, recirculating them one last time up and down and in and out, through my arms and around my legs 'till I tingle with nostalgia and love like old wine that you find is now vinegar from sitting alone too long on the bottom shelf. Gone awry. A priceless vintage of emotion now bad from waiting too long to consume - the last of it's year at the highest of prices, flawless and singular in a world of cheap highs. You'll not make that mistake again, says I into the darkness, and I open my eyes to the shadows of the the television, and deep-night thoughts of lovers far away and minglings of another night's dream of girls with fey smiles and wits deadly keen who carve from my soul a sculpture so priceless I hide it away from the eyes of the world.

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9/19/05   
    Summertime, in the city.

Crossing the leafblown excuse for a car-street that runs through the center of the town, I bump into you. You drop something precious with your curses, and I take it and walk away. You never see me again, but you miss that thing the thing that you can't remember. The thing the thing that used to hang at the corners of your laughter and the deep breaths of the warm vanilla AC after sex.
You dearly miss your thing the thing. You blame your lover, you blame the president with his polotik droll, you blame the dog and you even blame the shower.

Your laughter dries up with the summer winds, and the smell of rot and life that drifts off the water only makes you retch in the dead of night. You grow old with the days in August, and come September the bitterness of losing that one thing the thing that you can't remember for the life (and death amen amen amen) of you... it too falls away, and leaves only sadness and obeisity and cable bills dried up on the kitchen counter. Your lover has long since gone away... the president and his war is a liberal's memory... your shower smells like sulfur when you remember to take one in the mid-afternoon heat.

You want it back? I never took it. It was never mine to take, out there on the car-street with the cyclists like honeybees buzzing by and the children singing dark and happy songs. It was never mine to take, old friend. It was only yours to forget with the seasons of your age, to slough off like time on a procrastinator's shoulders.



Happy-ness, you fool.

...

These is the Price of Peas

Grass mowed down before their houses
Pottery kilned before its time
Tall lemonade in dark, cold glasses
Painting walls before their prime
Lightning striking lowly meadows
Wavelets breaking on the shore
Cameras flashing old poor widows
Apples rotten to the core

...

Sometimes the long way is the easy way down into the limelight the headlights shining down the long street the dark street winds amidst the homesteads the homefront looms on the edges of our borders our boarders leave because it's summer and summer breathes inside the lover's kisses, sweet in the hollows of my neck and whispering in my ear the loveliest little things and goosebumps spread along the curve of my spine my spine tingles with the water's touch touching to the corners of my mouth like lunch that launches the commuters homeward.

"...the shortest distance between two points is a... "

Lining luminescent that limns the lady luna as she limps across the latitude to lie beaneath the limit.
Ahem.
Lest my loquacious laxity loosen latent lingual limbs (oh languorous language!), I'll leave it lit for laymen to liken, languishing locked in L.




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http://www.harryandthepotters.net
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http://www.livejournal.com/users/iharthdarth/
http://www.superdickery.com/