I have a rendezvous with Death
At some disputed barricade,
When Spring comes back with rustling shade
And apple-blossoms fill the air—
I have a rendezvous with Death
When Spring brings back blue days and fair.
It may be he shall take my hand
And lead me into his dark land
And close my eyes and quench my breath—
It may be I shall pass him still.
I have a rendezvous with Death
On some scarred slope of battered hill,
When Spring comes round again this year
And the first meadow-flowers appear.
God knows 'twere better to be deep
Pillowed in silk and scented down,
Where love throbs out in blissful sleep,
Pulse nigh to pulse, and breath to breath,
Where hushed awakenings are dear...
But I've a rendezvous with Death
At midnight in some flaming town,
When Spring trips north again this year,
And I to my pledged word am true,
I shall not fail that rendezvous.
-Alan Seegar
31 July 2008
Salt Lake City (07-05-2008)
"I don't think you've really given it a chance," was the counter argument. Fuck that. I packed my shit into a Honda Accord, left my friends, and drove nearly a thousand miles to Salt Lake without any second thoughts or reservations. I only changed my mind once I got here. I think I gave it a fuckin' chance.
I moved up here to climb and enjoy life for a year before commencing another six to ten years of graduate work for my doctorate. I was excited at the prospect of moving to a new place known for its climbing where I could meet new people. I was excited at the idea of living closer to two of my brothers and spending more time with them. I was excited that I thought I knew what I was going to do. I was wrong.
It's not that I don't like Utah. The mountains surrounding Salt Lake are breathtaking. The people I've met are chill - my roommate is one of the coolest people I've ever known - and the climbing lives up to the hype. But I've quickly realized that this is not where I want to live. I need a place of culture, a place of mental stimulus, a place not Salt Lake City. Everything here feels so isolated and static, which might be attributed to its uncharacteristic cleanliness of an urban center. It doesn't feel like home.
I've been here roughly a week, and I'm already anxious to move back to California. Regardless of whether I stay or go, I know others will cite people as my justification for the decision, but this most certainly is not the case. I've made some messed up decisions in my life because I based them on other people, and as a result I've learned to be extremely selfish in my decisions. So if you think I make a decision because I was influenced by someone else, then you can go fuck yourself.
Nearly every night I've been here has involved either alcohol or marijuana, which can be fun, but a lifestyle of perpetual intoxication due to indifferent boredom is not where I see myself. I can't see myself achieving what I want to do here, namely getting my graduate applications finished and enjoying life, soberly.
I know that I will disappoint my brother, sister-in-law, and roommate by moving back to California, and that's not something I want. I'd rather live with their disappointment though than be unhappy for a year.
Perhaps when I start my new job as a server I'll meet some people and my feelings will change, but somehow I doubt it. And I'm sure I'll hear more of "you didn't give it a chance." To make an appropriate epicurean rebuttal, you don't tell someone to keep eating something until he likes it. He merely spits it out and attempts to rid his palate of any disgusting aftertaste.
I moved up here to climb and enjoy life for a year before commencing another six to ten years of graduate work for my doctorate. I was excited at the prospect of moving to a new place known for its climbing where I could meet new people. I was excited at the idea of living closer to two of my brothers and spending more time with them. I was excited that I thought I knew what I was going to do. I was wrong.
It's not that I don't like Utah. The mountains surrounding Salt Lake are breathtaking. The people I've met are chill - my roommate is one of the coolest people I've ever known - and the climbing lives up to the hype. But I've quickly realized that this is not where I want to live. I need a place of culture, a place of mental stimulus, a place not Salt Lake City. Everything here feels so isolated and static, which might be attributed to its uncharacteristic cleanliness of an urban center. It doesn't feel like home.
I've been here roughly a week, and I'm already anxious to move back to California. Regardless of whether I stay or go, I know others will cite people as my justification for the decision, but this most certainly is not the case. I've made some messed up decisions in my life because I based them on other people, and as a result I've learned to be extremely selfish in my decisions. So if you think I make a decision because I was influenced by someone else, then you can go fuck yourself.
Nearly every night I've been here has involved either alcohol or marijuana, which can be fun, but a lifestyle of perpetual intoxication due to indifferent boredom is not where I see myself. I can't see myself achieving what I want to do here, namely getting my graduate applications finished and enjoying life, soberly.
I know that I will disappoint my brother, sister-in-law, and roommate by moving back to California, and that's not something I want. I'd rather live with their disappointment though than be unhappy for a year.
Perhaps when I start my new job as a server I'll meet some people and my feelings will change, but somehow I doubt it. And I'm sure I'll hear more of "you didn't give it a chance." To make an appropriate epicurean rebuttal, you don't tell someone to keep eating something until he likes it. He merely spits it out and attempts to rid his palate of any disgusting aftertaste.
I Am Stephen Dedalus (06-02-2008)
(Caveat: The writing in this entry is utter shit, but I'm tired of looking at the old entry...)
The first time I ever read James Joyce was in senior year of high school for my AP Language and Composition class. Because Ulysses was deemed too inappropriate by the puritanical school board, we were reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. By the end of the first page Joyce had used the word 'moocow' and discussed the transient temperature of urine. I liked it already.
My senior year of high school was not particularly stereotypical. Unlike the vast majority of my peers who had a blast partying their remaining days away with close friends before the exodus to various universities, I spent the year enslaved by my own naivety. For the first time since puberty I looked normal, which consequently resulted in my first girlfriend, the antithetical paragon of myself.
She had beautiful dark skin and luscious lips. She was a great kisser, but her kisses were bitter like the kind that can only be sweetened with copious amounts of cheap wine and cigarettes. Unfortunately I did not realize this at the time and spent the fourteen months of our relationship alienating my close friends and family in a nihilistic attempt to be what she wanted. I went from being a happy sheltered conservative nerd to being a dishonest angry liberal stoner. It is not a time I particularly care to reflect upon.
Fortunately my perfidious twin brother convinced me to attend UCI, and it is here that I came into my own - to be painfully cliché. Like Joyce's Stephen Dedalus I left my native home and ventured to a place where I was free to be what I wanted, or at least what I thought I wanted.
It is only in the last year, however, that I have truly embraced my passions and become who I am. Unfortunately my life seems to be an archetype for bad timing, and everything is going to change just when I have come to thoroughly enjoy my current circumstances.
In less than two weeks, I am leaving behind all of my closest friends, whom I love dearly, and Southern California, where I've lived almost my entire life, and moving to Salt Lake City for a year before attending graduate school. In order to avoid moving home with my über conservative Mormon family for that time, I'm moving to the Mormon capital of the world. Irony's a funny little bitch.
Like any ending, this one is bittersweet. I have only recently met many wonderful people, the majority of whom I will probably never talk to again after I move. I guess that's life though, full of it's own comings and goings.
The first time I ever read James Joyce was in senior year of high school for my AP Language and Composition class. Because Ulysses was deemed too inappropriate by the puritanical school board, we were reading A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. By the end of the first page Joyce had used the word 'moocow' and discussed the transient temperature of urine. I liked it already.
My senior year of high school was not particularly stereotypical. Unlike the vast majority of my peers who had a blast partying their remaining days away with close friends before the exodus to various universities, I spent the year enslaved by my own naivety. For the first time since puberty I looked normal, which consequently resulted in my first girlfriend, the antithetical paragon of myself.
She had beautiful dark skin and luscious lips. She was a great kisser, but her kisses were bitter like the kind that can only be sweetened with copious amounts of cheap wine and cigarettes. Unfortunately I did not realize this at the time and spent the fourteen months of our relationship alienating my close friends and family in a nihilistic attempt to be what she wanted. I went from being a happy sheltered conservative nerd to being a dishonest angry liberal stoner. It is not a time I particularly care to reflect upon.
Fortunately my perfidious twin brother convinced me to attend UCI, and it is here that I came into my own - to be painfully cliché. Like Joyce's Stephen Dedalus I left my native home and ventured to a place where I was free to be what I wanted, or at least what I thought I wanted.
It is only in the last year, however, that I have truly embraced my passions and become who I am. Unfortunately my life seems to be an archetype for bad timing, and everything is going to change just when I have come to thoroughly enjoy my current circumstances.
In less than two weeks, I am leaving behind all of my closest friends, whom I love dearly, and Southern California, where I've lived almost my entire life, and moving to Salt Lake City for a year before attending graduate school. In order to avoid moving home with my über conservative Mormon family for that time, I'm moving to the Mormon capital of the world. Irony's a funny little bitch.
Like any ending, this one is bittersweet. I have only recently met many wonderful people, the majority of whom I will probably never talk to again after I move. I guess that's life though, full of it's own comings and goings.
24 April 2008
Ma Jolie and Nicotine
Pablo Picasso was the first artist I studied who gave me a true appreciation for Modern Art - quite fitting as its founding father - but it was not his art that captured my interest, rather a sense of shared voracity with the man. The revolutionary Spaniard loved to eat (he didn't trust anyone who lacked an appetite) and, as relentlessly evident from his art, thoroughly enjoyed all manner of licentiousness. After spending countless hours studying Picasso's various works, I realized he had corporally encapsulated my abstract understanding of art and human experience. Although in most regards I cannot compare myself to the 20th century genius of Modern Art, Picasso and I do share one common attribute: our passion for physicality.
In the wonderfully brilliant movie SLC Punk, the main character Stevo entertains the viewer with an epexegetical monologue about "The Fight" and its philosophical justification in Punk subculture. The final summation, despite Stevo's null assertion, is that pain reinforces one's sense of being alive. Growing up with a twin brother, this collective sensation of rage, adrenaline, and pain was all-too-familiar, and it gave me an understanding of certain emotions and feelings that the majority of others lack. I dare say that you have never been in a real fight and likely never will. I'm not saying that's a bad thing or attempting to make a bold claim of machismo, merely that experience has provided me with an erudite understanding that many lack. I think that much of my life hinges on this notion of intense understanding through experience.
I've been told that smoking too many clove cigarettes can result in hemoptysis, the coughing up of blood. I believe it has something to do with small particles of fiberglass contained within these flavored, carcinogenic tools of meditation. Luckily I have never discovered firsthand whether this is true, perhaps due to my historical limitation of debauched indulgence. However, lately I find myself smoking more than usual. Each clove provides me with a three-minute session of introspection and relaxation, a type of Zen meditation in which I often lose myself to the act of smoking. On the more rare occasion that I am accompanied by a fellow societal deviant, rarely is there a dull conversation; if no conversation ensues, we simply enjoy our personal meditations with one another.
I'm not advocating smoking. I've been force fed the dangers of smoking since before I could read. But I suppose it goes back to my feelings about experience and something that Joe Strummer said. Upon hearing from a friend that she was trying to quit, he encouraged her to keep smoking. He told her to imagine all the wonderful music, literature, and art that had been conceived while artists and writers smoked their cigarettes, and what it would be like if it were all gone. Would Picasso still have been the father of Modern Art had he not spent his twenties smoking in the cafés and brothels of Montmarte?
In some irrational way, I suppose by smoking I feel somewhat more connected to the many bohemian artists I so greatly admire, though perhaps it merely reminds me of good, albeit largely incoherent, nights I've spent with friends.
Whatever my original purpose was for writing this has become lost, and thus I shall leave you, the reader, unsatisfied by my lack of cogency while I go meditate.
(originally posted on http://dagdha.deviantart.com)
In the wonderfully brilliant movie SLC Punk, the main character Stevo entertains the viewer with an epexegetical monologue about "The Fight" and its philosophical justification in Punk subculture. The final summation, despite Stevo's null assertion, is that pain reinforces one's sense of being alive. Growing up with a twin brother, this collective sensation of rage, adrenaline, and pain was all-too-familiar, and it gave me an understanding of certain emotions and feelings that the majority of others lack. I dare say that you have never been in a real fight and likely never will. I'm not saying that's a bad thing or attempting to make a bold claim of machismo, merely that experience has provided me with an erudite understanding that many lack. I think that much of my life hinges on this notion of intense understanding through experience.
I've been told that smoking too many clove cigarettes can result in hemoptysis, the coughing up of blood. I believe it has something to do with small particles of fiberglass contained within these flavored, carcinogenic tools of meditation. Luckily I have never discovered firsthand whether this is true, perhaps due to my historical limitation of debauched indulgence. However, lately I find myself smoking more than usual. Each clove provides me with a three-minute session of introspection and relaxation, a type of Zen meditation in which I often lose myself to the act of smoking. On the more rare occasion that I am accompanied by a fellow societal deviant, rarely is there a dull conversation; if no conversation ensues, we simply enjoy our personal meditations with one another.
I'm not advocating smoking. I've been force fed the dangers of smoking since before I could read. But I suppose it goes back to my feelings about experience and something that Joe Strummer said. Upon hearing from a friend that she was trying to quit, he encouraged her to keep smoking. He told her to imagine all the wonderful music, literature, and art that had been conceived while artists and writers smoked their cigarettes, and what it would be like if it were all gone. Would Picasso still have been the father of Modern Art had he not spent his twenties smoking in the cafés and brothels of Montmarte?
In some irrational way, I suppose by smoking I feel somewhat more connected to the many bohemian artists I so greatly admire, though perhaps it merely reminds me of good, albeit largely incoherent, nights I've spent with friends.
Whatever my original purpose was for writing this has become lost, and thus I shall leave you, the reader, unsatisfied by my lack of cogency while I go meditate.
(originally posted on http://dagdha.deviantart.com)
17 April 2008
Reconstruction
Please excuse the bulk of recent posts. I've been transferring my blogs from another site to my updated blogger page.
Cheers,
T.
Cheers,
T.
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