from crib to coffin

my neighbor tried to kill his wife about a week ago. he was going to shoot her with his gun in the basement. fortunately, she was able to bring attention to the situation by running outside into the middle of the street. the cops were called and no one died. while one crisis was averted, another is just beginning. a marriage is falling apart, maybe an entire family. i would have never thought that my neighbor was capable of attempted murder. i would have never thought such awful things were going on inside the house next to mine. he was always smiling, mowing the lawn, being a typical suburban sixty-something year old. nothing struck me as odd or off kilter. i've lived next to them my whole life. it drives the point home that you never really know anyone. every single person you meet will have and keep a secret or flaw hidden from you. there will always be something that we all keep from each other. people keep appearances up, smile, nod, and close the door behind them and who knows what goes on. to a degree, we're all guilty of it. no one is ever completely honest with others or themselves. it can be a personal flaw, an addiction, a weird fetish, something in your past, or something in your present- which is worse because that's active lying to the people around you. what forces us to lie about ourselves? for some people it's the need to be liked and accepted. for others it's simply to get through the day without feeling ashamed, a survival technique. then there are the percentage that lie to keep the stasis they've created. they're comfortable with what they have in the now and aren't willing, ready, or able to admit to everyone else that this isn't who they are or what they want. there are people who will die with secrets that no one else knows. it seems like a pretty heavy weight to carry around all by yourself. i've tried to be as honest with myself as possible, but there are things that linger in the back of my mind that i choose to ignore and not confront, and i feel confident in saying that a lot of people function like that. it's a coping mechanism and it works, so why not keep doing it?

every town has an elm street

i've said it before, but i actually mean it this time- weirdest dream ever was had by me last night. nothing in it connects to anything that i experienced or watched the day of and it all means nothing. there's no definite starting or ending point, things just happen.

my sister and i were out east and we walked passed two older women leaving a house in a rush. they were holding a a black garbage bag and a gun. they ran to their car and drove off, leading my sister and i to believe that some wrong doing had just taken place in the house they left. we went inside without calling the police. there was blood on the floor leading out to the deck of house. we saw a head of a blond man with a face that looked similar to brad pitt's. obviously shocked, we just stood there. my sister then kicked the head into the water off the deck and i yelled at her for destroying evidence and this man's head. she said we had to cover up the murder because now that we found the head, we would look like the killers. not wanting to abandon my sister on this plan, i went along with it and we left the house like nothing happened. when we got home later that night, we were both tense and anxious. i put the news on and i see the top story of the evening: man's head found attached to an octopus in the water. i ran upstairs and whispered to my sister that the head had been discovered and that we were totally busted. all she said was that she didn't want to talk about it. i was frantic and got in my car and continued to drive to police headquarters back out east. i told them everything that happened and they said that they needed to bring me and my sister in for questioning. that's when david spade stepped in and told the officers that they could not question me or my sister because the head was found on stolen property- yes, the octopus was apparently stolen from someone's backyard water enclosure. in my dream, the law was that if you find evidence on stolen property you can not use it in the court. therefore, my sister and i were off the hook. at this point, i drove back home and told my sister the great news and we were both ecstatic.

my parents then told me we were moving, and magically, we were there on our new street. my family and i moved to new orleans for seemingly no reason and we were living on a block with five bars. in the town we moved to, there was a race war going on between asian people, black people, and the aryan brotherhood. i was most afraid of the brotherhood. a group of them lived on my block and would stare at me with extreme hate in their eyes. why they would hate me, out of all people, i don't know. my mom had left for work and my dad was leaving to meet a friend of his. i begged and pleaded with him not to leave because i was terrified of being raped and killed by the brotherhood. he told me to go to the pizza place around the corner and that antonio, the owner of the restaurant, would let me stay there and make sure no one started any trouble with me. my dad left and i started walking to the pizza place and i walked into a parade where the three groups demonstrated their pride. i quickly dodged the crowd and ran into the pizza place and introduced myself. antonio was a nice older man and said i could take a seat where ever. the restaurant was pretty crowded so i just sat behind the cash register. once i was starting to feel at ease, around five guys came in and started punching and pushing the customers. adorned with swastika tattoos, i could tell who they were and hid under a table in the back of the pizza place. as the fight continued, a fat man from the AB pulled me out from under the table and started taunting me and tugging at my hair. i tried to throw a few punches and kick violently but the crowd of five members grew to thirteen and i was highly outnumbered. one of the waiters broke a glass over the fat man's head and loosened his grip, allowing me to get away. as i left i saw antonio and he told me to go to the other pizza place on the other side of town. i sprinted as fast as i could go and noticed i wasn't wearing any shoes. i ran barefoot all the way the other side of the town. when i got there, i was crying and out of breath and couldn't get a word out at all. a group of four spanish girls were working at the restaurant and kept trying to get what happened out of me. when i eventually calmed down i told them about the huge fight on the other side of town. they said they weren't shocked at all but that it hasn't ever been this bad. i started asking them where the police force was during all of this insanity and they told me they were across the street. as i looked toward them, all i saw were a bunch of men in uniforms hanging out and sitting on the hoods of their cruisers and it became apparent that they did not run this town at all. it seemed like they were just as scared as i was.

the spanish girls let me know i had to leave because they were closing after their last customer, who in fact was david spade. he was wearing a black hawaiian button down shirt and bright red pants with white ked sneakers. he was a detective in the town and was very angry at the slow service in the pizza place. he told me to suck it up and stop crying, to get used to the fact that the town was a horrible place to live.

variations on a theme

'tis the season, december is here. for some reason i don't feel the holiday cheer at all. it's not that i'm unhappy, it literally just does not feel like christmas time. i suppose my cookie baking spree will change all that. a lot of people have grown to hate christmas because of its increasing gimmicky qualities. i can understand the frustration and dread of the constant holiday music and impending money dropping on gifts for family and friends. it's an onslaught of everything red and green, elves, santa claus, and wasted calories. what i can't understand is the hatred of the whole holiday. how can someone other than the grinch hate christmas? you really have to be a miserable person to dislike christmas. it's a special time of year and it's the only time during winter where i actually enjoy the season. no other month can make snow and freezing temperatures tolerable. in any other case, i hate seeing my own breath in front of me.

you can take christmas however you want. you can make it into a giant nuisance or enjoy it for what it's worth and what it was for you as a child. frankly, i always used to enjoy the challenge of making it on the "good list". that was huge for me and radically altered my behavior for a whole month. writing letters to santa and leaving cookies out for him (and carrots for his reindeer) was a yearly ritual that i got a real kick out of. even church was more tolerable in december. i used to make gifts for my family out of clothespins, cotton balls, tongue depressors, and anything else i could potentially glue together and draw on. my sister was the only one completely unimpressed by my gifts because she knew they were just pieces of crap. that's the point though, my family really never put all the emphasis on the presents. of course there was the discussion of what we really, really wanted but it was mostly about cooking and baking together, watching christmas shows, reading christmas books, and enjoying the lights and sounds as a unit. i feel like the people who hate christmas now were the ones who were only exposed to the commercial value of the holiday season. those were most likely the kids who were told to write down what they wanted and got exactly those items on the list, no element of surprise. that's not fun at all, especially for a little kid. the presents aren't important.

i've always loved gift giving though. i love composing the perfect gift that i know will "wow" whoever it is i'm giving it too. the person this year who's getting the "wow" factor is definitely my mom and she absolutely, 100% deserves it more than anyone else i know. i get the rush of giving from her, too. she's definitely instilled that in me.

christmas should be enjoyed by the masses for more than just the flashiness of what it's become. i suppose i've left all other holidays out of this post, but you get the idea. apply it to whatever you celebrate.

a heart that beats as both siphon and reservoir

a friend of mine told me today that this was jeff buckley's death anniversary. i quickly corrected this friend, who was not even close- his death date is may 29th, 1997 to be exact. it did however get me thinking about him as i sometimes do, considering he is hanging above my bed in poster format. ever since i was twelve years old, i've had a love affair with dead men and their tortured souls. jeff buckley, elliott smith, nick drake, jason thirsk, nick traina- all musicians, all very much dead by their own hand.

i consider jeff buckley's death a bit of a mystery though. he was known to have a history of bipolar disorder and manic depression. most of me believes that he went swimming in wolf harbor river fully clothed with boots on thinking that he could walk on water or breathe underwater. i don't think he wanted to die. i don't think it was his intention at all that evening to drown. i believe he was in the midst of a manic episode. i wonder what exactly he was thinking when he did it. i wonder if he had a moment of sanity where he knew he was drowning and dying or if he tried to come back to the surface for air.

i go through the same motions with elliott smith and the fact that he stabbed himself in the heart. was there a split second he wished he could take it back while he was bleeding out? i'm not sure you're even capable of feeling fear or regret after making a conscious decision to kill yourself. it seems like after you go that far there is no turning back. once you are so miserable, isolated, and numb i don't think you can experience the normal ebb and flow of emotions. with this opinion, i suppose i've answered my own question: they didn't feel a thing.

how to cry in total silence

as it shows in the date text line, it's been a long time since i last posted- the main reason being i couldn't ever remember my password. it wasn't for lack of thoughts, dreams, or opinions.

what exactly is a rut? what brings it on and why do they seem to last for far too long? i feel like i'm stuck in one and i don't see any way out. that's the whole point of a rut. it's hard to snap out of it, to get a grip on yourself. i can see both sides of the spectrum here. i understand the person that has little to no tolerance for "getting stuck in a rut" but i can also very well understand the person who gets caught. i too, have no tolerance for do-nothingism and that's a whole different story. there is a huge difference between someone who does nothing and the person who feels like doing nothing but forces his or herself to be productive in some way, shape, or form. i'm saying i understand the latter. ruts are awful. they make people unsure of themselves in all areas of their lives and relationships. are they good enough? are they pretty enough? are they smart, thin, wealthy enough? are they worth it? ruts make that person answer "no" to each question, effectively destroying most of their self confidence. everything starts to hurt. lying about being fine becomes commonplace. you start to zero in on every imperfection, things that friends and family might love about you. those quirks and specific mannerisms, the sound of your own voice, the way you move your hands and lips when you talk become the very things you just can't stand about yourself. they become things that need fixing or eliminating.

does it sound like i'm carrying on? am i carrying on? i am, i'm hyper aware of that. that's part of the point of this, to be the person no one likes right here. no one wants to hear other people's trials and tribulations. people will say they're there to listen, but in their heads they are checking the time every minute, hoping you'll be done soon. who wants to hear it? i don't even like to listen to people like that. i don't want to be someone's burden, i don't want to be a chore. i want to keep being a productive individual who actively contributes to society, making some small difference and not just being a waste of space. can i keep it up?

pick the victims to pieces

it took me a few days to digest and process what my subconscious came up with and now i'm ready to go through the whole thing. i'm not even going to try to connect the different scenarios in any smooth way. it's simply a cluster-fuck of dream segments. it starts in a burrito joint. a group of violent ninjas storm the storefront, killing random customers and employees. one customer is a girl wearing a ridiculously huge ball gown and she had braces that were blue. the ninjas were hacking people up in seconds. it was like a kill bill movie. so everyone in the front is dead while the employees in the back have armed themselves with balls of dough to fight off the ninjas rapidly approaching them. needless to say, the dough did nothing for the remaining employees and the ninjas were off and running after they killed the last one. the ninjas ran toward an overpass and then hang a right into a wooded area where a bunch of little kids sat in a clearing expectantly waiting for them to return. each ninja sat beside a child, nicely, and seemed to be teaching them how to grow up and be a ninja. it seemed like a father-son exchange. changing the subject rapidly, a mormon family is running an underground beer factory from the middle of the woods. all of the kids (i don't know how many, but there were definitely too many) were ages 4 to 16, all alcoholics. their dad were yell out different types of beer and each kids were run up to him and retrieve their fix. the mother was quiet and seemed to do whatever her husband told her to do. the 16 year old was creepy looking and her eyes were too big for her head. she was also pregnant and seemed to be the "bad seed" of the family which saying a lot considering her 4 year old sibling is drunk of its ass and they're all living in the middle of nowhere producing copious amounts of beer illegally. i didn't think her situation could get any worse until cops stumble upon one of their drunk children and follow the kid back to the factory. a sting is set in place and the mormon dad catches wind of this so he starts to surround the house with explosives, not concerning himself with the well being of his children. his wife is freaking out and trying to gather the little drunkards. the dad gives the older kids- 10 and up- guns and tells them to shoot at the people in uniforms. the dad grabs a rifle for himself and starts lighting up the explosives to deter the cops. all the while, the 16 year old climbs out of a screened in window and makes sure to bring a gun for herself. she runs through the woods and through shallow water and a police dog sniffs her out. she tells the dog to fuck off and then shoots it. almost immediately, she turns the gun on herself-points it to her belly- and shoots. a lot of other things happened in the dream and i can only remember fragments that aren't even worth typing out. all i'll say is that it involves frank the entertainer from that reality show with one of flava flav's ex's, a gay love affair between two middle aged businessmen, a basketball game gone terribly wrong, weird people sleeping in my basement, and walmart. this was a doozy, to say the least. i know i switched tenses about twenty times but at this point, does it really matter? the dream didn't make sense so the tenses don't have to make sense either. hopefully, my next few posts will start to be coherent. if not, then something is definitely wrong with my head. here's things that make me smile:

a good night's sleep, getting to sit on the lifeguard chair at the beach, fireworks, new workout pants, the glimmer of hope i feel when i send out my resume (even if it adds up to nothing), volunteering, summer dresses, sprite zero, the fact that dunkin' donuts now sells a pina colada donut which i have yet to ingest, drawing outside, freshly sharpened pencils, wearing a bikini all day and using the heat as an excuse to do so, trailing sand into my room after coming home from the beach, hanging my arm out of a car window, sun roofs, the moment i put a food i've been craving in my mouth.

no chance of walking away without a scratch

graduation day is rapidly approaching but surprisingly, this post will in no way be dedicated to that topic today. instead, i'll recant the dream i had last night. it was more of a d list horror movie mash up and i was horribly confused when i woke up, as i usually am. it starts off with me on a giant cruise ship headed toward an island with a group of other vacationers. the ship was abnormally huge and had horrible steering capabilities. eventually the ship ungracefully beached itself on land and people jumped out in a disorderly fashion. i got out and found my way to the swanky resort at which i was staying. i set my things down and looked out the window. it was then i noticed that this was not any sort of paradise. menacing clouds and angry locals were rampant and it started hailing as i turned my back to the window. i rifled through my belongings, finally finding my cell phone. i tried calling home but the phone wouldn't even turn on. i then decided to bite the bullet and accept all long distance charges and use the hotel phone, but that didn't work either. at this point, i was becoming very unsettled. i was alone on this island and i barely brought anything with me. as it was, i only brought bathing suits and no real clothes but i had the forethought of wearing sneakers, somehow all the while forgetting a pair of pants. i left the room hurriedly and ran down the fire escape stairs for no apparent reason. i could have easily got on the elevator. anyway, i got to the lobby and saw that it had stopped hailing but the sky was a dark and unfriendly grey while the water under it churned with wave after wave. i asked a hotel desk clerk where the nearest train station was. why i would ask that question is beyond me but that's the beauty of my dreams- they make no sense. he pointed in the general direction of where the station was and i just started running, something i'd be doing a lot of for the rest of the time. i ran through the resort grounds and eventually hit the train station. i got on the next train i saw and it was probably the worst decision i made. not only was hannibal lecter on this train, but so was a young man who claimed to be my stalker, an old man with his brain exposed, and a horribly unhelpful train conductor. i took a seat on the train, which was actually a subway car but you could walk through the cars like you can in LIRR cars. so i sat there and watched hannibal lecter walk through the train car door and just stare at each person on the train for about a minute each. he was blatantly holding a large knife and no one seemed to mind but me. i don't know what set him off but he started yelling and ran through the opposite door and just kept going. i was glad to not have him in my car. next, a young fat man who looked a little bit retarded came up to me- again with a large knife- and said he'd been watching me since i was eleven years old. he said he had a gift for me and gave me a handful of what looked like corned beef and just smiled at me and stared. he kept trying to hold my hand or hug me and i kept dodging each attempt. he finally left me alone and took his corned beef with him. at this point hannibal lecter came back into the car i was in and looked like he wanted trouble. the car seemed to have gotten longer so i had more time to think about what action i was going to take. then, an old man in a creaky wheel chair appeared at the opposite end of the car as hannibal. his brain was seeping out of a large open area in his skull and he had the look of a brain damaged person, understandably. i took his chair and gave it a good push toward hannibal and he was taken out by a comatose man in a wheel chair. the train stopped and i pried open the doors and jumped out. it was night time at that point and the area around me didn't look developed at all. there was one paved trail going through a wily array of vines, trees, and enormous plants. i kept running in hopes of finding something when a local in face paint jumped out at me. i screamed and stopped running and he informed me i was running a marathon and would be timed. i would be spared if my time was under eight minutes. i frantically asked what was going on and after getting no answers i just started sprinting toward a finish line i couldn't distinguish. i started to see a few more people running in the same direction and my hope was renewed. soon, the trail was all uphill and i knew i must have been passed twenty minutes. the last push was up a flight of uneven stairs and there was a girl who barked "7:38" at me. i knew she screwed up her timer because there was no way i made it in under eight minutes. i looked around to see if anyone noticed and just cooly walked away from that scene, grateful for that girl's stupidity. i walked through the resort grounds again which were extensive and seemed to take an hour or two. by the time i made it to the lobby, it was dawn and i saw the same cumbersome ship pull up to land. my parents jumped off the boat and started running toward me which is a rare occurrence, especially for my dad considering the man doesn't run at all. he hugged me and asked if i was alright. i answered with an "absolutely not" and we got on a private plane that appeared pretty much out of nowhere. my parents told me they were sorry for ever letting me come to this place and that i'd be okay. we took off and i looked down at that horrible place and then back to the familiar faces of my parents, all the while still just wearing a bikini and sneakers.