I figured that since it still applies today and that this blog is turning into a wasteland, I’d post this brief poem I wrote about a year ago.

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Numbers
The clank of lead and steel
Flawless simple machines
Guided by rhythm
Acid flows throughout
So painful, so sweet
A world where the man doesn’t make the machine
But the machine makes the man
Maybe I can iron out this concavity
Or evaporate vast stores
Of clandestine melancholy

While sometimes I pretend to be cynical, I’m really an obnoxious romantic. See, I have a dream. I know what I want to do with my life, and I want to do it because I want to expand the pool of knowledge about the universe that humanity has a little further, and I have a particular area in which I wish to do this knowledge expanding in. I want to be a physicist.

Earlier today somehow this came up in discussion, at which one person opined that he didn’t think my particular area of interest was as worthwhile as, say, medical research. I was a bit miffed at this statement, and he proceeded to explain that medical research leads to cures which improve the human welfare, while my preferred area did not seem to have much more to offer technology-wise. Ignoring the question of the truth of that statement (which I think is emphatically false), this made me think a few things.

It’s usually easier to justify expenditure of resources in science than it is in the arts and humanities because of how technological innovation proceeds from science, while the arts and the humanities usually have to resort to some nebulous appeal to metaphysical perspectives on the human condition and hope that it gets through to the bureaucrats who make the funding decisions. However, in the end, technology is not why I want to do science. While I don’t pretend to speak for all people who want to be or are scientists, I suspect many of them don’t want to do science simply because of technology either.

I want to do science because I want to learn about the natural universe. I want to help humanity learn about the natural universe.  The scale of the universe and its history, the behavior of subatomic particles, the chemistry of life, all inspire a great sense of awe and wonder. And, somehow,  a tiny bit of matter in some incredibly tiny corner of the universe, less than a water molecule in the cosmological ocean, manages to become self-aware and gazes at the rest of the universe and asks, “why?”

I’m not trying to be callous when I say that I don’t care about the practical benefits of science as much as I care about expanding the breadth of human knowledge. Efforts to increase the overall welfare of humanity are very noble and should be lauded much more than they are now.  One of our greatest failings is that we allow so much suffering to occur on our planet. However, improving the level of technological advancement and human welfare is not the only reason to do science, nor does it have to be the primary one for an aspiring scientist.

It’s past midnight, the sky is a light gray and a quiet rain acknowledges pedestrian faces every few moments. Three figures are standing at a table under a vinyl canopy, surrounded by people they will never see again. In the middle of the table sits a glass ashtray, surrounding it a mixed drink and a pint of Guinness for someone to cry into. One of them, standing behind the Guinness, is recognized to be Simon, a hopeless romantic in his own over-exaggerated way. He scratches behind his ear, almost elbowing a girl in a short red dress passing by their table in the process. He breaks the silence. “Have you ever been emotionally invested in someone?”

“Isn’t that what the sappy types like to call love?” From the dim neon light, a sandpaper voice and the end of a cigarette slowly glowing brighter. He was the reason the three were outside; a nicotine addiction that took root when it was cool to do so. It proved to be both magnetic and off-putting for the opposite sex. A paradox that is never acknowledged, never questioned. He is wearing a “Hi, my name is Marshall” sticker on the left side of a white shirt. The others presumed a pretentious attempt at irony, though Marshall had in fact gotten back from an ill-advised attempt at speed dating.

“Well, yeah, but that’s not what I mean.” Simon takes another gulp from the dry stout, holding back the urge to cough it up. He was never one for Guinness, and yet one had produced itself in front of him. “Have you ever found someone that was completely amazing, who just fills your mind to the point that you can’t think about anything else?”

“Seriously, that sounds like love.” A tall, capricious brunette who exuded a sultry charm that required years to perfect. Her style was impeccable, her standards unattainable, and yet she associated herself with a jaded, chain-smoking asshole and a hopelessly trepid romantic. If things were any more cliche, she would have found herself in a television melodrama or a piece of fiction.

“But it isn’t, Robin. It really isn’t, see? Because they’re too oblivious to tell, and you’re too bashful to say anything of it, so you settle for being the one guy that listens to her complain for a little bit, or talk about the latest happenings somewhere or another, without ever fully knowing whether or not she talks to anyone else the same way?” Simon slightly stumbles over the last few words, or at least, he seemed to do so within the realms of his mind.

“You switched from ’someone’ to ’she’. Obviously, you’re speaking from experience.” Marshall takes a five second drag, taps ashes loose from the end of his cigarette and steals various sips from Robin’s mixed drink. She slaps him on the arm, but does nothing more of it.

“Shush, let the kid speak.” Robin says, as she is hitting him. “He’s making a little bit of sense, for once.” She continues, acknowledging Simon’s tendency to ramble.

“I can’t even focus, anymore.” Simon takes another large gulp, before continuing on. “So many times I’ve met people, gotten to know them, and then come to the realization that I’m putting all of this effort into someone that doesn’t quite care as much as I do, acknowledge the fact, then continue to listen to them talk or complain or whatever until they fade out of my life. It’s not like I don’t want to create something more meaningful with that person, it’s just that there’s a wall in front of me erected by either her or my own neuroses. I want to walk away–every fiber of my being tells me that it’s absolutely pointless to even try, but I can’t. There’s something that’s telling me to keep going, even though she’ll just fade away, like all of the others. That’s what I mean by being emotionally invested in someone.”

“That’s… a pretty heartbreaking way to put it, Simon.” Robin, her eyes wide, finally says after a few beats of silence.

“It’s when you put all of your eggs into one basket, when you try your damndest to get to know someone, to sweep them off their feet, and actually start caring for them even though they don’t care much for you; that’s when it hurts the most.” Simon finishes, holding back the one thing people who are supposedly adults should never do in public.

“Oh, you have eggs. Ovaries, too.” Marshall quips.

Robin draws a black plastic cylinder from her drink, spilling drops of it onto the plastic table. There is a slight breeze, much like the calm before a duel in the Old West. “I will stab you with this drink straw, Marshall.”

The three share a laugh, the rain picks up and once again, the night returns to what all nights end up being.

Let’s start this off, shall we?

A penguin waddles across an icy iceberg in such tacitly tact way you’d think they were foolishly fooling you into thinking that it is way too cold to swim. It’s actually a few degrees below zero (Fahrenheit), so it isn’t too bad, there are fish aplenty within the deep blue yonder and yet all the penguin wants to do is stand, because, as we have mentioned before, it may be very cold. In fact, a few degrees below zero (Fahrenheit) is very cold. The penguin is faced with an option that is more human than penguin, really. Should it jump into the waters cooled by the icy iceberg, swim around for a little and find some sustenance for the rest of the day? Or should it stand still, stoically stowing away its remaining energy and keeping warm for a pretty indefinite period of time until another penguin waddles along with some surplus fish in its beak. The rift, it seems, is between the willingness to venture for more or settle for less. So the penguin stops, digs its little feet into the building snow (did I not mention it was snowing?) and uses all of the power in its frontal lobe (if penguins have one at all, I’m as of late ignorant in the ways of penguin anatomy) and tries to decide what the best course of action would be. What would the best course of action be? (Furthermore, why is this penguin adopting such human traits? Is it an evolved penguin, brought about after many genetic mutations over generations? Is it merely a terrible metaphor?) The desire for more fish or realizing that it is perfectly content with just sitting for a little while?

I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore (I rarely do, but this is beyond my normal realm of comprehension), so let’s change the subject. I haven’t been writing a lot recently, mainly because way too many unimportant things (and many important things, for that matter) have been clogging up the ol’ cerebral cortex recently. This isn’t saying that I haven’t had the desire to write, no, no, that remains the same. This is saying that all of those great ideas, all of those strong notions that suddenly crop up in the mind have gone by the wayside for other things. I don’t like that much (if at all).

Many, many apologies. I need to straighten things out within the whole mind thing.

I wrote this script almost a year ago thinking it would be a good way to get in some practice with directing actors, and filming lengthy dramatic sequences. Plus it seemed like good fucking idea. Unfortunately, it looks like it may never be produced do to my lack of 10 to twenty friends willing to sit around for nearly an hour pretending to be a crowd. So I figured I’d just share the script with you people. Enjoy.

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(The scene is one of Mr. Cross’ drama classes. The students appear to be bored as yet another one of their classmates is performing a monologue. The student is clearly acting their best but not doing a very good job despite this. Mr. Cross is one of the few watching this respectfully.)

STUDENT: (Trying to be as fully emotional as possible) …so…uh… Rick, he went outside to face them, “bang bang,” got show dead. (He attempts to well up tears but all he can manage is to scrunch up his face a little bit.) He was my best friend and I lost him to gang violence. (The boy returns to his normal state, believing he did fine.) That’s it.

CROSS: (Clapping politely) That was good, Jorge. (All applaud routinely, giving no trace of emotion except utter apathy and boredom. Roy, however, simply laughs in amusement at what was just presented. Mr. Cross makes a note of something in his gradebook, sets his pencil down and looks across the class.)

CROSS: So, let’s take a look at what he could have done better.

ROY: Everything. (The students react in various ways, many laughing. Mr. Cross is not amused.)

CROSS: Do you care to elaborate, Roy?

ROY: Sure. His emotions seemed fake, the emphasis he placed on a lot of lines were out of synch with the character and he was over-acting.

CROSS: Over-acting?

ROY: Yep.

CROSS: Well, that settles it. You’re up next.

(Roy looks up, shocked. After a few seconds, he rises reluctantly and takes a chair to the stage. He sits down and looks to his classmates with fear in his eyes. Cross urges the boy to go on. Roy looks back to the crowd for a moment before closing his eyes. When he opens them the fear is gone. He is in into character. The monologue begins. At first a lot of comic delivery is presented but there comes a point when the audience realizes that they are viewing a very complex dramatic piece.)

 ROY: We met in October about a year ago. I didn’t really talk to him all that much in the first few months. He was an odd looking fella. The dude had some really scruffy brown hair, funny arms. He was really tall for his age. Like 6’3” at fourteen years old and he wasn’t proportioned well at all. Lanky arms and legs with this broad torso. I don’t mean to sound shallow but I just didn’t want anything to do with him at the time. When we got our first class together in January, we really hit it off though. The guy’s name was Alex. We had so many things in common. Still loving the Power Rangers. We were into the classic animes of the ‘90s like Cowboy Bebop and Outlaw Stars and indie films like Donnie Darko and Brick. Alex would always do the craziest things though. He had these catch phrases laced with innuendo, like “Supersize me!” and “Black snakes make white girls scream.” There were these times when he’d run down the hall and start to slide on his belly but he’d always land on his hip and limp for the rest of the day. Alex would swear never to do it again. A week later he was back at it… What happened to him? He was a magician; vanishing without a trace… Okay. There was this situation with a couple of girls at a dance. He liked them both but he only ended up dating one. You can imagine how it made the other feel. Alex was a real idiot for being so nice and leading that other girl on the way he did with all the notes they had me transferring and those private talks in the hallway. I thought it was definitely the strangest thing he ever did. Stranger was what happened after that… At lunch one day, the eighth grade dean came and took Alex to the office. My other friends and I thought nothing of it ‘cause he’d skipped a lot of classes. Later I asked the dude what it was about. There was a drained looked in his eyes, like a rodent paralyzed and ready to be swallowed. That girl who he’d rejected and continued to be so kind to have disappeared. She had become a ghost, not there but her hand having an affect on us all. The next day, Alex’s eyes were more shocked than before. He’d been told that the girl’s mother still hadn’t seen her. Then he told me something he told no one else… She’d said to him that if she didn’t show up to school the next day she was dead. That she’d killed herself. My friend. He’didn’t take her seriously at all. Who could blame him with all the emo kids today that talk about this shit nonstop? I couldn’t. But when he disappeared, I had to worry. I was so afraid that this happy go-lucky guy had finished himself off too. I got to be really depressed for a few weeks and then he shot an e-mail my way. All that had been weighing my soul down seemed to drop as I was able to write to this guy and tell him how scared and angry and happy he’d made me… You could tell something was different though. As we increased the length of our conversations his lack of hope and overwhelming amount of sorrow became more apparent. The things he’d say had become so dark that I couldn’t take it anymore. I told him how much he scared me and that if he kept talking like that we were just… done. The last message he sent to me said, “Signing out…” We never spoke again. I moved on with my life thinking I wouldn’t care about it after a month or two. Well, I’d stopped caring… about everything. It was alright by me. I became the class slacker that I’d always wanted to be. Nobody else seemed to enjoy the change as much as I did so they sent me here. (He begins to laugh hysterically as he speaks, his voice gradually intensifying.) You wanna know the screwy thing? We never did find out what happened to the girl. Nobody did.

(The boy continues to laugh, gradually falling into a silent sob, almost inaudible but the tears visible. Roy’s eyes close for a moment and when they have opened he’s broken character. The boy looks up at his classmates frightened at what their reactions might be. At first the crowd is speechless but soon they begin a massive applause. A timid smile spreads across Roy’s face. He looks to Mr. Cross who claps with a proud grin on his face and the boy knows that he has done well.)

Ridiculum is the noun form of ridiculous that I just now invented.  This is because I’ve decided that the word ridiculousness is just ridiculous; and ridiculum sounds much cooler.  So take that, Merriam fucking Webster.

Aside from my current state of experiencing ridiculum…

Actually that’s pretty much an accurate way to label all that is going on.  Applications, work, school, art, and bullshit.  Lots of it. 

<unrelated>Mr. Bill’s neck is breakable.</unrelated>

All around her was gray, and brown, and a dirty color that might have once been called green. A car alarm was going off, somewhere to her right.

Molly looked down and frowned as sticky sweetness dripped onto her hands. That was no good, letting the wonderful treat waste away. She so rarely got something like she was holding in her hands – a rainbow Popsicle, to be precise – and she wanted to savor every drop.

She glanced up as another car alarm went off, this one right in front of her, and was rewarded with the whole Popsicle sliding off.

Molly glanced at the sticky stick. The newly-colored ground. The car.

Reaching a decision in no time at all (in the true fashion of young children everywhere), Molly threw the stick at the car and was rewarded with a startled look from the robber pillaging the rickety old thing.

Molly giggled, then frowned as she realized her Popsicle was still on the ground.

She looked at it again, a rapidly melting blot of color on the dirty expanse of gray concrete, totally out of place in her world of grungy grays.

Molly promptly burst into tears.

Completion of assignments and the boredom that occurs when this happens has prompted me to spend my time in Web Mastering making little logos for TSILB.

Sorry if it’s a bit sloppy, I made it quickly during pauses in note taking.

Also, this is entirely unrelated, I just clicked paste and this is what appeared:

“You made an excellent impression in your interviews. The executive editor and I agreee that you are perfectly qualified for the job and would be a great addition to our staff. Therefore, we are delighted to offer you the position of Copy Editor in our Editorial Department at a salary of $3,000 per month, based on a 40-hour work week.”

Interesting, isn’t it?  Makes me very curious about what the story is behind this.

“My shirt smells of her perfume.” Simon tells Tim, in reference to what had happened only minutes before. The scent mingles with the threads of his cotton shirt, reminding him of a field of flowers, or something as adequately cliché.  “It’s slightly nauseating but I don’t really mind.”

“Oh god. Not this again.” Tim responds. Not this again indeed, for Tim had witnessed the event many times before. Simon, on the borderline between emotionally unstable and entirely too emotional for his own good, often found himself engaging in elaborate imaginations of romances with those that were too good for him, those that he was too good for, and those who, despite the best of his abilities, he could not resist wanting to take to at the very least, dinner. The girl who had just left, the one who so carelessly gave Simon a final embrace before leaving to parts unknown, whose perfume smelled of a field of lilacs, was in a category of her own. She was, in essence, the one that got away, the one that was never meant to be, the one that broke his heart to tiny enough pieces that he has yet to put it back together. The one that caused him to be the effusive, overtly emotional persona that Tim had grown accustomed to. Tim gestures Simon to return to the green vinyl booth of an all-too-familiar bar.

“What does that say about the situation?” Simon muses. Tim began the process he always does. A swig of whiskey, a breath of air, and a truth masked in an insult.

“It could mean that even though you find her at least somewhat insufferable, very insufferable, even, you still long for her presence, even when you two just said goodbye. Like, not even five minutes ago. It’s either that, or you like wearing women’s perfume.” Just as before, just as he always did. Things had gotten mundane, it seems, for the pair.

“Asshole.” Simon retorts. “This is why I don’t talk to you about these things.” There was nothing more that Simon wanted than to return to a time of perhaps not-empty flirtations between him and the girl, before the times when his overly paranoid self was kicked into an overdrive driven by the desire to not get crushed again. Before her person changed within the span of a stairwell and whatever was between her and Simon was crushed to smithereens, ashes falling ever so lightly from the cigarette of someone smoking a cigarette on the roof of an apartment building. Maybe she had changed, maybe they could return to being perfectly fine with sitting on a worn leather couch watching whatever was on TV. It was too late for that, now. Simon snaps out of his trance with a sip of Chardonnay. He could muse on the subject for hours, left unchecked.

“At least one of those points was valid, though.” Tim shoots back, his wit a revolver and his statements the bullets. There was caring behind the words, hidden amongst the jackassery that psychologists would call a defense mechanism. “Judging by your past and my knowledge of your personality, and the fact that you’re drinking white wine of all things, I can only assume it’s the second.”

“Jackass.”

Here is a list of things I must complete today and tomorrow:

• My YoungArts application
• The rough draft of a College Application paper
• A seven foot tall sculpture that is due tomorrow (I’m still constructing the armature)
• A proposal for an installation
• And applications for Cornell, Cornish, PNCA, AIB, MCAD, KCAI, UT, and Corcoran.

Out of this, I have completed:

• The first half of my YoungArts application

It’s become apparent that I’ve got my work cut out for me.   I think it’s time I dropped from the social scene.  It’s happened before but usually as part of a punishment for procrastating to a point of extreme detrimentality.  So of course, out of naturally occuring rebellion, I continued to procrastinate during those periods of isolation.  But now it is time for a self-imposed isolation.  A holy-shit-I-need-to-get-stuff-done-and-I-just-don’t-have-the-time-for-anything-else  kind of isolation.

Here is a list of things I need to do in order to get everything done:

• Cancel weekend plans
• Change availability hours so I’m not closing on weekdays
• Cut back on the pot
• Actually do work