I come fresh from my first ever Moth here in the D.  The Moth is a interesting event where people get 5 minutes to tell a story.  There is a basic theme for the night and you just go up and tell your story.  A few caveats, no notes, stand-up or ranting.  It needs to be real and pretty much of the moment.  I put my name in the hat thinking I wouldn’t be called but as the ninth name was pulled from the hat it just happen to sound like my name.  So I made my way to the stage and stood in front of the microphone with the stage lights in my eyes.  I’ve been in that position before so knowing what to do came pretty easy.  The lights make it difficult to see the audience so the nerves calm a bit.  I told my story pausing for laughter and awes.  All in all it went really well and the applause when I was done was invigorating. I walked back to my drink with people saying that was a great story and great delivery and so on and so forth.  The adulation was amazing, I could have done that all night.

I heard the news and stared blankly at my computer. People asked me if I was ok, I told them he died.  When they didn’t know who he was I could do little with my vision.  Suddenly the figures asking me questions evaporated like funny smells in the winter cold.  I closed my eyes and tasted salt for a second and continued working.

I kept typing and those figures walked off.  I kept typing and wondered if the figures would appear again.  I kept typing.

Dear he, Thank you.

I must become a collector…An avid collector. A collector of information, ideas and associations. Here is where I begin. This is a challenge to myself, to my ultimate sense of creation. Do these thoughts have more value than the pretty echoes they create as they bounce around.

More soon on this endeavour.

I usually spend the days staring at computer screens all the while pretending you’re in the other room reading, hiding from the volume of life in the living room. I’m getting surprisingly good at pretending so; I usually walk into the bedroom with a question in mind. How’s the book going or are you hungry? I find myself saying questions aloud to an empty bed ruffled on one side. I dismiss it and go through my suitcase or nightstand in hopes of picking something up, in order to give the trip to the room some purpose other than…

I pour a large glass of water for myself and sit in the living room and watch Mexican television with my parents. I sometimes slosh the water around a bit to get the proper splash sound. I like to pretend that you’re simply bathing in a makeshift bathtub comprised of a large beer cooler and water cooler with hot and cold spouts for temperature control. However, I eventually just take a sip.

There is no logic to these elaborate daydreams other than my mind simply cannot comprehend your extended absence very well. It starts to plot against me. But like a child’s elaborate lie that sometimes involves mythical creatures and feats of super human abilities, it gets away from me and collapses into reality.

The reality being that I simply miss you.

So I’ve decided to make a podcast of short stories and other writings from the past few years. I thought it would b a good exercise in diction if nothing else. I’ve uploaded an introduction and the first episode. I’ve included a little player below and the rss feed and iTunes link should you want to subscribe.

RSS
iTunes

I’ve just returned from seeing Synecdoche, the latest Charlie Kaufman movie, and I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, some parts are truely hilarious. However I doubt many will. As a matter of fact several comments from neighboring patrons included “I’m glad it’s over” and “What the hell was that all about?” Two people behind us decided to leave near the end, oddly about 15 minutes till the end. Why not stay till the punctuation mark?

Anyway, why they left: The movie is a classic example of postmodernism, throwing the sequence of time out the window as well as being rather self referential. Someone not accustomed to the genre or Kaufman films in general would find the movie hard to follow. Ironically I enjoyed the film for the very reasons that some left. I found it interesting and well layered but about the beginning of the second act I noticed a surprising similarity to Six Characters in Search of an Author. Which gave me a basis for understanding the movie without much explanation. So I spent the movie admiring the details as I no longer had to pay attention to the road signs. I think that is the key to Kaufman movies.

It was enjoyable and interesting, my only wish was that it didn’t hand it to you on a silver platter at the end. He decided to simply beat you over the head with the message at the end like so many art films I wanted to enjoy. Children of Men is a good example of this. Small spoiler: I wanted the movie to end when Hoffman gets the role of Ellen near the end, just after he enters the door.

Watch the trailer and if you are into a slightly tougher read, then give it a go.

I stumbled across this short film on the internets and I liked its premise. This idea of finding a common ground between intellectual and social classes.

I’ve been having small conversations about how the labor worker is endangered in this country for a while now. Moreover thanks to technology and necessity there will be a need for more and more knowledge workers. Which we are currently at a deficit, I believe. Mainly because we’ve made it terribly difficult to become a creative knowledge worker. First, its expensive and second, we tend to pinhole a specific discipline and beat them over the head with it. So much so that it begins to dominate their lives. Architects that believe everything is Architecture, because of the very nature of the metaphor. We build relationships and design the very boundaries of our existence, etc… In every discipline as the focus becomes narrower I think a persons entire scope also becomes narrow and they believe that all life subsists of their discipline. Which is an easy correlation to make but we make it at the sacrifice of the myriad of possibilities from every other discipline. Artists love to believe that what they do and what a mathematician does is hugely different. When we know for a fact that both are interrelated. The golden ratio is a prime example as it relates to aesthetics. More over plenty of mathematicians can submit to the idea that a proof can be elegant or even beautiful. Using terms of aesthetics to describe mathematics. Sometimes science becomes more about creativity, rather than logic. Take string theory for example which states that all possibilities exists and are collapsed to a reality by an observer. Granted that being a rather simplistic statement of a particular part of string theory, nonetheless it almost sounds like philosophy rather than physics. These field experts are knowledge workers but they work at a deficit of interdisciplinary knowledge. Which is why collaboration is so important. But what if we were able to collaborate in our own heads as well as with other people. What if an Artist could put down the paint brush and discuss metallurgy or the kazimir effect. Or a chemist having a conversation on color theory or Calvino’s Lightness. What if we found a common ground in our own heads, would it be easier to talk to each other? Would the conversation be good?

Somehow there’s confusion amongst the people
seems to easy to steal

Somehow there’s to much eviction
actions that made men rich

Somehow there is still a decision
lingering in the heir

How can you stand there and pretend
You can’t rely on all those who don’t understand
They made a choice you robbed their voice and lead the end
We’ll stop and say, It’s all ok and raise our hand

Somehow they believe in the makeup
a perfect way to hide

Somehow there still an active recession
this one’s not a lie

Somehow there’s a question of ethics
de Tocqueville does not apply.

Have you ever felt out of place. I mean really out of place, not like wearing khaki’s and a button shirt to a black tie affair. But the kind of out of place where you look around and in every direction it is painfully obvious you don’t belong there. I’ve had several of these types of encounters usually in the south, being a person of color, sometimes you just walk in the wrong door.

Nevertheless I ended up in a Bass Pro Shop today to meet some people for lunch in the restaurant in the back. Apparently not only is it a giant wonderland of hunting and fishing gear but there was a mediocre fish restaurant in the back. It was about as good as any Red Lobster, so rather mediocre at best. Just walking in to the store I felt that sense of discomfort, like walking into the lingerie department without a girl to accompany you or ending up the wing-man and being left with the ugly drunk friend at the table, trying to get her to eat bread and drink water so she doesn’t get any ideas. So as my Oh Shit meter goes off I notice quickly the amount of dead animals on the wall. I was rather distressed about that but before that even had a chance to settle I was faced with a display of a mannequin dressed in full camouflage holding a rifle and wearing all sorts of gear. Thats when the realization hit me. You can buy a gun in this store, you can walk out with weapons from this store. Moreover all the people in this store probably own them. That was even more distressing. The demographics were painfully obvious, and I felt like I was in the south actually. However among the dead animals and killing accoutrement in the center of this enormous building is this man-made waterfall that churns the waters of a rather large fish tank. What was amazing was not this constructed monstrosity but the amount of people awing at it, as if it was as remotely significant as the smallest natural running of water outside that building. It was easy to judge every one internally as the stereo type of people was all too well represented in the shop. I half expected a tall-boy in the hands of some of these people while walking around the store. I couldn’t stomach to stay much longer so we made our way into the restaurant and I proceed to look over the menu. I’ll forego the bottle blondes ordering white wine and smoking menthols in the outside seating and simply note that somehow a simple meal took about two and a half hours. Usually at these types of restaurants they are pack ‘em in and push ‘em out but this time it was like being a clock watcher, suddenly the hands move backward. Somewhere in the middle of the whole thing I simply began laughing semi-quietly to myself like a madman out of the sheer absurdity of the situation.

After lunch I try to make it back to the car avoiding the video demonstration of some sort of magic fishing bait and the enormous keg like mugs. I figure if I move quickly enough the impulse buying bug won’t hit me. Especially with the discount lures conveniently located near the checkout isles where the candy should be. Maybe it was sheer will but I managed my way out without making a purchase and hoped that I would never have to set foot in such a place again.

This is where I’ll be spending the next couple of days. The gift shop sells a large assortment of hats. I might pick one up. The smaller wheel chairs are much more disturbing than I.V. lines. The amount of Nuclear Imaging and technology in this building is amazing. I find myself admiring the amount of interaction between people and machines. I find myself in shock at the amount of people suffering and the amount of people healing. I counted the masks, there were 27 in my eye view through out the day. For the protection of themselves not of others. Some need not worry about others as they were alone.