- People drive over speed bumps in different ways and at different speeds, and I like to pretend that that is the way they approach events in their life.
-I miss my best friend much more than I could have imagined, and it is only deepened by the fact that I can't contact her in any way. But then again I know when I see her it will be a(these are the only words I can possibly think to describe it)golden jubilee.
-The strange aphorisms of Frances Caroline Waldear make me giggle and are rarely understood by people who do not see them come out her mouth. Ask her for her opinion if you see her, it will be one of the best you have ever heard. If you live in Chicago I suggest you ask Martha Lein, she has been on a roll recently (who am I kidding Martha is always on a roll).
-If I could choose anything to remember most clearly from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs show, it how RoRo's eyes looked everytime they played and old song.
-Stewing in your own sweaty discomfort, both physically and mental, doesn't always bring you comfort. Sometimes you just end up over ripened and sad.
- When I open myself up to the world, I feel like a milk bottle pyrimd at a carnival. Some people are able to knock me down better than others, but but there is always a chance that they will miss. And even if I do get hit I rarely am knocked over completely. And even if they win, at least they get a prize. It also allows me to see people who try to knock me down as bloated from cotton candy and chili con carne. Thats my prize.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Monday, May 18, 2009
Patrick has a new mantra
No one asks to be born- but that doesn't mean you have to hate that you are here.
You can be like yourself just with a new pair of sunglasses, you can be yourself with just a touch of someone else.
Have you ever performed an action you would never associate with your character (in fact it is some action that you associate with someone else entirely) and you realize it only after its done, making you smile and laugh a little to yourself. To condense that: have you ever done something you don't do, that someone else does, and liked it. If you couldn't tell, that was the gist of my thursday morning, I became for a brief stretch of time, Jeff Gill.
Jeff Gill is my brother. He is my rock of Gibraltar while being the bane of my existence, he is the ringing in my ear when something I am wearing is too loud and sometimes a philosopher king; but all metaphors aside, Jeff Gill is my brother. I love him dearly. And I could not be alive and well without my brother in my life. So when I woke up, on a day where my work was canceled, I refilled the coffee maker with dark, fair trade, coffee and some cheap espresso powder I bought at Aldi . It was just like getting ready any other day, but without the pressure of leaving. I then had a taste in my mouth for something nostalgic but new. I had time to kill. I remembered I had always wanted to get into the band X, the southern California punk icons who have delivered a continual onslaught of sonic glory on the world for decades. So I went to youtube and shamelessly listened to their live stuff (youtube is a good point of reference, when discovering new bands, and judging me is stupid because I judge myself so much already); X is everything I wanted in a solid and beautiful punk band(steady speed, angsty but not trite, no instrument overshadowing another, and the plus point of a good female vocalist). I then made a Pandora station of them, I was then lost in wonder. The Ramones and the Clash came on, the Decedents, the Jam, the Misfits,and the Dead Kennedys whipped through too. I even got Video Romeo and Siouxse and the Banshees. And X would come up over and over again, bringing to my table what I had been missing for years. My coffeemaker was soon sputtering that it was all out of water, so I took of the pot and poured the smoldering liquid into my cup ( the one with the lords prayer and Myrtle Beach painted on it). I mixed in some sugar from my lovely old time sugar bowl, and decided while the good music was playing I could get in the zone to read some for my classes. The beat helped my keep on point, but sometimes I would get distracted by my eye twitching from caffeine or the chorus of a song. After around an hour or so of this kind of living though, I almost dropped my coffee in my lap and my eyes blasted open and felt like a window in a windstorm. I had become Jeff Gill. Or at least I had woken up and gone on with my day in the way I thought Jeff Gill would have. Every time we talked while he was in college he would proclaim the glories of coffee with more coffee and bar chords with more bar chords and being at peace with yourself when this all twined together. Granted I wasn't reading the Financial Times like him, but 19th century British poems could suffice. I told him about this when he called later that day, and I would like to think I made his drive through East Texas bearable. He laughed, and proceeded to tell me how he filled up two bottles of powerade with his urine, and was driving safer than he used to back home ("No no no Patrick, I drive much safer now, like 80 to 90, not 90 to 100.)
Doing this welcomed into my mind so many feelings: pride, honor, commradire, excitment, dehydration, and a strange sense of liberation. First of all, it is understandably confusing to feel free while acting like someone else; but in essence what what I was doing was not acting like Jeff, but simply taking what I saw and heard from him, distilling his thoughts and applying myself to them. If this brought me joy without me trying, what could happen if I did this actively? To go even deeper into my mind, when I felt angsty in my teenage years and rejected even by my so closely knit family (If you know them, don't ask how I came to the conclusion that they hated me sometimes), I made a decision to never be like Jeff. Jeff was my best friend growing up, and I felt abandoned when he left for college and changed. I never wanted to like what he liked in college: fast driving, dark coffee, fast music, philosophy. I already have brought philosophy into my life, but not in the way Jeff had. And for a few years I had myself fooled into believing I could never like fast and hard music again; finally when I brought it together with lovely lovely coffee, I felt happy, and not just because Jeff did it, but because those were all things I actually liked. It was almost as if I had been denying myself these things because they are liked by Jeff. Don't deny yourself of something you love just because it may associate you with someone you don't want to. You could be embarrassed by your love, but its still something wonderful to you.
Taking up someone else's process can make daily living an exploration, and it can sometimes create a bond between you and the person you are imitating. In a strange way I saw myself venerating my brother, and taking up a similar method to our life goal: living happily. That moves me to the second thing I felt while I sipped my coffee: I felt like I was honoring my brother in a small way. I was doing something he swore by, something that he would jokingly say was integral for human survival. And it was just as good as he described it, the computer shuttering as it emitted heavy and fast waves of sound, the second pot of coffee roaring as it was close to burning, and me reading, shutting out all other stimuli save those three. And though I love these things all well, I felt like Jeff was proud of me for taking on his traditions and enjoying them. I felt that I validated, barely and possibly only in my own mind, some of the things he did and showed him how much he meant to me. And the feeling of someone being proud of me, is so beautiful, so beautiful.
Yes a small thing like waking up to coffee and punk can show someone you love them, so think then what things you enjoy that someone else does, that you can bring into your life and hold special with them. People don't have to be dead for you to honor them. And you don't have to do something completely original to be free. I am not saying every action you undertake must be lifted from someone else, if that we to happen... oh lord that is a whole other stories worth of metaphor and bombast. I am simply saying that you can take from your own time a small space, and take from someone close to you a small action, and fuse them into something harmonious and yours. You can be like yourself just with a new pair of sunglasses, you can be yourself with just a touch of someone else. And it can make you feel good, you can feel good.
Jeff Gill is my brother. He is my rock of Gibraltar while being the bane of my existence, he is the ringing in my ear when something I am wearing is too loud and sometimes a philosopher king; but all metaphors aside, Jeff Gill is my brother. I love him dearly. And I could not be alive and well without my brother in my life. So when I woke up, on a day where my work was canceled, I refilled the coffee maker with dark, fair trade, coffee and some cheap espresso powder I bought at Aldi . It was just like getting ready any other day, but without the pressure of leaving. I then had a taste in my mouth for something nostalgic but new. I had time to kill. I remembered I had always wanted to get into the band X, the southern California punk icons who have delivered a continual onslaught of sonic glory on the world for decades. So I went to youtube and shamelessly listened to their live stuff (youtube is a good point of reference, when discovering new bands, and judging me is stupid because I judge myself so much already); X is everything I wanted in a solid and beautiful punk band(steady speed, angsty but not trite, no instrument overshadowing another, and the plus point of a good female vocalist). I then made a Pandora station of them, I was then lost in wonder. The Ramones and the Clash came on, the Decedents, the Jam, the Misfits,and the Dead Kennedys whipped through too. I even got Video Romeo and Siouxse and the Banshees. And X would come up over and over again, bringing to my table what I had been missing for years. My coffeemaker was soon sputtering that it was all out of water, so I took of the pot and poured the smoldering liquid into my cup ( the one with the lords prayer and Myrtle Beach painted on it). I mixed in some sugar from my lovely old time sugar bowl, and decided while the good music was playing I could get in the zone to read some for my classes. The beat helped my keep on point, but sometimes I would get distracted by my eye twitching from caffeine or the chorus of a song. After around an hour or so of this kind of living though, I almost dropped my coffee in my lap and my eyes blasted open and felt like a window in a windstorm. I had become Jeff Gill. Or at least I had woken up and gone on with my day in the way I thought Jeff Gill would have. Every time we talked while he was in college he would proclaim the glories of coffee with more coffee and bar chords with more bar chords and being at peace with yourself when this all twined together. Granted I wasn't reading the Financial Times like him, but 19th century British poems could suffice. I told him about this when he called later that day, and I would like to think I made his drive through East Texas bearable. He laughed, and proceeded to tell me how he filled up two bottles of powerade with his urine, and was driving safer than he used to back home ("No no no Patrick, I drive much safer now, like 80 to 90, not 90 to 100.)
Doing this welcomed into my mind so many feelings: pride, honor, commradire, excitment, dehydration, and a strange sense of liberation. First of all, it is understandably confusing to feel free while acting like someone else; but in essence what what I was doing was not acting like Jeff, but simply taking what I saw and heard from him, distilling his thoughts and applying myself to them. If this brought me joy without me trying, what could happen if I did this actively? To go even deeper into my mind, when I felt angsty in my teenage years and rejected even by my so closely knit family (If you know them, don't ask how I came to the conclusion that they hated me sometimes), I made a decision to never be like Jeff. Jeff was my best friend growing up, and I felt abandoned when he left for college and changed. I never wanted to like what he liked in college: fast driving, dark coffee, fast music, philosophy. I already have brought philosophy into my life, but not in the way Jeff had. And for a few years I had myself fooled into believing I could never like fast and hard music again; finally when I brought it together with lovely lovely coffee, I felt happy, and not just because Jeff did it, but because those were all things I actually liked. It was almost as if I had been denying myself these things because they are liked by Jeff. Don't deny yourself of something you love just because it may associate you with someone you don't want to. You could be embarrassed by your love, but its still something wonderful to you.
Taking up someone else's process can make daily living an exploration, and it can sometimes create a bond between you and the person you are imitating. In a strange way I saw myself venerating my brother, and taking up a similar method to our life goal: living happily. That moves me to the second thing I felt while I sipped my coffee: I felt like I was honoring my brother in a small way. I was doing something he swore by, something that he would jokingly say was integral for human survival. And it was just as good as he described it, the computer shuttering as it emitted heavy and fast waves of sound, the second pot of coffee roaring as it was close to burning, and me reading, shutting out all other stimuli save those three. And though I love these things all well, I felt like Jeff was proud of me for taking on his traditions and enjoying them. I felt that I validated, barely and possibly only in my own mind, some of the things he did and showed him how much he meant to me. And the feeling of someone being proud of me, is so beautiful, so beautiful.
Yes a small thing like waking up to coffee and punk can show someone you love them, so think then what things you enjoy that someone else does, that you can bring into your life and hold special with them. People don't have to be dead for you to honor them. And you don't have to do something completely original to be free. I am not saying every action you undertake must be lifted from someone else, if that we to happen... oh lord that is a whole other stories worth of metaphor and bombast. I am simply saying that you can take from your own time a small space, and take from someone close to you a small action, and fuse them into something harmonious and yours. You can be like yourself just with a new pair of sunglasses, you can be yourself with just a touch of someone else. And it can make you feel good, you can feel good.
Friday, May 15, 2009
"is there a text in this class?"
"in the procedures i would urge, the reader's activities are at the center of attention, where they are regarded not as leading to meaning but as having meaning. the text is an experience; it occurs; it does something: it makes us do something."
stanley fish
stanley fish
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