sequences

1. the principle reason for my lack of blogging the last couple of months, if you'll allow me to self-diagnose, would have to be my inability to find any sort of uniting theme to my thoughts.

2. not that such a thing is necessarily necessary for a blog post; but still, it's nice.

3. so but in which case isn't a blog post just a jumbled collection of disparate thoughts masquerading under an arbitrarily chosen theme anyway?

4. vis-à-vis; (with the addition of my general laziness at this point in the year) i will present you with this admittedly entropic list of thoughts without any previous deception of theme or overarching purpose.

5. beginning principally with the thought that to never again be forced to submit myself to the brutality of a high school monday morning is a truly glorious thought indeed.

6. yet it turns out that, excepting the experience of all those younger than the age of 10, literally having nothing to do is deceivingly maddening.

7. if ever you inexplicably find yourself with the belief that the citizenry of america (or the world at large) has made significant progress in terms of interpersonal politeness, linguistic/grammatical/orthographical ability, logical reasoning, or just plain intelligence, i perilously invite you to locate and read (for however long you can stand) any one of numerous internet comment threads on a) yahoo! b) amazon c) youtube d) it seems basically any web site these days.

8. some people really really suck.

9. finally achieving a long-term/dearly-held goal, i've found, is actually more puzzling than anything else.

10. my father now stalks birds.

11. he does this with a web cam he has placed in a birdhouse. i thank you, 21st century! we marvel at your technological advances each day anew! how you so deeply enrich our lives by enabling us to peer into the previously-mysterious day-to-day lives of common passerine and subsequently share our findings with our children!

12. baby birds most definitely rank up there with rats, leeches, and any number of small slimy creatures in terms of general ugliness and undesirability to look at.

13. the word beezy may now be used as a general-purpose superlative adjective, noun, and pronoun.

14. it is impossible to entirely avoid self-contradiction.

15. actually, it's not.

16. the world would be a genuinely better place to live in if everyone behaved like IKEA employees.

17. the fact that people (or at least circumstantially selected teenagers that i've observed) now physically write out "less than 3" rather than simply draw a heart, use the word "delete" when "erase" would have been far more suitable, and announce their feelings using acronyms spanning OMG to TMI (myself readily and admittedly guilty for propagating the latter) -well, this is really more (excuse me) lolz than anything else i could say about the ubiquitous influence of the internet or the degradation of language in the modern world.

19. as far as i am concerned, higher level mathematics is magic.

20. episodes from the earlier seasons of the office seem so much better now that they are slightly aged. sort of like wine or the experience of remembering pokémon.

21. it is apparently irrational to believe that people will do what they say they will do.

22. facebook has irrevocably and fundamentally changed human interaction and the way people study it. it's not just that facebook has changed the way people look at sociology as so much as facebook now is sociology.

23. we live in a society in which men who throw spheres into nets for television cameras earn thousands, hundreds of thousands, and even millions of $ more than people we entrust the fate of our youngsters to.

24. although maybe we do entrust the fate of our youngsters to the men throwing spheres into nets for television cameras.

25. finding one's place in this world is probably the most notoriously difficult act (and yes i do mean that word in its truest meta-dramatic sense) one must undertake, and is certainly that of the teenage years.

26. my perception of a book can be almost completely (and probably unfairly) altered by the selection of font by the publisher.

27. does that make me some sort of elitist?

28. probably.

29. the continued existence of television, radio, magazines, and books is most likely to be at least in part a testament to the true power of nostalgia.

30. for some reason, extreme complexity in story-telling is incredibly captivating (see: proust, LOST, ulysses, 100 years of solitude, infinite jest).

31. sleep is like, important.

32. scheming about the future girlfriends of your kid brother is surprisingly fun.

33. there is something about listening to your favorite music that makes you simply want to write out the lyrics to some of your favorite songs (not that the millions of AIM/facebook status messages of teens nationwide haven't already demonstrated this ad infinitum).

34. i am an american aquarium drinker. i assassin down the avenue. i'm hiding out in the big city blinking. what was i thinking when i let go of you?

35. sorry.

36. 私は日本語を話すふりをして多くの楽しみがある。

37. honestly, why are so many people afraid of roller coasters? it's not like this sort of thing came pre-programmed evolutionarily speaking, like snakes or spiders or bodies of water. maybe it's the heights or loss of control?

38. "what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence." - ludwig wittgenstein

39.

40. alright, let's be honest; at this point, this is just getting gimmicky.

41. as it turns out, making absurd, lengthy, and rather random lists seems to be a perfectly suitable way to fill a blog post.

community

(author's note: please be advised that the following post contains two lengthy and seemingly-disparate accounts of separate events that will be attempted to be implicitly amalgamated together in a somewhat meaningful way by yours truly. should you be averse to such things, or just inclined to stick to more succinct posts, posts devoid of great emotion, or posts with clearer and more understandable connections, be advised that no one will hold such things against you if you decide to wait this one out, or perhaps just read the bits that catch your eye. we now proceed with our feature presentation.)

i went to miami for a week.

believe me when i say it was truly spectacular.

a national organization took 143 artists from all about the nation and threw them together in a miami hotel for a week of madness and adventure. i made up 0.7% of those artists, and 4.8% of the writers present. in summary: i met people there whose talent surpassed my basic understanding. i went to a botanical garden with giant floating plastic objects in its lake. when people asked me what i was, i said 'a writer' and i meant it. i rode on buses. i took pictures of kinetic art. i expressed skepticism at a scheme involving shenanigans with anti-hulk juice. i did a public reading of the post "utility," which you can read for yourself below. i gave high-fives. i laughed when a woman handed me an article written by malcolm gladwell on talent that was supposed to convince and inspire me to succeed in my artistic endeavors. i taught some people the 'single ladies' dance. i considered the future of the publishing industry and was ironically informed that blogging will never get me anywhere. i nearly cried upon reading an essay on a waffle house; such was the essay's beauty, i'm serious. i stood awkwardly by the side of a pool while dancers and actors jumped in the freezing water at 10:30 PM. i wore fake glasses. i became widely known, and rather endearingly so, by two simple syllables: meepmeep. i suffered with allergies for the first few days (do you know how terribly difficult it is to meet people when you have a runny nose?) only to emerge with newfound energy for the remainder of the week. and most of all, i met people, really really cool people, and witnessed their amazing work.

some people want to know about how miami was as a city, as if i even saw the beach or went to a single nightclub. others want to know about the prestige: "what did you win, what famous people where there, etc?" others still want to know about the controversy: "was there anyone there that legitimately did not deserve to be there?" (answer: no). so a lot of people are surprised to hear that the best, and really the only important, part of the week was finding people that liked and understood the same sorts of things as myself, and who were able to speak of literature and writing in sublime and relatable terms. in short, the best part of the week was the almost instant creation of a community - a community of people with the same goals and methods for their lives - a community of, dare i say the word, writers, even artists.

i've been finding that sort of thing in a lot lately. the community idea.

what is it to discover that there are people out there, spinning around in the same world as you, that share your same quirky thought patterns, who think about things so esoteric and seemingly-bizarre that you're shocked to find out others think of them as well? to fall so casually but deeply into conversations about the feel of certain publishers' book jackets, embarrassing middle school technological mishaps, obscure unpublished stories, or dinosaur chicken nuggets, that somehow bare a bit of your soul to another person? to rediscover the warmth of humanity, day in and day out, and to spend your time with people that inspire you in the most menial of moments? to laugh? to cry? to touch? to converse? to smile?

it is to suddenly belong, and it is the most ephemeral and wonderful feeling in the universe.

because i've concluded that it's people that get you through things. not that this is a terribly insightful, or original, observation at all. but trust my sincerity when i say that no human is an island, and no human could live without others, or at least the thought of others. community. kindred spirits. amigos. family. it's how we get by.

always, always, always.

...

now i'm going to do a homage (or tribute, perhaps?) that is somewhat unrelated to anything, except for the fact that it's actually related to everything. it's just about some madman stuff that happened to me a couple of days ago, and how the literary community lost somebody important, and a couple of people that really mean something to me. i don't know how it'll turn out, because i've never tried something like it. it's cheesy, i realize, but it isn't too cheesy. i think you'll catch on pretty quickly. here goes...

Where I want to start telling is the day that the first semester of my senior year ended. My school is this place that's in Irvine, California. You've probably heard of it. Anyway, it was the last final of the semester. If there's one thing I hate, it's finals. Don't even mention them to me. For some reason, for the last final, they made everybody in the class watch this movie about these crazy drivers that went and got themselves killed in stupid accidents, and they made us watch the blood and guts and everything. It was supposed to make you a better driver, but to tell the truth it just made me want to puke. After that I wasn't feeling like doing much of anything, except that somebody leaned in and told me that this favorite author of mine died. I didn't know what to do, so I just sat there and thought about the guy. You'd have liked him. He was terrifically intelligent. I'm not just shooting the crap. He really was.

I don't remember who, but somebody said "RIP" about the whole thing. That's depressing, when someone says "RIP" about a person you liked. That depressed the hell out of me, to tell you the truth. It's just so goddamn obvious. Of course you're resting in peace, you're in the goddamn ground for crying out loud. That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a person that's alright about death, because there isn't any. You might think there is, but once you talk to them, when you're not paying too much attention, they'll sneak in a "RIP" right under your nose and ruin the whole thing. I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery and I have a tombstone and all, even if I say I don't want "RIP" written on it, I bet somebody will come along and write in on there. I'm positive, in fact.

I had some plans for the night, so I went to go see this very affecting picture about a crazy little kid and a bunch of monsters. The kid just wanted to be friendly and all, but the monsters were mostly a bunch of phony slobs to him, which killed me. When it was over and I was all set to go, I stood for a while next to the stairs. I was sort of crying. I don't know why. It could have been because of that little kid, meeting all the monsters and just wanting to be friends, or something. Then I got the hell out.

After I came out from the movie theater, I went into this bookstore with everyone else. Anyway, I was feeling restless if you want to know the truth. It was about seven or eight, and so I went back and just stood there in the bookstore and read the last chapter of this crazy book out loud to these two girls, and it sort of made me feel better. It sounds really corny and all, but I swear it wasn't. I didn't even care that people were walking by and giving me this funny look for doing it. It was so nice and peaceful.

Then a funny thing happened. I went to go eat with a bunch of kids in this restaurant. It was all crowded, and the waiter was so lousy that I sort of felt sorry for him. I did some pretty funny things with my sandwich and I put on these crazy 3D glasses that were supposed to just be for kids, you know the ones where one eye is red and the other one is blue? Then I ran across the street with everyone else and spun around in a gazebo. I think we looked so damn nice, the way we kept going around and around in the gazebo. And the funny thing is, I sort of forgot about the whole thing with the author dying and all. I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth. I really did.

All I know is, I sort of miss that old dead guy now. Even the books he never got around to writing, for instance. It's funny. Don't ever read anybody. If you do, you start loving everybody.

...and i am at peace.

complexity

it seems to me that there is a feeling in art, and in human thought in general, that ideas are to be praised as to their simplicity or complexity, respectively. do we even have an intermediary between those two? a single word to describe an average amount of complexity? i don't think we do. so then, a book or song or equation or movie or philosophical idea is either 'wonderfully complex' or 'delightfully simple,' -these are both terms that people use. but they're opposites, aren't they? we like skinny, not fat people. beautiful, not ugly things. large, not small houses. a lot, not a little, money. so simplicity or complexity -which do we like? make up your mind, humanity!

but regardless of this societal linguistic hypocrisy, i'd like to transition this discussion directly to these very ideas themselves. first, i'd like to show you how simple the world sometimes appears to be.

everything you could ever hold in your hands (namely, everything physical) is composed somehow out of combinations of just 100-odd elements -and depending on what it is you've got, it probably contains a lot less than that. and everything physical you'll probably ever truly care about (namely, humans) is composed almost entirely (we're talking ~99%) of only six elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. add in a few trace elements, like potassium and sulfur, and ladies and gentlemen, that's it! out of those six unique building blocks, you have: the human being. combinations of this limited number of elements are what are currently taking in visual information to give you the sight to read these words, the correct "wiring" to transmit that information throughout your brain, and the mental facility to process and understand this post i've written - which, by the way, is really just an fancy jumble of about fortysomething symbols: 26 letters, 10 numbers, and ~8 punctuation marks.

let's talk music; music, as you know it (in its western context), is made up of only twelve distinct notes. twelve. do re mi fa so la ti (do) for a single scale, plus five more for a chromatic consideration. these twelve notes are endlessly manipulated, combined, and re-imagined -but in the end they number only twelve.

i could go on; turn to any field of study, and you will see simplification and basic patterns. history, physics, linguistics, neuroscience.

and if all of that really isn't unnervingly reductionist enough for you, consider this: humanity is now encoding almost everything, almost all of its cumulative information, into computers. and computers operate on a very simple, boolean idea: zeros and ones. everything can be represented, in a computer at least, with zeros and ones. your essays, your music, your powerpoints, your picture of your brother on his first birthday eating a cupcake. government records, love letters, records of distant planets, historical footage: zero zero one one zero one zero zero etc.

but then...

apples to apples.

apples to apples is a good, good game. in fact, in my mind, it is everything a game should be, or should at least attempt to be: endlessly entertaining, wonderfully social, intriguingly strategic, and ultimately memorable yet easily dismissible upon losing. i realize i'm sort of sadly behind the times on this one (that game was so 2006) but anyway: the idea is that words are printed on cards and players choose words that relate to other words on other cards and everyone has fun. i don't know, read about it if you don't know what it is.

but see, what interests me most about apples to apples is the amount of possibility it demonstrates. as the game's packaging tells us, "The card combinations in Apples to Apples® are virtually limitless." indeed, this is basically true. with the limited amount of combinatorial mathematics the public school system has given me, i've calculated, based upon the "party pack" edition of the game i own, that there are about 13502788770 (756 C 4) possibilities for a single round of play: namely, a single green card with four players each playing a red card. that's a lot of possibilities. if you want to take into consideration which person plays which card, which i believe is now a permutation, the number is ~324067194400. play two rounds, and there are now ~102810134600000000000000 (i apologize for the lack of precision - my calculator rounds off after ten meaningful digits). that's a freaking lot.

and consider this as well: there may well be more than four players, there are certainly more than two rounds, there are possibilities in which card is chosen by the 'judge,' possibilities in what is said about each card, possibilities in everything from the amount of time it takes to choose the card to the decimal level of the vociferous protest when one's card isn't chosen. now is unfortunately not the time for a discussion of the philosophy of probability, but in a single game i think we can safely say there are a nearly infinite number of unique outcomes. in short: considering a limited non-deterministic case-study of apples to apples, things are batshit crazy.

if one game of apples to apples can be so complex, can't the world be that much more so? can't what we've demonstrated in microcosm be extrapolated to the larger plane it inhabits?

sure they may only be 130 elements, but when they form bonds with one another they can form molecules that are very complicated in both form and arrangement. the same with language, music, and our brains. so i guess that in the end what apples to apples shows me best is that true complexity, true...reality, i would even argue, arises in connections. a human, a civilization, an atom, or a computer can create incredible, mind-boggling complexity through connection. it's simply exponential. there is synthesis in connection, enhanced experience in something like a new friendship. and there are many, many things out there in this world. the number of ways in which they can and do combine with one another truly goes beyond understanding.

the world is a big, booming, complex place. and i've got to say: it's really lovely to be there with you.

utility

once a week, i babysit my neighbor's child.

he is an inventive little guy. this week, we kept ourselves amused for about half an hour with "meepmeep," which is a small red wooden mouse with a compass imbedded in its back and two gray felt ears super glued on its head. it goes like this: first he says, "oh, meepmeep go nightnight." he hids meepmeep. i pretend to see what meepmeep is up to, sleeping in the middle of the day and all, and in fact secretly pocket meepmeep. several seconds later, he checks back to see if meepmeep is living up to his promise to sleep -but meepmeep is gone! so the search for meepmeep is on. we look for meepmeep for a minute or two, and i secretly place it in an open area (for instance, on top of a television, a lego structure, a pumpkin.) i then say something to the effect of "well you know, meepmeep probably likes to live near a window..." and then meepmeep is found, and we laugh at the incredibility of it all: meepmeep! running away like that! being found in broad daylight! what a silly little mouse he is. then the cycle begins again. part of me hopes that he actual believes that the little wooden mouse is animated, but he is a very smart three-year-old, and definitely knows otherwise. it's still very funny though.

now i'm going to try to draw a really pained metaphor out of all that, which i apologize in advance for; because the real reason i told you that story was just because i found it amusing, and not because it illustrates a point especially well.

but play along for a second and substitute, will you, meepmeep with happiness or success, and my neighbor with humanity. no, not happiness? fulfillment, then? yes, that's the word: contentment.

do you see it?

because our society is obsessed with finding meepmeep, whatever that is. we declare it in our founding documents, we justify our education with it, we conclude our favorite literature with it.

but meepmeep always, freaking, escapes!

and it drives everyone crazy.

for instance, the recession, which is making a great deal of people a great deal of upset. i admit, the recession is unpleasant, and i'm not wholeheartedly opposed to the idea of economic growth. but come on...

economics is all about meepmeep. getting the most meepmeep for your buck. the best allocation of meepmeep. real national gross domestic meepmeep. it gets pretty annoying, after a while. (well ok. that same phrase also goes for school in general, but that's a story for a different time.) life isn't about squeaking out the most amount of use for everything.
more money ≠ more happiness.
efficiency ≠ joy.
utility ≠ truth.
life isn't about finding meepmeep, because, you fool, you will never get him! it's about what happens to get you there, or more importantly, the idea that one day you will hold him in your hands and be done. life is about what happens in between, and what you make of the time you have to play games and do nothing productive.

silly things keep us alive.

...

my sister and brother are dining together beneath a soft florescent light. they are seated across from each other, like two wonderful innocents in an vintage coca-cola advertisement, harmoniously quiet. the three of us are home alone, and i am in charge. (ha. ha.) my sister is gnawing on an apple and reading. my brother is finishing off his dumplings and completing his homework on lunar predictions. i am at my computer, a 90 degree turn from either, some feet away in the family room, writing to you...

my brother makes an excursion outside, and comes back in singing: ♫ i, can't, see, the moon! i, can't, see, the moon! i, can't, see, the moooOOOOOoooonnn ♫ his sillyboy song annoys my sister. she is trying to read a book and eat an apple. she asks me if she can throw the apple core at my brother's head. "ok," i say in the way that older brothers only can, "sure!" because these things are always jokes, and there's certainly no harm in joking.

my sister throws an apple core at my brother's head.

it makes a beautiful parabolic arc across the table. i watch it from where i sit. my brother's eyes move closer together, following the apple core as it draws closer to his face; he smiles in rapt amusement, too surprised or trapped in cognitive dissonance to move. the apple core smacks him just above his right eyebrow and throws apple sauce about his forehead.

thunksh, it says.

change

i think the last few days of mine deserve recounting to you, even if that's something that i traditionally have avoided. i just have some anecdotes to tell, and i'm going to be very modernist about the whole thing (hope you don't mind). maybe i'll find a common theme of some sort, maybe i won't. either way, it's about time i post something! y'all have been strapped for some dying cat lately. let's fix that.

friday morning was a clumsy one. i dropped a bowl of oatmeal. glass and oatmeal exploded. oatmeal went on my socks. glass went on everywhere. allow me to simulate the noise for you.

*clumsy fumbling [wait, does that even make a noise?]
"shhhiiii......." [slow-motion swears]
KER-chak-a-chak-a-CHOW [this entire progression is about 1.32 seconds]
smppsssssssssss [glass sliding]
"oh." [slow realization that i just exploded a bowl of oatmeal over myself]
ssssssssssssssSSssss [more glass sliding to far-away spots in my house]
"oops." [just about sums the whole thing up]

then on my way to school, after the oatmeal ordeal, i stopped at a green light. i actually stopped my car at the intersection while the light was green. old people gave me strange looks. later, in econ, i forgot a graph on the previous page of a test, convinced myself that the question i had read was referring to a non-existent graph, informed the substitute, and had to endure the embarrasshilarityment of skulsky pointing out my own silliness to me. skulsky! silliness! senioritis! oheaseey. (oh eye es why?)

then i went to chicago.

and that was an adventure.

once in john wayne airport, i took a seat in the terminal across from a fat man and listened to my ipod, which was mainly broken, which was very disappointing. when it came time to board the plane, the TSA stopped me for a "random-check," which was very strange. a man patted me down and called me "pal." he checked my back, ribcage, middle, and legs for weapons, and i was definitely not his pal.

walking alone through an empty airport at 11:24 PM, flanked by dozens of signs proclaiming chicago to be an ideal city for the 2016 olympics, and devouring three cheeseburgers faster than i thought was possible, i knew joy.

"HOG Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders;"

the subway was under construction, and consequently ended two stops before where we needed it to.

"oops," said my father.

but it was no problem; thanks to some quick research on the iphone, we discovered we could walk the rest of the way. so we walked around chicago after midnight. it was amazingly serene. the city at night....at one point we rounded a corner and there was a giant sculpture.

"i think that's a picasso," my father said.

we got closer and he was right: it was a giant picasso sculpture! in the dead of night in a giant metropolis, here was something i never expected to see. to the side, there was a fire burning by a group of construction workers.

"that is a fire," i said.

"i do not know what the fire is for," my father said.

we walked on.

"They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:"

the next day we went to the university of chicago. this time we took the train, which was above ground and much faster than the subway. on the way out of the subway station in hyde park there was a dent in the glass door.

"Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;"

through the neighborhood, with its street art. onward, to the university.

"Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,"

the buildings covered in ivy. the receptionist is a frat boy. he hands me my interview form and i fill out my extracurriculars.

"Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,"

i run out of the information session to go to the bathroom. people are arguing about intellectualism on the wall of the stall. "fuck the university and its faux intellectualism" it begins. "fuck all that hate on the university," it continues. i stop to read it.

"Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!"

the tour complete, the interview over, we walk the path to find a place to eat. my interviewer walks by and i wonder if she hears me telling my dad what the interview was like. i wonder if the girl who shouted to the tour guide about how the university should have a quidditch team will get in. i wonder what happened to the guys who built a nuclear reactor in their room. i wonder about the dad who flipped out when he saw a sign advertising hookah on the quad. i wonder if the tour guide was joking when he pointed to a gargoyle and said it represented an admissions officer. i decide that he was.

then a beautiful girl walks by and i am happy.

we eat at subway. i order a meatball sub, which is weird. a large man walks in and asks the employee how much refills are.

"freefills,"the employee says cleverly.

"huh? how much are refills?"

"freefills. they're free."

"oh." he chuckles.

as he redeems his "freefill," the man turns to face us and begins to speak.

"each generation brings good and bad."

huh?

"a memory is worth its weight in gold. memories worth their weight in gold."

now i understand: he is imparting his wisdom on us. i take a bite of my sub.

"the world is changing," he says importantly, waving his soda in the air to accent his point. "everyday!"

"Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation."

i nod my head in agreement.