admittedly, i haven’t done much to counter the sickness, neither rest nor doctor’s visit. but whaddya expect? i got sick on the 4th of july, as far as i know, the biggest holiday in the city. dc loves the 4th like nyc loves halloween. so if i DIDNT come out, it would’ve been the type of shame that i couldn’t look down.

eh, shit like this is what they made sudafed for.

i have hella ish that i need to write about, considering i missed two packed days. but because i will have a 16 hour bus ride, and at least two hours worth of battery life, i’ll make a second update about the past two days and about dc in general tomorrow morning… written on the bus.

that's where i wanta live!

some photos, no matter how touristy, are obligatory

so on the 3rd, i did the museum thing… the freer gallery and the national gallery east wing with my homeboy camden, as well as a more general walking tour of downtown dc. i’d like to publicly thank camden again for taking me around and showing me the sites. what a great guide to the city! it reaffirms my belief that you really do need locals in whatever place you go.

as per usual, i was amazed at the beauty that is art. i fucking love the national gallery. it is AWERSOME sauce. admittedly, the east building is a bit bloody tiny, but getting to see the Nude Woman Standing by Picasso was… life changing. it really is an amazing piece of work, as are so many works in the national gallery.

who's that sexy bum?(and yes, i changed clothes)

what the hell is it with manet and horses?

the walls are closing in!

nudie!

i REALLY wanted to go to the national archives to see the constitution and the declaration of independence, but the line was too ridiculous.

even then, i had an awesome time being a tourist in DC.

real coney island dog? i think not.

but even more than that, even more than the fact that i’m sick, i keep thinking about meeting the hare krishna boys. they travel from state to state, setting up this festival of india fair grounds thing. it was ridiculo random meeting them, as me and cam were randomly resting in front of one of their tents when i found out some of them played a little bit of submission wrestling. me being me, i asked them what affiliation they were with and somehow ended up wrestling one of ‘em.

taking the back and looking for an armbar

god i am a midget

big dude by the name of hari gave me one hell of a fight for my money, ‘specially considering i had trained for so much longer than he had.

but afterwards, all the hare krishna folks took me, which is weird, introducing themselves, sharing their food and beverage. honestly, in trading stories and experiences with them, it struck me how much i depend upon the kindness of strangers on this trip. the hare krishna boys, among others have really fundamentally renewed my faith in humanity. there is such an open generosity of spirit in the human character and i feel like that feeling was definitely embodied by the hare krishna boys.

the boys + ninja dude

(one of the guys in the above picture is a ninja. i mean dead serious. completely able to blend in the background. i’ll talk about him and natural talents some other time. dude scared the bejesus out of me)

it’s trippy… life is such a game of inches, full of weird circumstances. my life is especially so. random things happen, random things come together. or don’t. but thas my life. and i’m set adrift on this river of circumstance that reaffirms my idea that if there is a god or some great power guiding the paths of our lives… he/she/it has one hell of a sense of human. or i might just be a cosmic joke. either way.

they stole my haircut!

that night, after laundry of course, was artmoatic, this massive art festival/warehouse party, where i got to meet up with some of the folks i met at hay qua. whoa, that was dope, even if i hardly spent any amount of time there. and even if my first purchase was a glass of wine. but hey. it’s me.

i hella enjoyed the day. more discussion about it later, as well as about more philosophical things i’ve been thinking about, as well as my fourth of july hijinks. which was minddblowingly awersome sauce. and more about the hare krishna folks, of course.

plus, i’ll talk about meeting up with one of my friends in highschool, using that as a springboard for discussion of how people change or don’t change over time. and about wingmanning for her ditzy arse. i am awesome.

oh… and if you’re reading, please comment. it’s too often that i can feel just the tiny bit alone. or that this blog is a scream into the ether.

oh and if ANYONE knows ANYONE in nashville tenn, please connect us.

life is like a cold… more often than not you’re floating on a benadryl haze… and when you ARE cognizant, it mostly sucks.

do you know how some people see sounds? they perceive music as an array of colours because of whatever strange connection has been made in their heads. though mostly this is is discussed in relation to the physical senses, i have something similar with emotions.

when i feel an emotion, there’s a tint in the back of my mind that colors everything. when i feel an emotion coming offa person through my physical senses, there’s a subtle flare of colour around them. it sounds weird, but it’s something i’ve grown up and kinda like. it’s unique. which seems to be a goal all its own in this city.

i guess why that’s the reason i describe poetry using the painter metaphor. we are painters, emotions are our paint, every subtle shadow corresponding to the exact nuance of a feeling. i’ve said it before, i don’t like using words like love or hate in my work without some sort of qualification. what kind of love? what kind of hate? what does it mean to have a hate for a person once loved? a hate born from seeing those you care about being hurt by the target of your disdain?

i’m still trying to convey that complexity in my work. it’s hard. one’s control of language, one’s technical skill is the tilt of the head that makes the Mona Lisa forever haunting. i’m learning it as i go, trying to build from traditions before me, but this shit ain’t gifted. it’s earned.

though, i do have enough of the romantic (the era, not the gift card) in me to see the poet as special on some level. maybe it’s my own arrogance speaking. but at the same time, there’s great technical illustrators that are still unable to convey any depth of feeling in their work.

i guess i’m rambling again.

my days have been stormy, the wind and rain that seeps into your bones and steals even the ghost of warmth or light from your being. then the tempest arrived, destroying the mud wattle buildings i’ve built up. now… the calm has come.

that specific calm that comes in the wake of devastation. the feeling of resignation that somehow still allows one to continue with one’s life. maybe the exact shade of emotion as the man who knows his cancer will kill him, so chooses to live his life as he wills. the specific gradation that belongs only to the boy who realizes that these three guys are going to kick his ass, so he might as well grab onto one and keep swinging. the swirling peace of a woman who is finally able to leave and be done, after too much time and investment in an awful affair.

—————————————–

colours

a mother’s love, an earthy red
oceanic in its depth
and temperament.

the feeling of the first nice day in spring
the pastel yellow of the sun
seen through freshly dusted douche goggles

infatuation is the whiteness of halogen lamps
haloed by a blinky, misty red, blinding
so that all else is relegated to the periphery

the satiated guilt of indulged gluttony
is the white of institutional light
reflected from the melting richness of vanilla ice cream left out

the contentment in the willingness to wait
is noon sun through a teal window pain
dust motes idly dancing

an adolescent’s frustrated rage
is the intense, pulsating red
of an infected cut

the frustration of hard work proved wanting
the sandy red-brown of the specific layer
of pit dug in the desert that is just kissed by moisture

a parent’s grief is a blurring
a twisted distortion of colour
that strips the senses of perception

the desire for cold vengeance, pallid
blue-grey of apprentice’s iron
fit for plowshares, forged into a sword

interpersonal ambivalence, the blue black green
of healing bruises, timorous
in its betweeness

quiet resignation is the ochre red
of dried blood, spilt and wasted
without recourse

a boy’s artsy-pretension depression, the cliched
inky blackness, thick with its self-imposed weight
a hungry dark, its smoky contrails reaching

my love for you, even now
the brown-gray of petrified wood, no longer alive
but always persistent

and my head keeps spinning, can’t keep having these visions, gotta get wid it

love.

casanova fucking by the copacabana, the sheer weight of the word is like mountains, like duty itself. yet, its glibness, the way it falls off the tongue, like pennies and peonies strewn haphazardly, with nothing but a grin at the way the sun hits petals and tarnished bronze just so.

love.

the source of childish laughter, drunken debauchery… of murders and masterpieces, the joyful spontaneity of a groaning exultation, the anguish that can drain away years in a few mere moments. what we all say we’re looking for, what we’re all so afraid of getting. the source of envy enough to launch a hundred thousand ships, the fire that illuminates the night even after the bombs have taken off all the lights.

romantic-fucking-love.

jeebus. why would i be discussing such a subject? oddly enough, because of a goddamn sitcom. a pilot at that. how much of a sap am i? but really though… i was going through one of those moods, the existential crises that drain the joy out of life, that makes you doubt the rightness of whatever you may be doing. not depression, that’s too much credence to lend it, rather a sense that there’s more than this life you’re living has to offer out there somewhere. maybe.

watching tv to try and take my mind off it, i saw the new abc show cupid. it was about a guy… who was either a man who had suffered such a fundamental heartbreak, so earthshattering and life-splitting that all he could do to cope with the force of it, that shock that took breath from the lungs, was to come up with the delusion that he was cupid or eros or whoever, the ever so fickle god of love. or maybe, it was really was the demi-god himself, the real cupid, punished for fucking his job up and now left to wander the streets of new yawk city until he can match up 100 couples with true love.

(as an aside, let me just say, fuck the way they treat the city… we really aren’t THAT devoid of wonderment and romance and the soft mushy things. hell, i would even argue that new yorkers are hold onto that delicate, transcendent part of themselves even more tightly than anyone else… is it a crime that we protect it more? we hold it more dearly, because we know how ugly the world can really be. the city runs you down, but thas why you grasp onto the idealism inside of you and hold on for dear life.)

i have a cigarette to pass the time, because the traffic is hell

but yes… to return to my point. i was watching this show, in my funk, and honestly, as i was watching it this smile crept across my face like a soldier creeping across no-man’s land. it was just too cute. i couldn’t help but enjoy it, i was powerless under the assault of its saccharine fancy. and it of course, cheered me up immensely, but more importantly, it made me think about love, which i’ve been tried to break down all these years anyways.

so here it is… my definitions of various expressions to describe it, ‘cuz dude, i’m just a boy… do you think i really give you the secret that haunts us all?

crush – a mild attraction that may or may not motivate enough effort to approach the object of affection, but is sufficient to be source material for both fantasy and for adolescent boys maybe something else.

lust – if’n you don’t know the definition of lust, you’re either a-sexual or pre-pubescent. if’n the latter, you shouldn’t be reading this blog anyway and tell your parents they should be bloody well monitoring your internet usage. if’n you’re the former… thas like trying to describe this to a blind man, or moonlight sonata to a deaf man.

infatuation – that stage, when you’re teetering the edge of sanity. sure, your OOE may not take up every thought of your day, but you sure as shit have the desire to call him/her entirely too much, especially considering it’s all a game. you savour the smell of their hair, the shape of their nose, the curve of their neck… and you know that in a blink, it can become all-consuming, if’n only it moves just a little bit more. or it can go completely the opposite way, and all of a sudden… it’s over. you’re bored. it’s done. this is where boys like me get stuck on.

in love – the phase where you can truthfully plead temporarily insane… that all consuming fire and passion and insanity that makes short shrift of anything so mundane as personality compatibility, credit reports or ‘other’ commitments. this is the stage where emotion is a drug, more insidious and ambrosial than anything else, that which the best quality MDMA is nothing but a pale ghost of an imitation. the wildness, the fascination of it, when you can’t help but ache, down deep when you’re not with your OOE, when your whole world, your very perception of life itself has narrowed down to this one person. when the locks of her hair caught in your towel, the ham-handed way he handles wine glasses, when those define your world. everything else is burned by the blow-torch intensity of it all… but… with that much more risk of burning out.

love – that stage, after the oil has taken the charcoal of your soul and burned away and what is left burns with a much more subtle, but steadier depth. that which is able to last, maybe even endure past the rain and the lack of oxygen. this is the stage of love that they say abides, where your perception of the world is able to see more than your OOE, but nevertheless, it like you yourself now cannot be defined, from now unto forever without your OOE. two plants, in nature, occasionally lean onto each other until they start becoming entwined, occasionally going so far as growing into one. this is where that starts.

granny love – … no you dirty mo’fo, this is not a porno title. it’s that place when someone becomes so fundamental to your life that they make it up. i don’t even know how to describe this, as i’ve never be anywhere near it myself… but we’ve all seen it.

settling – when you have none of these, but you make a relationship go anyway, if for no other reason then not wanting to be alone. and maybe, just maybe, it’ll become real love someday. for now though, this life is too hard, the trials too great to not be halved, the joys and triumphs too meager to not be doubled by sharing.

… maybe i’ll do more in the future, if’n anyone wants me to. as is, i’ve already taken up too much of all yous valuable time.

so au revoir.

we keep on pavin’ over paradise, because we’re only human

life is the awkward moments when you’re awake. whoa.

I’m at 158 right now… and ideally, i’d want to compete at 139. 17 days, almost twenty lbs, the problem is obvious. i honestly believe that i could do it, cut that much weight…

if i had the time. life is a busy beast. if it weren’t, than i’d call it empty or boring. grind-ful and drama ridden and crazy my life may be, but never empty or boring. so i can’t cut the weight. i’ve decided that for my own good, i’m not even going to attempt it. on some level, with the sheer amount of work i have coming up, between poetry and shows and school, i probably shouldn’t be competing.

but like everyone else, i need something to look forward to. some goal with which to ground myself in the every day and to work towards. some connection to put my head back in the game of living. so it looks like i am going to try and compete on nov 8th. but because i don’t have as much time for training with my horribly busy school and life schedule, not enough time to get into the gym, but hey. such is life. if i compete and do well with my schedule being like that, than i truly deserve to be where i’m at.

along those lines, this is the workout i’m going to try to do at home in mornings and evenings, in addition to going to yoga and training whenever i can. i’m going to try to sweat and workout a little everyday, so that the eventual 10 lb cut to 149 will be an easy, no stress cut. sitting in a sauna all day is not my idea of a good time.

5 gi pullups
10 front pullups
10 back pullups
10 seconds grip switch pullups
20 bicycle crunches
10 hindu pushups
10 hindu squats
30 second leg raise

three sets of that every morning and every evening should allow me to be in better (not good) shape for when tournament time comes in.

along those lines, i’m going to cut carbs, including alcohol and eat cleaner… no more mamoun’s or sweet sweet whiskey. try and eat healthy in general, cut out anything that’s really bad for me… try to go to sleep much earlier, if i can. it’s awkward isn’t it, that i need the spectre of getting my arse kicked to actually get my life a little bit healthier.

which gets me to the last thing i wanted to talk about in this post… how pain and competitiveness and the chance of getting hurt or getting your arse kicked is such a good motivator. it touches something really and truly primal in yourself that grounds you to the present and the real. it pushes you to do more, to reach for things that you normally couldn’t touch because you didn’t have the motivation necessary.

it’s one of the things that allows humans to be more than themselves.

which is why it’s dope.