no, this is not paris...
i have no place to be today where there is a corner that i can sit in and shut out the ugly american world around me today. it's a holiday so even though most of the working people in my corporate ugly town are not flooding my cafe at this early hour, the flamboyant touristy types are flooding the place, and there is NO corner here that i can sit in with my back to them all. i have TROUT MASK REPLICA playing loudly in my earbuds, so that casts me partly into another realm, but the visuals around me anchor me to the fact that i am NOT in Paris.
ahh, Paris... will i ever meet you in person? Craig Ferguson did a wonderful week long visit to Paris with his Late Late Show last month and he took the amazing young actress Kristen Bell with him. God, what an old man's fantasy that is for me... ahem, so I've got a little bit of cash in my pocket right now, enough exactly to buy a passport. i said that already, yes? so this week i'm going to start the application process to nab those "papers"... Dublin, London, Paris, Edinburugh... cemeteries and bookstores. that's my dream vacation. then i can come home and die. then i won't care if i die in this god forsaken place where no one knows who i am or what i do. i'd throw Rome into the mix for that vacation too but i think it's better not to dream too big.
so i'm still out of whack. just can't shake this malaise i'm feeling. need a massage, that's what i need. bought a groupon for a series of massages at place in Lafayette but i think they must have gotten overwhelmed by the demand of their coupon because i can't get through on the phone to make an appointment. they only have three employees. i don't think they anticipated the big response they got. may try to see if i can just get my money back.
i can't write clearly or freely enough here right now either. i still feel, invisibly over analyzed by the things i say. i just need to be able to say them and not have them regurgitated like the summary from a lecture. i don't mind getting personal insights or hearing someone else's similar toils...
it's funny, there is one person in this town right now that really likes to find me and get me to sit down and have coffee with him and have me listen to him tell me about what an artist he is. sadly, i have to avoid the places he goes because every time i see him, he says the exact same things over and over again. as if we had never met before and he never told me his story before. it drains energy from me every time it happens. i'm ready to, next time i see him, to slap him in the face and say, "shut up! listen to yourself! you always say the exact same things and i don't care! shut up and leave me the fuck alone!" you know me, though. i won't do that. and he is only talking about being "an artistic soul". he does not create any art. the really bad thing is that he works at the health club. i know the scheduled hours he has, so i know when i can avoid him being there except that recently he has just been hanging out there on his free time. and the thing is, every time he meets me in public, he throws his arms around me and announces me to his friends as the "great artist daryl darko". like knowing me is a trophy... he is from egypt and his father was a photographer and i think he must feel some sort of sadness about missing his father and that he did not become a photographer, or something. he's a lovely person, but this one thing he does just saps me. sad. and he thinks i avoid him on purpose because i don't like him. i'd like him fine if he didn't do this soul sucking thing... he does it in other ways too, whenever he has problems he needs to talk about. it must be a european thing, this need to talk like this... i dunno..
okay, so there... i talked something out. not what i really want to be blogging about though.
there are some new poems on the poetry blog.
the sn detox is going slow, but it is going. i do not miss the fb at all. and i am getting more and more detached from G+ too. i have shifted my addictive net energy over into my tumblr right now, but that is different. really different. i don't talk to people on tumblr. tumblr is image therapy for me and i'd be doing it one way or the other whether i were on fb or not. so i will hit a plateau with tumblr like i normally do and take a break for a couple of weeks. i had a thought earlier this morning that maybe i'd start a new tumblr that contained only my own images. but that is totally contrary to what i am trying to do in hiding my art right now. so i don't think i will do that. i need to go into hibernation. i need to sleep. i need to read. i need to dream. i need to slowwwwwly think about what i want to do next. i am trying to figure out how to finish this book of Jordan poetry. i'm pretty sure that i don't want to do it as a blurb book. it's just too expensive for anyone to buy. i am thinking of doing using HP MagCloud which would be much more affordable to purchase and it would be an exciting new format to experiment with. but its a whole new learning experience for me. it shouldn't be too hard to create a magazine style format/layout but having no experience and no easy to use templates like Blurb offers, i'm stepping in blind. we'll see.
i have not even began to think about nanowrimo yet. last month i had a spurt of inspiration to rewrite Requiem For A Loner, and worked on that for about 2 weeks, and now that is a total blur of a memory. unfinished. it was really hard too. to both reread what i had written but also to try to fix sentences and paragraphs that were apparently broken. i got so pulled into what i had written that i became entranced by my own story. and then there is last year's nanowrimo text that i have not even peeked at since November 30, 2010. IT needs to be edited, and BLURBED. why the hell not?? i just don't have the strength. honestly, the pain i feel in my body right now just makes me want to go to sleep for a week... but that will not make the pain go away. i guess the only way to really deal with the pain is to keep in touch with my obsessions and ignore the pains. my main obsession is to sit in front of a computer and edit my photographs and to write. things that only complicate the muscular/skeletal pains i'm suffering from. and the other obsession is Mountain View Cemetery. but it's so far away. gas is so expensive and my poor car, every day i feel like it's the last day it's going to drive. yesterday the passenger door stopped opening from the outside. so now both front doors cannot be opened from the outside. i have to climb in from the back of the car to open the front door so i can get into the driver's see to drive. those visits i made to the cemetery last week may be the last ever. (of course it won't be... still, some issues seem insurmountable.)
i considered going to Alamo Cemetery on Friday night but i just don't feel safe or welcome there any more. not sure what to do about that. and it was interesting because just recently i was in the Danville library and saw this young high school girl who had a striking likeness to the young 14 year old girl Kirsta that is buried in AC. i was fascinated by seeing her and it started to pull me back into my thoughts of the original Cemetery Girl story that i have NOT been working on in a very long time. i had seen this girl before. last year, in November when i used to go to Danville Library every day to write my nanowrimo. she was there but at that time i did not see Kirsta in her. maybe she was not 14 then?? it was a weird day in that library though because the internet worked awful. i could not get any proper streaming at all. my music would not stream. my typing got all clogged up. i thought it was something wrong with my computer so after an hour of frustration i got up and went to Peets. which was awesome because one of the baristas there made me think of Emma Stone (so now I have to go there to work on my writing because of that connection to her role in the film Paper Man). i practically decided to never go back to Danville Library with my computer to work on writing after that experience. but now i may need to reconsider. i'm never going to speak to that girl. but just being in the room near her would be contact with the muse.
it's not autumn here yet but it needs to be. i hope its a bitter, wet autumn. one thing this year has lacked is fire. i did get to see the amazing video feed of the burn at Gerlach, Nevada last night. but there have not been many wild fires burning in California this year. no smell of smoke in the air. there was one season, about 2 or 3 years ago when there were wild fires burning up near Clear Lake. there was a thick haze of smoke all over the Bay Area and northern California. we had dramatic sunsets and there was a great smell of burnt timber in the air. that lasted for nearly 3 weeks. there's something comforting about the smell of a wood fire. maybe especially if it's a wild fire. not a city experience at all. i've been trying to tap into old memories lately. this morning i had a quick glimpse of a memory back into around 1965 when i was a little boy in San Leandro. it was a melange of memories; of Linda Seagul, of how we used to love to play in the dirt, of what our dirty neighborhood streets looked and smelled like, and of the crispness of the first autumn airs... first memories of autumns as a child are really pretty special. autumn doesn't mean anything to you when you are a baby. it's not until you are about 5 or 6 that autumn starts to feel significant. the sudden need to wear a coat after the heat of summer, the feelings of dewy mornings walking to school, noticing that there is a shift in the length of daylight... first memories of Halloween and Thanksgiving add to the strength of these. some of my best memories of autumn in my modern, recent life were the marathon chants at Gurumayi's ashram in Oakland in celebration of Muktananda's mahasamhadi. the only thing i've had celebratory since those times are my cemetery isolations. i really hope to be of good health, physically, mentally, and automobilically during October, November, December, January, February (our autumn months here in Northern California) so that i can have my meditations in Mountain View Cemetery. and I hope to be strong enough to be able to make those visits with some lovely creatures to create more art with. this is my most inspired time of year. i'm just so worn out from the first part of this year so far, and so many of the lovely creatures of earth go into hibernation during this time of year and don't like to come out and play... we'll see.
ahh, Paris... will i ever meet you in person? Craig Ferguson did a wonderful week long visit to Paris with his Late Late Show last month and he took the amazing young actress Kristen Bell with him. God, what an old man's fantasy that is for me... ahem, so I've got a little bit of cash in my pocket right now, enough exactly to buy a passport. i said that already, yes? so this week i'm going to start the application process to nab those "papers"... Dublin, London, Paris, Edinburugh... cemeteries and bookstores. that's my dream vacation. then i can come home and die. then i won't care if i die in this god forsaken place where no one knows who i am or what i do. i'd throw Rome into the mix for that vacation too but i think it's better not to dream too big.
so i'm still out of whack. just can't shake this malaise i'm feeling. need a massage, that's what i need. bought a groupon for a series of massages at place in Lafayette but i think they must have gotten overwhelmed by the demand of their coupon because i can't get through on the phone to make an appointment. they only have three employees. i don't think they anticipated the big response they got. may try to see if i can just get my money back.
i can't write clearly or freely enough here right now either. i still feel, invisibly over analyzed by the things i say. i just need to be able to say them and not have them regurgitated like the summary from a lecture. i don't mind getting personal insights or hearing someone else's similar toils...
it's funny, there is one person in this town right now that really likes to find me and get me to sit down and have coffee with him and have me listen to him tell me about what an artist he is. sadly, i have to avoid the places he goes because every time i see him, he says the exact same things over and over again. as if we had never met before and he never told me his story before. it drains energy from me every time it happens. i'm ready to, next time i see him, to slap him in the face and say, "shut up! listen to yourself! you always say the exact same things and i don't care! shut up and leave me the fuck alone!" you know me, though. i won't do that. and he is only talking about being "an artistic soul". he does not create any art. the really bad thing is that he works at the health club. i know the scheduled hours he has, so i know when i can avoid him being there except that recently he has just been hanging out there on his free time. and the thing is, every time he meets me in public, he throws his arms around me and announces me to his friends as the "great artist daryl darko". like knowing me is a trophy... he is from egypt and his father was a photographer and i think he must feel some sort of sadness about missing his father and that he did not become a photographer, or something. he's a lovely person, but this one thing he does just saps me. sad. and he thinks i avoid him on purpose because i don't like him. i'd like him fine if he didn't do this soul sucking thing... he does it in other ways too, whenever he has problems he needs to talk about. it must be a european thing, this need to talk like this... i dunno..
okay, so there... i talked something out. not what i really want to be blogging about though.
there are some new poems on the poetry blog.
the sn detox is going slow, but it is going. i do not miss the fb at all. and i am getting more and more detached from G+ too. i have shifted my addictive net energy over into my tumblr right now, but that is different. really different. i don't talk to people on tumblr. tumblr is image therapy for me and i'd be doing it one way or the other whether i were on fb or not. so i will hit a plateau with tumblr like i normally do and take a break for a couple of weeks. i had a thought earlier this morning that maybe i'd start a new tumblr that contained only my own images. but that is totally contrary to what i am trying to do in hiding my art right now. so i don't think i will do that. i need to go into hibernation. i need to sleep. i need to read. i need to dream. i need to slowwwwwly think about what i want to do next. i am trying to figure out how to finish this book of Jordan poetry. i'm pretty sure that i don't want to do it as a blurb book. it's just too expensive for anyone to buy. i am thinking of doing using HP MagCloud which would be much more affordable to purchase and it would be an exciting new format to experiment with. but its a whole new learning experience for me. it shouldn't be too hard to create a magazine style format/layout but having no experience and no easy to use templates like Blurb offers, i'm stepping in blind. we'll see.
i have not even began to think about nanowrimo yet. last month i had a spurt of inspiration to rewrite Requiem For A Loner, and worked on that for about 2 weeks, and now that is a total blur of a memory. unfinished. it was really hard too. to both reread what i had written but also to try to fix sentences and paragraphs that were apparently broken. i got so pulled into what i had written that i became entranced by my own story. and then there is last year's nanowrimo text that i have not even peeked at since November 30, 2010. IT needs to be edited, and BLURBED. why the hell not?? i just don't have the strength. honestly, the pain i feel in my body right now just makes me want to go to sleep for a week... but that will not make the pain go away. i guess the only way to really deal with the pain is to keep in touch with my obsessions and ignore the pains. my main obsession is to sit in front of a computer and edit my photographs and to write. things that only complicate the muscular/skeletal pains i'm suffering from. and the other obsession is Mountain View Cemetery. but it's so far away. gas is so expensive and my poor car, every day i feel like it's the last day it's going to drive. yesterday the passenger door stopped opening from the outside. so now both front doors cannot be opened from the outside. i have to climb in from the back of the car to open the front door so i can get into the driver's see to drive. those visits i made to the cemetery last week may be the last ever. (of course it won't be... still, some issues seem insurmountable.)
i considered going to Alamo Cemetery on Friday night but i just don't feel safe or welcome there any more. not sure what to do about that. and it was interesting because just recently i was in the Danville library and saw this young high school girl who had a striking likeness to the young 14 year old girl Kirsta that is buried in AC. i was fascinated by seeing her and it started to pull me back into my thoughts of the original Cemetery Girl story that i have NOT been working on in a very long time. i had seen this girl before. last year, in November when i used to go to Danville Library every day to write my nanowrimo. she was there but at that time i did not see Kirsta in her. maybe she was not 14 then?? it was a weird day in that library though because the internet worked awful. i could not get any proper streaming at all. my music would not stream. my typing got all clogged up. i thought it was something wrong with my computer so after an hour of frustration i got up and went to Peets. which was awesome because one of the baristas there made me think of Emma Stone (so now I have to go there to work on my writing because of that connection to her role in the film Paper Man). i practically decided to never go back to Danville Library with my computer to work on writing after that experience. but now i may need to reconsider. i'm never going to speak to that girl. but just being in the room near her would be contact with the muse.
it's not autumn here yet but it needs to be. i hope its a bitter, wet autumn. one thing this year has lacked is fire. i did get to see the amazing video feed of the burn at Gerlach, Nevada last night. but there have not been many wild fires burning in California this year. no smell of smoke in the air. there was one season, about 2 or 3 years ago when there were wild fires burning up near Clear Lake. there was a thick haze of smoke all over the Bay Area and northern California. we had dramatic sunsets and there was a great smell of burnt timber in the air. that lasted for nearly 3 weeks. there's something comforting about the smell of a wood fire. maybe especially if it's a wild fire. not a city experience at all. i've been trying to tap into old memories lately. this morning i had a quick glimpse of a memory back into around 1965 when i was a little boy in San Leandro. it was a melange of memories; of Linda Seagul, of how we used to love to play in the dirt, of what our dirty neighborhood streets looked and smelled like, and of the crispness of the first autumn airs... first memories of autumns as a child are really pretty special. autumn doesn't mean anything to you when you are a baby. it's not until you are about 5 or 6 that autumn starts to feel significant. the sudden need to wear a coat after the heat of summer, the feelings of dewy mornings walking to school, noticing that there is a shift in the length of daylight... first memories of Halloween and Thanksgiving add to the strength of these. some of my best memories of autumn in my modern, recent life were the marathon chants at Gurumayi's ashram in Oakland in celebration of Muktananda's mahasamhadi. the only thing i've had celebratory since those times are my cemetery isolations. i really hope to be of good health, physically, mentally, and automobilically during October, November, December, January, February (our autumn months here in Northern California) so that i can have my meditations in Mountain View Cemetery. and I hope to be strong enough to be able to make those visits with some lovely creatures to create more art with. this is my most inspired time of year. i'm just so worn out from the first part of this year so far, and so many of the lovely creatures of earth go into hibernation during this time of year and don't like to come out and play... we'll see.
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