smile.

i have no idea how to start this or where i am going with it all. i've erased my own words several times this evening, hoping to put down exact thoughts, but failing miserably. i know that today it was there. i felt it. i saw it in her smile, the smile that i would like to imagine that only i can put on her face. i looked up, and there it was. i wanted to giggle like i would have when i was five, i was overcome with joy. that is a moment i will be lost in for as long as i have the ability to remember. in that second it came clear. i know now what i hadn't been dreaming of knowing. in that split-second, it made sense. neither one of us expected to be here, especially not at the same time, ever again. this wasn't planned upon, this is an inconvenience. however, in that smile i saw what i did know all along. no matter how many days pass, no matter how distant it gets, there is nothing that will change that feeling she gives me. i know if i walked away tomorrow and reappeared so many months or years from now, she would still not be able to contain that look. the one i know must be written all over my face. also, i found out today, that if i were to runaway, never to return, she would still wonder years from now what would have happened if only i stayed. it was humbling. i am encapsulated. usually this is where things get tense, i start to over analyze every motion in the situation. this time i feel calm. i have a sneaking suspicion that i have shattered the time table that has worn so ragged on my mind. i feel like my day will come. i feel like my day may not be here, but one day it will come.

listening to -

i'm wide awake, it's morning - bright eyes

white gloves.

so it seems to steady. a gentle rocking that i am growing accustomed to. i can brace myself for the letdowns just as i can be guarded on the upswings. i sustain no damage at this point. i can see when it is best to hold the rail and just hold steady as the ship pitches starboard, and i have the presence of mind to not through myself headlong towards the railing when the waters look most appealing. this is a careful game we are playing, white gloves on a marble chess board pronounce the moves with quiet elegance. right now i am all smiles with this. i know not to get overly involved, but at the same time, i get to feel my heart race when our hands brush, when you set your eyes on me. maybe it will grow old as all things do with time, or maybe it will just end, its for a blind-folded fortuna to spin the wheel and decide the winner. right now my feet feel steady, my head clear, and my hopes are arching for the blue skies. the fall is starting, and i am starting to fall. slowly though, i am not going to get ahead of myself, the careful dance continues, like the one in your parent's kitchen, locked in a ray of sunlight so many months ago. the last time i felt truly alive was with you in my arms as book of love played through the radio. now i'm starting to get that feeling again. i'm not sure if i like it.

listening to -

falling out of love at this volume - bright eyes
violet hill - coldplay
you can do better than me - death cab

turned rowboat.

slowly now, you can't be too careful ya know? make sure that you don't let your guard down, make sure to stay indifferent. you know this same thing happens every time, and then it is just the greatest let down in history, outshining even the last series of sparkling tragedies. just be careful, okay? okay? no. in that moment there is no decision, no conscious thought. there is just her, while everything else dips and swirls like a swell off the eastern seaboard. she is the peace set into the middle of that eddy, she is the calm on the water. i have no choice but to grab absent-mindedly, a toddler in a candy store being constantly foiled by the glass of the display counter. obstructed. what is in the way? i have no idea. i have no clue. there is something, and i may not be sherlock holmes, but i'll be damned if i can't get to the bottom of this one way or another. more than likely i will just end up looking at the bottom of the bottle, pausing to think of the bottom of the barrel, the end of this case long forgone for thoughts less subtle. the storm is pressing the shore, blurry divisions drawn in the rain strewn sand. let's hope this over turned rowboat can outlast the sea.

listening to -
still fly - big tymers (still fly)
a hard rain's gonna fall - bob dylan (the freewheelin' bob dylan)
never had it - flobots (fight with tools)

it won't happen. it never does.

yesterday i came to the rather startling realization that i love her. i see her and want to walk up behind her and wrap my arms around her, just because they fit. i know she will crane her neck and smile up at me and things for those split seconds will be more than okay. they will be right. i see her walking down the halls and i feel the air knocked out of me when she turns and says hello. it feels so different than it has recently. a warm wind filtering through the doldrums. i ache for her, the empty-hearted, bright eyes inspired aching that i thought had faded away with high school football games and saturday nights shooting movies with andrew. when she is away from me i can't help but ring my hands in nervous expectation, knowing that she doesn't exactly love me back, and even if she does, she isn't going to come to grips with it anytime soon. she makes me want to run down the block screaming at my neighbors, coffee in hand, swathed in bathrobes, that i have found the most beautiful, smart, caring, and perfect girl in the entire world. a secret i can't help but blabber around town because of the way she makes my veins overflow with youthful exuberance and speculation. she gives me a feeling that i am on the edge of my chair, watching michael jordan sink a jumper over bryan russell in the 1997 nba finals. however, maybe the most important thing is that other feeling. the one where the back of my neck feels like freshly-fired pottery, my skin breaks into shivers, and my stomach does more flips than shawn johnson in beijing. the one when i hear her say that it might work someday. the one i get when she doesn't call back for days. the one i get when she openly describes what its like being with someone else, and the one i get when she explains that i should understand. i would do anything, give everything, and walk around the world just to have her feel what i feel. it won't happen. it never does.

j.z. saved my life

last night a storm was building just to the west of this city. the thunderbirds swooped and dove, painting the skies with lightning each time they would beat their wings. i was lost in thought as i absent-mindedly changed lanes, watching the first few drops splat on my windshield. i grumbled to myself about the condition of my windshield wipers and then it hit me. eighteen-wheels, a whole lot of iron and one man. my mind was enveloped in the spin as i jumped the curb and crashed headlong into the brick sign marking the existence of a run down church. that was how quickly and suddenly it happened. i had been lost in thought moments before, ostentatiously arguing with myself about her. i had run the situation up and down in my down so many times it looked as though i would easily exhaust myself, tears welling. however, then the singular thought hit me, james zaffiro. that was it. no, there wasn't more to the thought, just j-z. a smile crossed my face and eased the lines in my brow. it was all okay then, and drove the next six blocks in continued silence and she didn't cross my mind again, all it had taken was zaffiro to knock her from my head. odd.

watching the rails.

garbage. i can't write anything but garbage. i'm too focused on the actual writing and not enough on the other aspects which fill the page. my arms are trembling from utter exhaustion, and my mind is off attempting to pay my speeding ticket before a warrant is issued for my arrest at three in the afternoon. i want to leave town on a freight-train. it's raining. i would get soaked and then wind would cut my flesh though my cheap rain coat straight to the bone. looks like i'm stuck watching the rails head towards the great western freedom, and the interstate pave the way to southern familiarity. here i stay, my lonely northern outpost sheltering for at least a few more seasons. i will cop out, i always do. there is no coast, there are no mountains, there is just here. there is just this. the game is up, at least for today.

listening to -
lost - coldplay (viva la vida)
easy - faith no more (buzz ballads)

world jumble.

i hate being told how to write. i have a basic respect for the rules, for the technicalities, for the things that make good writing good, however, i hate to be called on them. this presents a major problem when i duck my head through the door and walk into composition class. we listened to an audio program that instructed how to operate a mechanized writing program that will critique all of our work before our professor will be allowed to see it. i understand the need for screening, some pieces of writing could use a spell check, some reformatting, and other minor adjustments, but i feel like that is where computer editing should end. how can a computer tell me if i am using too many verb? i write as a relief. i take pride in my writing, when i choose to, which is a great deal of the time. writing fuels my passion to read, reading ignites my will to speak, and speaking kindles what forces me to write inside. i need to be able to write for understanding and clarification. words in print across the artificial screen can anaesthetise any thought, giving the whim a place to be reflected upon, a safe haven to rest until the next occurrence. the way i can sit and pen sentences that could be easily separated into paragraphs should not be a problem. i have the courtesy to give the reader breath, but still that is my major shortfall. that and fear. i write on the edges of what is my concentration, disguising to many things in too many words. sometimes i feel like the worst writer in the world, shaking words inside a mug of alphabet soup. i think i just want to be read. to be heard, and identified with. i do write for me, but i still write for everyone else. i see it as an art, to be shared. that should make it impossible for judgement by an impartial hand. an emotionless console that can not interpret, let the words run up your fingers on the page, and settle somewhere deep inside you, setting your face aglow. i can paint the picture in a thousand words, and you will walk away with a deeper understanding of what you saw. you will remember more that that you just saw it. i can make you imagine that the next time you cough there might be something squirming through your tissue lining in your lungs, something in that black space, that you may one day cough out and have a pleasant conversation about the nyse with. the letters just build on a string, walking across the page and settling into their places. anyway, this is what they call a world jumble of my thoughts about composition class.

standing out.

two days, forty-eight hours, and a whole lot of minutes. a whole lot of moments. it has been a blur, head nods, high-fives, and hellos to half-familiar faces. crashing into choir late, she was there. i knew she would be. it sucked all the air out of me, rocked me back on my heels. i recouped and found a seat, more high-fives, my mind racing above the room in circles. encapsulated. i faded in and out of the conversation, the rules and regulations for a successful semester. then we caught eyes in the mirror. the same thought crossed both our minds: "maybe, someday, when we are both back in the same place..." the words that had echoed so empty last january, crossing two sets of eyes through one wall-sized mirror. i shook it off, made the thoughts cross through the mechanism that would leave me catatonic. back to the rules, no cell phones in choir on the threat of a claim to be your boyfriend, and then a jump back into outer space. don't think about it. then like a flash it was over, checking cell phones, grabbing backpacks, and shuffling out into the cramped hallways and off into life. that is all that went on, as far as i remember, for two days. forty eight hours. one moment that is standing out.

listening to -
no static - nappy roots (the humdinger)

this is an intermission.

last night this cold front pushed its way through the black hills and has arrived on the plains, sweeping out the twilight and bringing the crisp smell of fall. this is an intermission, soon the temperature will spike once again, but right now i need the seasons to change. since the early spring it has been summer inside my bones, and now the toll is starting to take, forcing a weathered ache to posses me. i am ready to watch the leaves turn from green to something more subtle. i want saturday afternoons filled with tests of the college grid-iron with my dad, listening to him carefully explain the way the left tackle should have countered differently. i am ready for walks where i can catch a shiver off the river's glass-top, forcing me to pull the hood closer around my face. i need the time encapsulating air that will flow down from the mountains and cleanse my lungs. i'm ready for the summer to be done, i'm ready for life to move on.

listening to -
hip-hop saved my life - lupe fiasco (the cool)
we are nowhere and it's now - bright eyes (i'm wide awake, it's morning)

lost in the night once again.

i'm feeling empty. content, but empty. i can feel the long winter depression setting in early this year. i don't want to eat. i don't want to sleep. i don't want to do anything but be left alone, forever. i can't find anything that i really want in life. i've been searching for years now, but i've come up with absolutely nothing. i have found charms and medications which, once uttered or ingested, help pass from one day to the next, but never, ever, provide a permanent solution. before when things like this would set in, i would blame "her." whoever it happened to be at that point in time would be why i was so down. now, i realize that it never was her, it was just the fact that i have no reason to be unhappy, i just simply am. i'm lost in the night once again.

half way gone and nowhere close.

with the new year rapidly approaching i decided to dream up some goals that i would attempt to accomplish before the year closed. we are just beyond the half-way point, and i think that i am making little progress. here is an update on each of these goals.

1. stay in love, and be content with that

in december i was in love with hannah may gjersvik. that has long since been done due to malcontent. the distance was partially to blame, as was circumstance. currently i am looking for nothing involving love or anything related.

2. manage to get back into shape

at the time of writing i meant through careful discipline and hard work that i intended to get back into shape. i did manage to lose upwards of thirty pounds to this point, it was not from anything resembling determination. the wares of poverty took their toll along with my health and waste line. this was not the worst trade i have ever made. that involved hot wheels cars and a batmobile replica when i was seven.

3. play shows as much as humanly possibly, while balancing everything else out.

this seems to have been the kiss of death. i played several shows immediatly before the new year with cowboys in an attempt to get the band back together but that fizzled out eventually before the champagne on new year's eve. to date this year i have practiced with lots of acts but not played a show. i toured with colonizer which was a good time but not the same as playing on tour. the converse to this all would be that i have balanced things out, and maybe i should just recognize that the creative process takes an all consuming mindset, and that has to be the balance, not something to be balanced.

4. hit the west coast like a tropical storm.

failure. however, i will be going to visit merced in march, with a plane ticket all ready booked. that will be on next years list, perhaps rephrased, but still the same objective.

5. find some source of stable income.

completed, i now have three jobs, which are keeping me busy, providing a steady check into my savings, and preparing me for the freedom of next summer when i plan on knocking out a list of goals.

6. kiss someone in the snow, in the rain, and in the street.

i kissed someone in the snow, right after the new year. i kissed someone in the rain this summer, and both occurances were in the street. however, i meant one person, so this goal is as fulfilled as it will be.

7. write a record i can be proud of.

hopefully by the new year it will be done. worked on it some this morning, and i have the first five writtenish. i'm keeping my fingers crossed that i will keep it going.

8. wear a bathrobe for some amount of time every day.

everyday goals are difficult. i have spent a sizeable amount of time in a bathrobe, i even added a second to my collection, but it still has not been everyday.

9. stabilize my relationships, cut out the highs and lows.

successfull in many, still polarized in a few. i do think that all of my relationships have found some level of stabalization, it's just that some of them have found a stable low.

10. put my feet in both oceans.

next year. honestly.

11. go to fenway and wrigley, the two remaining chapels of america's greatest game.

failure. mission aborted.

12. dream, write, express, all while being mindful of other people.

i have greatly improved with this but there is still pleanty of room for improvement. i still have long periods of time where i don't write, but they are seeming to become less and less frequent. i have gained a much better view of myself which has reflected on my world which makes me more mindful.

13. watch the sky.

success. to no avail thus far, soon there will be a sign.



five down, and several to go. next years goals will be greater. they will be harder, yet at the same time i have a better plan and have been more careful in the inception.

oh, i will.

when i grow up i don't want hardly anything at all. maybe with maturity it gets easier to watch your dreams fade with the setting sun, or maybe i have finally decided what is important in life. i do not want fame, i do not wealth, i do not want anything other than experiance. i want to live in obscurity, away from the mainstream, but not rejecting it. ideally, in ten or so some odd years i will be able to purchase a house outside of a small town where i can live out my days. i have no intention of becoming a hermit, but it seems instead of on national television, i would much rather suffer a lonely fate. that's the thing i gained from all of those nights overflowing with connor's words and absolute, i found out how to not be alone, ever. there are two of me, and sometimes i hang out with myself, and i could do it ever day, forever. mainly because at long last, as boy meets world holiday special as it sounds, i have a finally incurred a deep sense of personal respect. i love who i am, not necessarily who i have been. at times in the past i acted as a foolhardy boy, concerned only with cementing the insecurities that easily defined me. clarity, overwhelming perceptiveness is what i view the world with now. now that i have gained this vision, i feel ready. ready to be done with school, done with half-hearted relationships, done with the race. i feel like a fifty year old man. i want nothing more than to have my place away from the world where i can read, write, and spend time with someone significant for the rest of the days i have. now, i have to get it, and, oh, i will.

listening to -
lost - coldplay viva la vida
handlebars - flobots fight with tools
the documentary - the game the documentary

for familiarity.

i have composed myself throughout the day, made the necessary phone calls, run the errands that needed running, and now i have made it to the point where i am ready. i do not feel threatened by returning to the place i once nightly wandered the streets as a stranger, no, for familiarity was never something i associated with that small town. i am wishing that i could view the weekend, and then make a decision of whether to go or not. this could be a positive. i needed break from this northern outpost before the severities and hardships of school begin. this could also be a negative in several ways. the first possibility is that i will just long to be away from that place the entire time that i am there. that was what it felt like as i left the last few times, desperation to be away from that place. however, now that a sufficient amount of time has passed i fear another consequence. i fear what pella will always do for me, it always seems to pull me back. that is what i am so tense about, i have no idea if once there i will ever want to leave again, although i have no option. this is what lead me back every weekend, and then eventually through relocation, back to pella semipermently. i want it to be done, i am ready for it to begin, and hopefully, just hopefully, it will be a good visit.


listening to -
isabel - ray lamontange live from bonaroo '05
empty - ray lamontange live from bonaroo '05

babble incoherently about van halen.

today will be arduously filled with preparation. a new bank account, cleaning clothes, finishing the last things that need to be done before i return to the place i just so recently fled. i do not have any allusions about what i am going to or what will happen when i am there, no, i just have no idea. with part of me, i miss that town, with everything i have. i miss the nights sitting outside chain smoking reds while listening to robbie babble incoherently about van halen. i miss all of the boys who pose as young men joining into a toast while lucky boy's confusion plays in the background, words being slurred. however, as much as these things were all well and good in their time, i feel like the time has passed for the forays of youth, and now i approach this weekend with a sort of dread. what will it be like? to see him, to see her, to see the way things have transcended time and now lay on the cold floor of modern perception? i am trying to have an open mind, i am trying to enjoy myself no matter what, but i have a feeling bordering on belief that something is going to happen that i don't want to be privy to. i can see the swell off shore in a sense, and yet i keep sitting in the coarse sand, debating whether or not it will come ashore and shake me indefinably. we will see, we will discover.


listening to -
nas - hate me now (stillmatic)
fall out boy - sophomore slump or comeback of the year (from under the cork tree)

or the process is already completed.

it is all open to interpretation. last night as the lights danced and mingled with the smoke the room seemed to shift in an instant. as my peers were pretentiously discussing politics bordering on conspiracy, a pastime that has been a personal forte since the early days of my youth when i became attached to ralph nader. however, last night was different. lately i have noticed the scope with which i view the world is refocusing, or the process is already completed. i no longer have the gusto or imagination that needs to be granted for long forays into political discussion, i just no longer have the motivation. there is no desire left to save the world through the american system, there is nothing driving me towards the revolution i once so vividly clung to. now i am just a man, content to analyze the important points of the system, the one who brings the idealistic back to the earth with a thought filled interjection. i do however fell like the america we grew up, the america of the 90's is lost and dead. the apparent reordering of the top players at the world table has come, and the united states must realize that we are going to shift out of the seat of ultimate power, or pay dearly to lose it eventually, paying in lives and a degraded currency for a few more months in the empirical sun. for me, the game is over, politics is no longer of the interest it once was. now i just want to be free, more so than i am here. more so than i will be without change. however, change is coming and the sun is setting on the american empire.

wide open spaces

it is setting in all around me not. the air has that late summer smell that means fall is just around the corner. i could not be more excited for the oncoming season. i just want to be out in wide open spaces of this continent soaking the sun into my face, head thrown back. i want it all, and finally i know how i am going to get it.

the invitation is yours to accept or deny.

what comes next is simple. when june comes i am going to pack up and move to california. throughout the summer i plan on playing in the fountain of youth which is promised on the west coast. i have every intention of scaling the heights of the matterhorn and biking through the desert in death valley, viewing the most golden state from top to bottom. as the fall hits and school begins the season will fail to change as it has for the first twenty odd years but the summer will end. as the days and nights progress it will be laid back, focused schooling and open dreaming. weekends in yosemite and the abandoned beaches of the northern california shore soaked in sunshine. when my time is done two years from now i will kiss it all goodbye and possibly start planning to return someday. the summer following graduation i will spend in transit, living nomadically across these fruited plains until i wash up on the eastern sea board and seek refuge in the mountains. for the first time in two years the seasons will change, and graduate school in upstate vermont will be a welcome season. here there will be weekends in the big cites: montreal, quebec, toronto, and boston. the winter will be harsh, but the windows will hold views of the adirondacks in the west and the green mountains in the east, both ranges looming like sedentary giants closing the skyline. when the time has expired in the east, it will be time for a return to the heartland, maybe. maybe, not. i am only twenty years old, but this is where i will be when i am twenty five, i can not speculate as to where i will want to go. however, i will speculate as to i won't be sick of you yet, so the invitation is yours to accept or deny. act accordingly.


listening to -
the greatful dead - uncle john's band (dozin' at the kink)
nas (feat. 2pac) - thug's mansion n.y. (god's son)
nas - nazareth savage (street's disciple)
coldplay - lost (viva la vida)

scan the papers and drink coffee

so, summer didn't seem to hit at all that year. we were so used to the humidity sucking away at all the force in our lungs, but this was a different kind of heat all together. that was the summer it all changed. at first it started as an ongoing joke, but as time went by the hope filled laughter began to register with each of us as a need. so, on that warm june day we packed up and made our swift escape on that artery that heads west through cheyenne and then passes through the rockies. we passed the great salt lake, and she kept taking pictures, i just smiled and drove. eventually we crossed the desert and as we got close to reno the conversation began to take an edge to it, we were almost there. well, with little fanfare in the quiet desert night we crossed the state line and made our way down past sacramento and into the heart of northern california. we rented a small one bedroom house down on 28th st. and began a life. a new life that wasn't encumbered or watered down by the midwestern plains. things were good in those days, we would scan the papers and drink coffee in the morning, and lay on the carpet listening to midwestern folk bands on vinyl when it was time for tea in the evening. we had the openness that had been promised as coming with the coastline, weekends were spent making short jaunts to the mountains, to the beach, to yosemite, or to the gilded city in san fransisco, her snapping away pictures the entire time, me awkwardly posing with a fisherman or backpack. in time it became home, a place where the memories far outweighed anything amassed previously in our camera like minds. it was at first a savior, and then eventually it just became life. life as promised, life as it should have been all along. a place where life can be encountered in all facets. a place where we could be everything. a place where we could be free.


listening to -
brand new - untitled 3 THE DEMO'S!
phantom planet - too much, too often RAISE THE DEAD
ray lamontange - empty LIVE FROM BONAROO 2005
ray lamontange - isabel TILL THE SUN TURNS BLACK
bob dylan - down the highway THE FREEWHEELIN' BOB DYLAN
interpol - take you on a cruise ANTICS
death cab for cutie - bixby county bridge NARROW STAIRS
franz ferdinand - jacquelin - FRANZ FERDINAND

radio.

i want to start a radio show. only as a hobby though. i don't have any grand illusions of people listening or even enjoying it if they had. it just seems like it would be a productive hobby. i remember in high school we had mobile recorders that were capeable of posting online from just about anywhere. i should get one of those and everyday at eleven i should go live, from wherever. i think this would be a worthwhile endeavor because it keep me on my toes, knowing that the end of the day everyday i would create a record of where i had been that day. Maybe i'm just off somewhere in a different space right now, but i can't think of anything i would rather do in the entire world right now. everything right now seems to be pleasantly over-shadowed by the looming west coast on the horizon. anything that seems to be a burden is just lifted with the thought of the beach two hours from my door and the mountains looming behind me. our entire lives people have been saying that if you put your mind to something, you can have it. its starting to make more sense, i am starting to feel like i'm not playing on a juvenile plane anymore. it's like i'm transitioning into all the things that everyone warned we would need in the real world while still holding onto the important things. maybe i am just in a safe place, but for the first time in forever im in a position to carefully planout the next steps of my life while the world doesn't pass me by. today is a good day so far.

listening to -
The Game (feat. Dr. Dre) - Here We Go Again GHOST UNIT
The Game - Mr. Potato Head GHOST UNIT
The Game (feat. Kanye West) - Crack Music GHOST UNIT
The Game - For the Cameras MIXTAPE MIX
The Game - 1970's Somethin' STOP SNITCHIN', STOP LYIN'

lost boys in our clubhouse.

so, summertime hit like a hurricane. well, not at first. it was subtle. the piles of dust and refuse piled thoughout the house began to grow and give off a bitter odor, not from apathay, no, but through the owner's preoccupation with enjoyment of life. the dishes piled high and were eventually utilized as an apartment complex for a swarm of gnats that would come out in force everytime the kitchen sink was turned on, evoking memories of watching the l.a. riots on television. the hot water was shut off at the beginning of that month, no one seemed to noticed. everyone just showered less or waited for the sun to strike them in an exceedingly hot manner. It was a dream for us then. We were all lost boys in our clubhouse. hours from the parental supervision that had micromanaged our childhood we felt the freedom of the open wind pulling on our hair. there were no restrictions on how to live, just the stipulations of working enough to post rent, beer, cigarette, and maybe even food money. it was a fair trade, and eventually our rumbling stomechs couldn't even get the best of us. we were poor but happy. we painted all the walls blue and made attempts at sophistication. they all fell far too short, but we were young and thought that the world wasn't going to notice when we were slipshod, because we were the world, and none of us would have ever said a word. in the day we roamed free, stealing bikes or just staying home, nothing could hold us captive, just the moment. when the sun started to set we lit candles and watched them dance through our ever intoxicating vision. the smell of incense burned heavy in those days, masking the stale cigarette smoke and making everything we owned smell like sandalwood. we played with all of the girls, making promises and holding hands, but always secretly hoping that at the end of the night there would just be three of us still quietly locked into conversation long after the last partygoer had stalked off into the night. we talked of all the things we were going to buy when we grew up and had the money, we talked of all the things we would do when the time was right. we were pacing through the ends of childhood, night after night, as the smoke discolored the ceiling and the candal wax spilled onto the coffee table, covering the glossy magazines completely. we never saw it coming, just one day it was there. the glances around the room started to take on a grittier lens, and the dream was dead. our oasis of childhood had become a dollhouse of the past. what had once been the representation of freedom began to be what was holding each of us from being what we all could be. just as giants can not inhabit the houses of men, men can not inhabit the homes of dolls, and we realized it all too slowly. eventually we all abandoned that house, slowly at first, just spending fewer and fewer hours inside its walls, and then fewer and fewer nights. they all picked excile long before i could walk away. for days and nights at a time i would be the only permenant resident inside its walls, carefully pacing the rooms in a more bitter candle light then before. there were the nights where i just longed for it to be the way it was, and then there were the other moments where i just wanted to burn it down. wash my hands of what was holding me back. instead i fled, following the paths of the others at first, but still i fled. eventually i knew it would take the same path as last time. a northern safe haven, but this time as a resting ground before the long journey through the night to the waking shades of the pacific coastline instead of a destination. soon, eight short months, and it will all be mine, a new landscape to carve out the things i have been dreaming of all along. the city and the sea will sleep in the west as the mountains to the east project the sunlight through the valley to start each day. i know where i am, i know where i am going, and i know where i want to be.





listening to -
ray lamontange - empty (till the sun turns black)
ray lamontange - write you a letter (Raycharles Montange)
james taylor - your smiling face (greatest hits vol. 2)
death cab for cutie - you can do better than me (but i can't do better than you) (narrow stairs)
funeral for a friend - bend your arms to look like wings (casually dressed and deep in conversation)
funeral for a friend - waking up (casually dressed and deep in conversation)