just pretend that little hole is a mouth
and everything you put in there isn't disappearing
it's just feeding magic creatures that will watch over you while you sleep
and you will have nice dreams
of floating through navy blue skies and feeling aurora borealis tickling your cheeks
falling stars whistling past your ears and landing on icebergs
eskimos waving to you out of their igloos
beckoning you in for hot chocolate
it is warm but snowing still
the flakes melt when they touch your arm and each one feels like a first kiss
melting quickly before the next arrives
floating through navy blue skies up above everything
and everything looks so so small that when you land again it will still seem small
and you are large and swollen with optimism
you land on your bed and think
"the world is young" and you sleep soundly.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Thursday, December 25, 2008
how to handle xmas with a former jehovah's witness
'tis the season for questions
where "why" takes a back seat to "why not" in the great christmas debate
Dear friends,
it's ok to just say nothing
and not dance around with what or what not to say or do
don't ask "what you people did on christmas"
don't ask how it was growing up
don't ask if i've started because i haven't
there are forces at work
girlfriends and girlfriend's families with the best intentions
coworkers and customers coddling me with the cold delicate handling reserved only for religious minorities they gleefully shit talk in or out of suspected earshot
strangers who can't help but feel i am slighting those closest to me with a presentless 25th
sorry team
this is america
and there are stones in this pot that refuse to melt
and there are as many definitions and interpretations of christmas as there are snowflakes in a snowman
some want the christ back in
some want the christ out
some just want the look on the faces of their children when they see a mound of wrapped presents beneath The Tree
and who am i to spare them that?
who am i to think i ever stood a chance?
to them that is worth the stress and aggravation of mall crowds and long days with the shortest hours of sunlight
they are probably right
they are right
and i am wrong again
i was wrong when i was knocking on the doors of strangers with news of an impending armageddon
i was wrong when i knew there was no santa
and we don't really have to talk about it
silence is a cold i am willing to bear
love,
jeremy
where "why" takes a back seat to "why not" in the great christmas debate
Dear friends,
it's ok to just say nothing
and not dance around with what or what not to say or do
don't ask "what you people did on christmas"
don't ask how it was growing up
don't ask if i've started because i haven't
there are forces at work
girlfriends and girlfriend's families with the best intentions
coworkers and customers coddling me with the cold delicate handling reserved only for religious minorities they gleefully shit talk in or out of suspected earshot
strangers who can't help but feel i am slighting those closest to me with a presentless 25th
sorry team
this is america
and there are stones in this pot that refuse to melt
and there are as many definitions and interpretations of christmas as there are snowflakes in a snowman
some want the christ back in
some want the christ out
some just want the look on the faces of their children when they see a mound of wrapped presents beneath The Tree
and who am i to spare them that?
who am i to think i ever stood a chance?
to them that is worth the stress and aggravation of mall crowds and long days with the shortest hours of sunlight
they are probably right
they are right
and i am wrong again
i was wrong when i was knocking on the doors of strangers with news of an impending armageddon
i was wrong when i knew there was no santa
and we don't really have to talk about it
silence is a cold i am willing to bear
love,
jeremy
Saturday, December 13, 2008
88mph to a wedding in a vineyard
6\07
Driving out east. Kathrine drove me out east for a wedding in the Hamptons. "Katherine O'Shea and Guest". Thank you for capitalizing the G in Guest, but it didn't make me feel like anything more than a place-holder in a sea of local celebrities. Would it have been funny to introduce myself to people as "Guest"? Maybe for one or two people, but it couldn't last long. It's too self-conscious.
Driving out east. It's like driving backwards in time. You watch the buildings shrink and for once in your life on Long Island the sprawl is green and natural. But it's never enough to pull you too far deep into the past, never believable enough to be comfortable, only enough to get you to slightly identify with the idea when you read about it. Enough architectural anachronisms and they aren't anachronisms anymore; they are what is.
First you see a Ford dealership, maybe a Starbucks somewhere, a Lexus dealership, definitely a Starbucks right over there, then a shiny new supermarket big enough to make Jack Gladney blush.
The illusion was never shattered because it never existed in the first place. We never escaped the 21st century. We were always in a car that was anything but an '85 Delorean. We were never more than three cars away from a luxury SUV.
So we went to a wedding. A ceremony for two people in love, ideally. It was nice to be out in that vineyard in another illusion. This was the illusion of love that will last forever when united ceremonially. But we never left the real world. I was introduced to one of Kathrine's uncles, a divorce lawyer. He makes good money helping people negotiate the terms of their realization that they have failed in their public promise to each other and their one family which will soon again be two families.
Driving out east we never left the real world. We never left it because it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist just as much as the imaginary world does not exist. We never left the world as it is. We live in the crossfire of what we imagine the world to be like and what we imagine the world to be. Perhaps there were some cynics in the wedding party who would cite the rising divorce rate or decreasing marriage rate as evidence of the institution of marriage failing. As if that had any bearing on the ability of two people to be in love.
What is love? Well, maybe it's the constant rediscovering of someone intriguing, maybe it's a chemical reaction, maybe it's a goldfish forgetting what the other half of the tank looks like as soon as it reaches the other side. Whatever it is, it exists. Even if it's nothing more than the sound of the word being formed on our tongues, it exists. I believe in it because I choose to. It's a game I play.
Soccer is a good reason to stay in shape, to go running, to be with friends. Why bother asking what the point of kicking a ball into a net is? Why question the meaning of the lines on the ground further than their obvious function? Why over-regulate yourself? There are a few simple rules to any game of pickup soccer. Don't break any obvious rules and remember that you're there to have fun.
That's love.
I never asked what the point of a kiss is, I just think about what it does to me. I just remember that I'm here to have fun. Love, soccer, both two games that don't matter to anyone other than the people involved.
I went to a wedding this weekend and it was a ceremony. It wasn't the World Cup, it was more like a high school championship.
Games.
Playing games.
That's what people do. Not just eating or sleeping or mating, but recreation despite whatever reality you can't escape.
Come to think of it, driving out east isn't like driving backwards in time at all. It is driving backwards in time. We got there by not analyzing the inescapable anachronisms and thought only of the impressions left upon us by the shrinking buildings and sprawl that is vernal instead of urban. We drove back to a time where the divorce rate didn't exist because divorce did not exist. The buildings disappeared and we sat in a field of wine grapes. We drove in a car to a time before cars, before the dark ages, before the bronze age, before objects, before artifacts, to a place where two people became two ideas and before our eyes they became one idea. They were beautiful.
The idea behind inviting Guest to your wedding is that there's some unknown person that someone you actually do want at your wedding would like to have beside them. The idea is that you are welcoming an outsider.
This is a message from Guest, the welcome outsider, from one idea to another.
Don't break any obvious rules and remember that you're there to have fun.
It's ok to bend reality a little bit because there is no reality. There is only the world as it is.
After years of being conspicuously abstinent from alcohol I decided to have a glass of champagne at this wedding in the vineyard. There was a message at the bottom of the glass:
"To Guest,
Don't break any obvious rules and remember that you're there to have fun."
This is me raising my glass for a toast to two strangers who helped me learn the importance of playing games.
Driving out east. Kathrine drove me out east for a wedding in the Hamptons. "Katherine O'Shea and Guest". Thank you for capitalizing the G in Guest, but it didn't make me feel like anything more than a place-holder in a sea of local celebrities. Would it have been funny to introduce myself to people as "Guest"? Maybe for one or two people, but it couldn't last long. It's too self-conscious.
Driving out east. It's like driving backwards in time. You watch the buildings shrink and for once in your life on Long Island the sprawl is green and natural. But it's never enough to pull you too far deep into the past, never believable enough to be comfortable, only enough to get you to slightly identify with the idea when you read about it. Enough architectural anachronisms and they aren't anachronisms anymore; they are what is.
First you see a Ford dealership, maybe a Starbucks somewhere, a Lexus dealership, definitely a Starbucks right over there, then a shiny new supermarket big enough to make Jack Gladney blush.
The illusion was never shattered because it never existed in the first place. We never escaped the 21st century. We were always in a car that was anything but an '85 Delorean. We were never more than three cars away from a luxury SUV.
So we went to a wedding. A ceremony for two people in love, ideally. It was nice to be out in that vineyard in another illusion. This was the illusion of love that will last forever when united ceremonially. But we never left the real world. I was introduced to one of Kathrine's uncles, a divorce lawyer. He makes good money helping people negotiate the terms of their realization that they have failed in their public promise to each other and their one family which will soon again be two families.
Driving out east we never left the real world. We never left it because it doesn't exist. It doesn't exist just as much as the imaginary world does not exist. We never left the world as it is. We live in the crossfire of what we imagine the world to be like and what we imagine the world to be. Perhaps there were some cynics in the wedding party who would cite the rising divorce rate or decreasing marriage rate as evidence of the institution of marriage failing. As if that had any bearing on the ability of two people to be in love.
What is love? Well, maybe it's the constant rediscovering of someone intriguing, maybe it's a chemical reaction, maybe it's a goldfish forgetting what the other half of the tank looks like as soon as it reaches the other side. Whatever it is, it exists. Even if it's nothing more than the sound of the word being formed on our tongues, it exists. I believe in it because I choose to. It's a game I play.
Soccer is a good reason to stay in shape, to go running, to be with friends. Why bother asking what the point of kicking a ball into a net is? Why question the meaning of the lines on the ground further than their obvious function? Why over-regulate yourself? There are a few simple rules to any game of pickup soccer. Don't break any obvious rules and remember that you're there to have fun.
That's love.
I never asked what the point of a kiss is, I just think about what it does to me. I just remember that I'm here to have fun. Love, soccer, both two games that don't matter to anyone other than the people involved.
I went to a wedding this weekend and it was a ceremony. It wasn't the World Cup, it was more like a high school championship.
Games.
Playing games.
That's what people do. Not just eating or sleeping or mating, but recreation despite whatever reality you can't escape.
Come to think of it, driving out east isn't like driving backwards in time at all. It is driving backwards in time. We got there by not analyzing the inescapable anachronisms and thought only of the impressions left upon us by the shrinking buildings and sprawl that is vernal instead of urban. We drove back to a time where the divorce rate didn't exist because divorce did not exist. The buildings disappeared and we sat in a field of wine grapes. We drove in a car to a time before cars, before the dark ages, before the bronze age, before objects, before artifacts, to a place where two people became two ideas and before our eyes they became one idea. They were beautiful.
The idea behind inviting Guest to your wedding is that there's some unknown person that someone you actually do want at your wedding would like to have beside them. The idea is that you are welcoming an outsider.
This is a message from Guest, the welcome outsider, from one idea to another.
Don't break any obvious rules and remember that you're there to have fun.
It's ok to bend reality a little bit because there is no reality. There is only the world as it is.
After years of being conspicuously abstinent from alcohol I decided to have a glass of champagne at this wedding in the vineyard. There was a message at the bottom of the glass:
"To Guest,
Don't break any obvious rules and remember that you're there to have fun."
This is me raising my glass for a toast to two strangers who helped me learn the importance of playing games.
welcome to a room of my own
6\07
sorry for the mess but every time i try and clean it it just feels like i'm losing part of myself i like the pile of clothes they are mine and usually i can find a shirt when i want to sure i hang up the ones with collars but who even wears those anyway so this is it heres my messy room theres my bed flush against the corner like doing so would give me enough floorspace to do anything but throw clothes on top of i start cleaning it but nobody really comes in here anyway it's kinda weird to see you standing there sorry i don't have any chairs just a bed it used to be a futon i used to be alot of things now i'm just a man in a hotel room a perpetual tourist on the long island beating paths out onto the road with my silly black pickup truck i bought it because they are cheap and functional where am i where does this car take me where do these feet take me but back to this messy room where i drool out words onto myspace like a man in a cartoon on a hump of an island with one tree on it i am on that island throwing bottles into the sea not thinking about shipping lanes or trade winds or anything just thinking about everything i throw into the sea into the river before i go back to my room my pile of coconuts and sand it's not so bad once you get used to it but you could say that about alot of things and one day i'm going to say that about everything christ let this single tree be an antenna straight to the ears of god this is me your humble servant asking for forgiveness i am daniel in a den with my waning positivity crouching like lions but without daniel's grace and i believe they may pounce at any minute i scrawl this hastily and cast it into the water
"spare me lord my work is not done."
sorry for the mess but every time i try and clean it it just feels like i'm losing part of myself i like the pile of clothes they are mine and usually i can find a shirt when i want to sure i hang up the ones with collars but who even wears those anyway so this is it heres my messy room theres my bed flush against the corner like doing so would give me enough floorspace to do anything but throw clothes on top of i start cleaning it but nobody really comes in here anyway it's kinda weird to see you standing there sorry i don't have any chairs just a bed it used to be a futon i used to be alot of things now i'm just a man in a hotel room a perpetual tourist on the long island beating paths out onto the road with my silly black pickup truck i bought it because they are cheap and functional where am i where does this car take me where do these feet take me but back to this messy room where i drool out words onto myspace like a man in a cartoon on a hump of an island with one tree on it i am on that island throwing bottles into the sea not thinking about shipping lanes or trade winds or anything just thinking about everything i throw into the sea into the river before i go back to my room my pile of coconuts and sand it's not so bad once you get used to it but you could say that about alot of things and one day i'm going to say that about everything christ let this single tree be an antenna straight to the ears of god this is me your humble servant asking for forgiveness i am daniel in a den with my waning positivity crouching like lions but without daniel's grace and i believe they may pounce at any minute i scrawl this hastily and cast it into the water
"spare me lord my work is not done."
earthquakes and contintental drift
3\08
does it make me want to hold on or let go
throw water on burning bridges
who starts these fires anyway
how does the face of the earth change
drifting continents or earthquakes
is this a living room or a lobby
does it make me want to hold on or let go
what does brazil think when it hears about cameroon
or madagascar think staring at mozambique all day
does it make me want to hold on or let go
throw water on burning bridges
who starts these fires anyway
how does the face of the earth change
drifting continents or earthquakes
is this a living room or a lobby
does it make me want to hold on or let go
what does brazil think when it hears about cameroon
or madagascar think staring at mozambique all day
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