The Journal

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Nine minutes to the Weekend

I had this dream last night that was terrifying in a sick sort of way. It was one of those dreams that keep coming back even though you're fully awake -- for the seventh time.

It all started so innocently: I was playing some sort of Zelda-like computer game, dodging demons and collecting gadgets, killing monsters and casting spells. Unfortunately, my subconscious saw no reason to keep this wonderful fantasy world inside the computer. Gradually and insidiously, I became the little boy running around a giant haunted mansion, trying to save his family from destruction by Death (yes, with a captital D), who looked like a flying human skeleton dressed in dark, dark, dark blue rags.

Although Death was translucent and mostly immaterial, he did not like to be touched. He kept saying "ouch" every time I swatted at him. He was the sort of jovial fellow that you would not mind having over for dinner, as long as he didn't fly around and kill people in nasty, gruesome ways. Death was also deceitful and helpful at the same time. You know how, in James Bond movies, the villain keeps giving 007 clues so he can lure the international spy into compromising situations? Well, Death was doing that to me in my dream. He flew overhead and whispered, "If you go to the pantry, I can't hurt you."

Whatever the heck that meant.

Anyway, after hiding in the "pantry," which turned out to be a little 1'x2' nook with no door and watching my dream family (which looked nothing like my real family) get slaughtered, I woke with a start and tried to put the whole sick idea out of my head. But, as often happens when you wake up, Death was waiting for me when I fell back asleep.

Go ahead, Freud. Analyze THAT. It's now four minutes into my weekend. Life is good here, excepting, of course, that guy hanging out four inches below the ceiling.

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A lonely night at the bookstore

I love to watch my own words dribble across this screen as I write them. You may read what I have written and think, "Gee, this guy needs to lighten up!" You know, you're absolutely right.

The truth is, I have no idea what I am going to write before I start writing. See it as a metaphor for my life in general. I have this wonderfully versatile medium in which to frolic, speak my mind freely (as long as I do not break any decency laws or betray any secrets), and publish all the silly pictures I want. This medium, the web, does have its limits: bandwidth, real time communication, image/movie quality, blah blah blah. So--I find that words are the least obstructive paints with which to dabble on this canvas.

Within this form, I pour my mold. I care not what shape this liquid takes, because I know that the shape will be of me and by me. . . In the end, it will BE me, or a reasonably lifelike facsimile of my personality. If you have read this whole journal, congratulations. You know, or would guess, that I mumble essays and poetry to myself as I walk alone down an empty sidewalk. You know that I pick my nose when no one (or very few close friends) is watching. You may not know about the days when I relieve stress by running around scantily clad, cleaning stuff, and listening to Lori Anderson.

Congratulations, you know who I am.

Last night, I walked down the street alone, thinking about the form of my life--this enigmatic structure I've built around me, these limits that will soon hold the molten handiwork of my life. I realized that, by poking and prodding, I cannot discern the final shape that my life will hold. I cannot guide the rivulets of bronze to form a sculpture that does not conform to this mold. All I can do is keep pouring.

When I finally returned home from my ruminant ambling through a desolate bookstore, I spent a contented evening with my best friend in the whole world.

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A whirred, billowed lethargic kind of day.

A small story for an overcast Halloween: (I really need to illustrate this)

Oflam, the mutant kid from down the street decided that, for this particularly Orange and Blackish day, he would no longer wear plastic pumpkin outfits or home-made hobo and pirate costumes. Oflam gritted his foul green teeth with pride when he showed the normal children his grand idea, just after sunset that fateful Friday. Robert, the stupid light-haired sixth-grader, was wearing, of course, a dracula costume, bought from the highest quality manufacturer of cinematic and theatrical costumes from South ern California. Victor, the rich kid, had an elaborate motorized foam rubber and latex velociraptor suit. It was truly marvelous. The same could be said for the costumes of all the other children, excepting Oflam.

Oflam, standing one meter tall, weighing four thousand kilos, and possessing an intensely tepid look about him that made dogs run away in fear, had no such wonderful costume. His resources were limited to what he could find in the dumpster or under the d esks at school, where they made him sit in the back between the guinea pig cage and the old paint bucket that caught drops of water seeping from the ceiling. Oflam was not fat. He was just dense. His parents, who were otherwise normal people, kept him in the cellar, away from the public's prying eyes. They told all their friends that Oflam lived in the cellar with his crippled mother, who paid no rent. Of course, Oflam's mother was not crippled, and she did not live in the basement.

So, when the sun set that fateful evening, and the children flooded the streets in their very elaborate costumes, Oflam planned his great unveiling. He knew, being short on looks but very very long on brain, that all the children waited until the very first strike of the clock to visit the house at the end of the street. . . the governor's mansion. Every Halloween at midnight, all the children in this very affluent neighborhood met at the gate of the honorable Mr. Grousenever opulent abode.

Oflam emerged from his subterranean fortress at 11:57pm, draped in an old green army blanket, concealing his fantastic costume. He thudded carefully up the street, keeping to the shadows and crawling through the hedges to avoid detection. The throngs of children began to coagulate as they swiftly bounced from door to door, filling their bags with tooth-corroding morsels. Vampires, velociraptors, princesses, mummies, lunch foods, demons, ghouls, witches, ballerinas, gnomes, enchantresses, swashbucklers, cowboys, caesars, tsars, kaisers, soldiers, whores, breakfast foods, vegetables, candies, dead presidents, robots, beasts, beauties, dwarves, office supplies, and famous landmarks went scuttling by as Oflam made his way through the darkness. He cut across a lawn and tunneled beneath a fence and squeezed his lumpish dense body through a crack in a retaining wall.

He was in. Slogging through the storm drain beneath the gate to the governor's mansion, Oflam disrobed in utter darkness. The leathery texture of his costume rustled in the darkness. He counted in his head the seconds that had passed since he had left his cellar. 175. . . 176. . .

The governor strolled lazily out onto his front porch, his arms loaded down with four great baskets of the most tantalizing treats. His eyes glinted as the ravenous children in their fantastic costumes swirled about at his gate. He stopped at the great steel barred entrance and smiled wickedly, showing off his expensive fang-capped canines. The children oohed and aahed at the luscious goodies he held in his great arms.

177. .. 178. . .

The governor signalled to the nightwatchman to open the gate.

179. . .

Oflam crouched in the darkness, his hands pressed up against the manhole cover.

NOW!!

There was a stunned silence as the entire crowd of costumed children and exasperated chaperones realized that the manhole cover at the governor's feet was no longer in the ground. It flew fourteen and a half feet in the air and landed somewhere next to the velociraptor, who defecated on the spot.

The stunned silence quickly gave way to fearful wonderment and then panic as the great dense mass of Oflam exploded from the sewer, clad in absolutely nothing.

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Nobody is anybody until they're somebody.

I stepped onto the sidewalk three hours before sunrise on the west coast, onto a street that, by this particular time, looked familiar. The homeless lady in her concrete hammock muttered something unintelligible as I passed. I followed a route that was very familiar to me--I even recognized the school children in their swollen parkas and stocking caps and brightly colored backpacks. The graffiti on the cement embankment was familiar. The potholes and cracks in the pavement were familiar. The sunlight did little to warm the morning chill. I sit now in this office eight hours later, as the sun dips past the horizon. Home awaits, but it is not within walking distance. If I had the means.

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The tortoise of electronic salivations.

Love these stale aching days, when the sky is gray and the temperature is high, but you can't feel it. Love these clanging nape of the neck days, when each blink of an eye brings you closer to sleep, but the hungry lions wait for your slumber to pounce. The fan says, "Lasko," encircled with a spidery ring of chrome. It's silent, motionless. Hot outside, cold in here. My thighs hum with boredom. My fingers tap out a rhythmless tune on a sterile keyboard. I can hear the others in the office, drumming their fingers as the clocks slog on toward five o' clock.

Oh, the things I could do if only they'd let me.

I glance to my left, and the fan still says, "Lasko." Hungry shelves gape open drooling single sheets of torn paper, lonely envelopes. My stomach also grumbles. What was to be my lunch has been, by now, swallowed by the tireless vacuum near the elevators. It's been one of those days, I think, as the telephone rings for someone else. People drawl in conversations I'll never join.

Oh yeah. We forgot to pay for parking. The car has most likely been stolen by now. Oh well. So much for my evening.

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Go on and laugh.

My favorite phrase these days is "the Emperor has no clothes." See that man in the $4000 suit? He is not happy because he knows that he has more money than everyone on the street and wastes some poor child's dinner on a $4000 suit. He is not happy because his employees think he's antisocial.

And that woman in that limousine? She can't stand the fact that her entire career is built around lies. She can't eat dinner without someone asking for her autograph. She is not happy because she can't cook.

And that kid on the roof playing his guitar? He's not happy because he can't do anything of note. Everything he does is mediocre. His grades, his music, his art, his writings--just as profound and just as creative as the thousands of other artists and scientists in the world.

What about that woman who sleeps, eats, and chuckles to herself on that filthy curb, day after day? I walk by, frustrated by rent and money and employment and schedules and clothing and paychecks and applications and the future. This old woman who cares only for food and shelter laughs. She laughs at me. Me, who spends forty hours a week to earn money to support my house of plastic straws and dime-store thread, whose patience wanes much quicker than it used to, who tries so hard. She laughs and laughs, shaking her head when she sees my furrowed brow, my determined stride, my pursed lips, my clenched teeth, my restless fists. She covers her mouth with her leathery, sticky fingers, suppressing a guffaw.

What can I do but soften? I see myself now from her perspective. This babbling brook of carefree adolescence has become a frightened block of ice. I am splintered and cracked. Why must I need more than this homeless woman? What is necessary? I have food and shelter. I have love and friendship. I don't need this man's suit, this woman's fame, this adulthood. When I was a child, I acted as a child, thought as a child, spoke as a child. But now that I am grown, I find that I am unhappy as I put away childish things.

I will keep this childlike lack of care. I will keep this childlike love of humor and humility. All I need is this curb and this cardboard box.

Here I will melt.

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Up on the Roof. . .

I hate headaches. If you haven't guessed by now, we're living in Washington, DC, not too far from that one girl who works for National Geographic from her apartment. Apparently, she has a quickcam attached to her computer in her bedroom. It broadcasts automatically to her web page every three minutes--no matter what she happens to be doing at that moment.

That's kind of like this page. Every week or so, you get to see me undress or act stupid. You get to peek into my brain while I dance around in women's underwear. This is my special fishbowl.

Those of you who have lived in DC before will probably snort at this, but I am of the opinion that people in DC are unnecessarily rude, untrustworthy, and selfish. Duh, yes. My life would be perfect if everyone had the good qualities of Oregon--of which there are only a few--and the good qualities of DC--of which there are FEWER. I just can't believe you are required to wait at least a week for a deposit to show up on your account.

Oh, well. Anybody have an extra $1000 laying around? I could really use a drink of water.

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Well, I'm here.

Well, I finally got a job of sorts. And an apartment of sorts. And a car of sorts. Everything is "of sorts." I had a successful interview today, culminating in an offer for a job, which it may or may not be. Temp agencies are a gift from the employment gods. Oh well, at least it's money. My current problem is finding local access to email. Anyone know any good ISP's around DC? I can't tell you where we're living because they'd all come and kill me. Who's "they," you ask?

Heck if I know. I've done very well in my life so far being paranoid.

It looks like I may have a special visitor soon. My sister is coming to visit! She SHOULD be in Taiwan, but she came home to tie up some loose ends. Speaking of loose ends, I need to go back to Oregon during Christmas and give more hugs to more people. DC is a very unhuggy place, unless you're one of those crazy international students who kiss each other all the time. What a country!

For those of you who actually read this and know what the heck I'm talking about, the grokking thereof is much happiness. "Three thousand, five hundred miles away, what would you change if you could?" Listen to it again, maybe you'll gain insight. Until next time, this is Aaron Louie.



Because next time, I'll be Kermit the Frog!!

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Goodbye Money, Hello Gin

I find it very interesting that the people who I currently serve at my part time job in that country club are also the people who had enough money to make the United States the way it is today. Here they sit in their plush chairs, sipping vodka tonics and Tanqueray martinis and macrobrews and boxed burgundy from glasses I washed and filled, talking politics and big business as if they were discussing what they were going to have for dinner that evening.

Do I envy this power? Perhaps. It's not really envy, though. It's akin to watching someone play Tetris, Jewelbox, Columns or some other repetitive "falling stuff" game. You can stand behind them and point out all their mistakes because you aren't the one making the decisions. Maybe I just wish I could have control of the helm for just one year. Maybe I just wish my opinion counted.

So it comes down to this. These people have money; I don't. They have power; I don't. They spend all their free time playing golf and getting drunk; I don't.

Make your own judgements. I'm just being honest.

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Creak, said the spine.

Okay, so I don't make sense sometimes. It's probably because you're not inside my skull, thinking what I'm thinking.

I've just spent the last two days updating and refining this web site, trying to show you just how cool I am. I'd just like you all to know that I still burp, fart, eat, and sleep more than most people. I am not a perfect person, and you should not hire me if you don't like imperfect people. I think I'm experiencing some cognitive dissonance through all this showing off that I do. Here's my résumé! Here are my pictures! These are my talents! Worship my artwork! Bow down to my words! I need a break from my own stage act. I just want to be plain old me for a while.

If I could get a job based solely on my shortcomings, I'd probably feel much better. From there, I'd have nowhere to go but up. Who wants to pay me for being a space cadet? Who wants to give me a salary for having a bad back? How about for rampant acne? What about an uncommon attraction to Tetris?

Show me a perfect human being, and I'll show you his hairy, unkempt nether-regions.

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The road beckoned

Boxes everywhere.

My entire life fits into boxes and crates and plastic tubs. I throw away that which I want but need not and that which I want not but need. Only those things which have purpose stay. There's this box of old papers from high school that I keep with me. It is the coffin, the urn of charred past, where I store my old selves, the ones I both was and aren't. I should dispose of this box.

There's this other box that holds nothing but blank paper, empty notebooks, virgin day planners, unused pencils, and sterile sketchbooks. It is the unfertilized womb of all that I wish to say, a sentence unwritten, a picture unrendered, a vision unseen, a day unlived. I should keep this box, for I will fertilize it with my thoughts. It will become the me of the future, a child of tomorrow.

I'll keep the boxes that keep me warm, fed, informed, and entertained. I'll keep that large box that says "Fragile." and that other box that says "I love you." and that box that says "I'll always wait here." These I will carry on the road.

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Itchy throat, warm heart

I haven't written in this journal in a long while. Since the last entry, I've graduated. I now have what most people call a "degree." Now I need to get what is called a "job."

Do you know what my ideal job would be? If you guessed professional nosepicker, you're less than half right. I want a job where I'll get paid to draw pictures, make web pages, teach biology and psychology, play the guitar and french horn, cook, and rock climb. Oh yes, and I'd ask for a minimum salary of $30,000.

Anyway. The above entry about those two important people in my life who can't cope with me being me has been somewhat resolved. I just can't wait to move far away from all "this" and enjoy being who I am on my own terms. I have Kristen, I have my skills, I have my dreams. What else is there to worry about? I suppose I should remember my family, but they're going to be so far away. . .

All right. Enough blabbing. I have jobs to hunt.

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Clean room, dirty hands

It is now time for me to talk about things in a hypothetical sense, using pseudonyms, acronyms, and abbreviations to protect those who may not wish to be identified. They all know who I'm talking about, anyway.

L. and A. have a big problem with me being me. They want me to be more stubborn, independent, prideful, and existentialist. Well, sorry. They also want me to spend more quality time with them. Let me ask you, dear readers, why I would want to put myself through the torture of being constantly criticized just to placate the desires of L. and A.? These are people that I have known for a very long time; were at one point in my life my closest friends. Now, as we grow older and grow apart, they wish to enjoy that same closeness, to strengthen those bonds that once held us so tightly together.

Don't mistake me. I wish to restore that same friendship--but it's not the same, never will be. When we were young, we had innocence. We accepted each other for our faults, were blatantly honest with each other, and loved each other unconditionally. Now we argue endlessly about philosophy--a veiled attack on the other's lifestyles and conflict resolution strategies (for lack of a better word). I am not blameless in this, either. I avoid them and their cynical conversation. I write journal entries about them and publish them on the web. I spend an inordinate amount of time with my new friends (who do not treat me like an intellectual inferior). I would rather sit in my room and play solitaire than spend an hour with them, defending my beliefs.

If this is what happens when you grow up, I'd rather stay a child all my life.

My bitter thought for the month: If you can find a human being who isn't selfish, they either have an ulterior motive, a psychological disorder, or a very nice spaceship floating nearby.

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The Night of the Living Dead Moth

Insects are incredible creatures. They rule the earth. If a giant spaceship full of alien colonists were to land on this planet they would undoubtedly greet the cockroaches first, then the ants, followed by the honeybees. Then they'd consult the humans as to the quickest route out of the atmosphere.

If you try to kill something--like a moth--and you're quite sure it's dead, remember this: moths, not cats, have nine lives. I speak from experience. This moth I tried to put into my insect collection LOOKED dead. After all, I had gassed it with cyanide for about five minutes. Three hours after I pinned it, the thing back to life, writhing and wriggling against the straps of paper holding its wings down. The moth's coiled proboscis was whipping around, grasping at the steel pin thrust through its thorax.

I swore at that moment to never become a professional entomologist.

It's nice to know that, deep inside my soul, I am truly affected by the sight of an innocent, crucified animal thrashing about in panic and pain. That moth never suspected that the cause of its suffering was my grade in an entomology class. I once read an Annie Dillard essay about the death of a moth that acccidentally landed on a lit candle. I once thought that Annie Dillard could use some antipsychotic drugs. Now, either it is I who need those pills or maybe Ms. Dillard was right in spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about that one moment in history where an insect, unaware of the inventions of humans, became an inferno of its own curiosity. Would we understand if those aliens popped us into their killing jars and stuck us through with giant pins? What if their only purpose in doing so was to get a few more points in their Interplanetary Ecology course?

Do I frighten you?

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A Very Lazy Day

What I really wanted to do this weekend included much stress and diligence. Right now, however, I just want to stop. Just stop and sleep or draw pictures instead of writing papers and hunting for jobs. If you could bottle this feeling of apathy/procrastination/whatever and sell it to bugs, you could make quite a bit of money.

My tonsils hurt from treating myself badly this weekend. No sleep, no nutrition, no exercise. My room is chaos. I am the antithesis of Kristen, who is currently typing a paper on her laptop in the middle of my very disorderly room. My CD player is shuffling through three albums, strangling smooth transitions between tracks into awkward, stifled silences. That's me. The white cloud in a grey sky, somewhere between sunlight and rain, between three cities and in them all at once. I do not envy those who stay, nor do I admire those who leave, yet I am both. Kristen gives me a piece of gum. That plastic lobster stares on with its poorly painted eyes. The ceramic pig yawns at the setting Maxfield Parrish sun. It's time to clean my room.

If you look really close, you'll see what I'm hiding. If you stand back and squint really hard, you'll see the same thing.

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The two week twang

Like so many E strings tightened to G#, my nerves pluck out the banjo pickings of a crazed college student. Reared on ten-cent ramen and old after-dinner mints, this babe of 21 years rubs his eyes. Only fifty more graduation announcements, eighty form letters, fifteen resumˇs, one midterm, three finals, four papers, and one very large bug collection to go...

The nagging voice in the attic of my consciousness begs me to get back to work. Two more weeks and I'll be wearing that goofy hat.

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The Day it Rained Bathwater

As Kristen licks her fingers after painting her lips with toxic orange Dorito dust, I reflect on a long day of sweating in the wetness of another Oregon day in May. The bells far off mingle with the melodies of Dave's eclectic music selections. I won't be here much longer. I won't sit here in this room in this building on this campus in this city in this state come August. I'm packing up my most precious things and going across the country to start a different life. Sometimes I feel like an amnesic on a dissociative fugue. I guess most people on this planet have already experienced such a drastic change in atmosphere--in culture--more than once in their lives. Me? I'm just beginning to realize how small my world really is. My brother wrote something on the inside cover of a notebook once: "As our minds grow larger, our worlds grow smaller." Or something like that. It sort of has a double meaning: the more intelligent we humans become, the smaller the distances between us become--take this journal, for instance. Then there's the other interpretation, which I don't agree with. I just want to know, to do away with my own ignorance. This plan may be ignorance anyway, but what the heck. I will live my life with no regrets, hopefully.

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untitled

Pressing the leaves between rough fingers, worn as the reddish brown veined plant turned so delicately in leathery palms, mourned its death despite the cheer of fall. Mists crowded against his face in ghosted delicate tear-wetted black veils, masking the trees, lost. The eyes that belonged to the fingers sighed. Dusk.

The last spindled stripes of sunlight slipped beyond the reach of yet another day--only to return in seemingly lesser splendor than the day before--and the day before that.

Long fearing that the fleeting glowing orb of the firmament would lose its way on the other end of the galaxy, somehow drawn away by the points of light years away, supernova now, the man behind the glistening eyes and weathered hands whispered a prayer of safe passage for the sun, wishing her quick return. Tonight again his lips moved amongst the trunks of withering saints, sentinels of earth, blessing Sol in her waning glow. Incense, breathed from that tongue, filtered through the twisted branches overhead to join the maiden on her journey yon. Satisfied, a droplet of joy formed in the spring of the eyes, tumbled through miniscule caverns and ridges, and cascaded to the bed of leaves below.

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