Saxophones and Empty Fountains

As I set out, once again, on the all-too-familiar route to the place I call work I found myself wanting to pull away from everything.
To pull my veins back into my own body and let my lifeblood recirculate in some cheap, not-as-real warmth.

I just wanted to stay where I was so I wouldn't sink any lower.

I saw a man playing a ramshackle ballad on his saxophone, standing on a dry platform in the middle of a dry fountain.
He seemed almost as unsatisfied with his art as I feel with mine these days.
He kept halting to frown, shake his head at himself, then start again with another unpredictable, sad trill.

A woman with her child paused at the top level of the dry fountain, listening to this sad swan. It was as if she found someone who was just a little sadder than she and that made her just a little happier.
She was searching so intently for understanding, for companionship, that she was almost desperate in her want for this, her child, to understand. To feel. With her.

I wanted to stop, to take part in the feeling.
To once again reunite with the flaming leaves on the fall-kissed tree branches.

But on I walked.
Steady on to that foul restaurant.

Steady on to yet another evening of genuiness wasted on random, temporary nobodies.

I just want a somebody but I feel guilty.
I feel like I want to want nobody. I want to frown at myself, shake my head, and keep trying to play an original set of notes.

Heal Over

I can't understand this onset of downward motion I seem to experience to readily these days.
I don't get it.
I feel like I can't get it.

I don't look forward to anything.

I don't look forward to anyone.

I feel like so much is losing its luster.

It's not even money. I have money for now.

It's just that something about life is so disappointing right now.
I feel like I'm disappointingly boring.
Life is boring.

Maybe I'm just tired.

What To Do About David

Quickening,
still and slow
rapidly drawing
a subtle breath.

How was I to know?

How was he
to know
his palette calls
for something unfamiliar,
strange,
and yet so craved.

Pulling back my hair and exposing the skin of my forehead,
I see the scars and dents of time and thought.

Can he possibly see them?
Want them?

What calls from me
to him?
Body to body?

Body to body.

He asks for what I do not want to give
to him.

But I want to give
to him.

To tell the truth
means lying
to his face
and his heart.

It's such a painful honesty.
An openness only
comparable to dissection.

Cutting in and seeing
the bloody depths of
real and awful self.

He calls for a piece of flesh
or is it a piece of beating
fluttering
honesty?

There seem to be so many questions.
So many unknowns and yet
they call.
Body to body.

I want to be called and
I let myself.

I call a returned want.
A desire is not mine
and is made mine.

Is it really mine?

Questions,
posed
and delivered
and left.

He told me without his words
but with his mouth.

What will my mouth say
without words?

Considering The Rose's Thorn

I see what is happening with Nick and Tony as it pertains to Chris and it saddens me.

It makes me feel rotten inside especially because I knew it was going to happen and now I just wish I were wrong.
Wrong for everyone's sake.

Chris is slowly but surely (and possibly unwittingly) coming between Nick and his happiness with Tony. I doubt it if Tony knows the full extent of Nick's care for Chris.
Then again, I sensed it at the beginning.

I probably ought to be telling myself, "quit worrying about something that is none of your business," but I'm still allowing myself to be upset.

No, I don't have any right.
I don't give a twig for whether or not it's my business.
I still sense the pain in an overwhelming way.

The seeming remedy would be to stop associating with the situation as whole until it either blows over or someone brings me into it.

*sigh*

I think I need to pull out of a lot of concerns much like this one.
Concerns based in wanting to feel for others when my empathy is completely unwelcome.
I think that's a large part of why I end up getting so intensely emotionally offended.

I must focus on myself in a non-selfish way.
I need to be self-ful.

Perhaps it's just one of those "times of trial" you read about in the Bible and epic poetry.

The cruelty of fate's irony.

A Little Link

I spent the evening with Michelle and Julia this evening and really went into detail about my intense level of observation.
I think I may have given them a bit of a scare when they realized just how much I saw...not only in them but in all things.

Hmmm...I wonder how I am supposed to be using this descriptive ability.

Maybe I'm writing to be read again.
I don't like that.

If this journal becomes another town crier when it's supposed to be the candlelit scribblings of a malcontented sister then I will be officially angry.


Part of me wonders if I'm wanting to draw closer to those two girls because it will make me feel slightly closer to Drew...even though he's so far removed. So gone.

He kept coming up in conversation and the girls were showing pictures of old, good times with him. I just still feel so attached.
And that attachment has now become something I see as being against my better judgment.

I'm feeling like I am in the midst of having it proven to me, once again, that everything was just momentary and poisoned with passion. Like the things he said were just to fulfill the script in his head for the "perfect evening".

But I ache to think that that's actually the case.
I want him to have been as thrilled as I was.
As excited.
As peaceful yet crazed.

I'm not getting any messages of reply.
I'm not getting any phone calls.
I'm feeling accessory.

But then again, I sort of am.

Settling Into Diligence

Once again I find myself ready to sacrifice all eternals and buckle down.
To let go of the possible momentary excitements in exchange for an assurance of my own successes, both academically and emotionally.

I hope this pays off...and I am hoping I am not going to pull another "excited beginning into a half-assed follow through"

A Letter To Drew

I just spent a very pleasant couple of hours with our dear Michelle.
We reminisced about the past and recounted classic tales of our former renegade activities and joyful romps across the old Canadian campus.

Then, of course, the topic turned to you.
We spoke of missing you and how nonsensical it seemed to be that we were all brought into each others' lives at such odd times.
There's an order to everything when reduced to mere function and I think that the pragmatism of relationships tends to be an illusive study.

That being said I thought I would write you the first of my promised correspondences.
Life here turns toward a somber note as the trees begin shedding first their verdigris for a fiery bronze and then lose their sheets of pressed metal.
Sidewalks begin to resemble the littered floors of an art room post-class; clippings strewn about in an effortless shift and sway according to the wind's direction...or lack thereof.

That selfsame wind carries with it a voice, a whisper of pending gray.

We can only hope the gray will produce just a little white.

Of that, among many thing, I am quite jealous of your current location.
You'll have snow, oh so much snow.

Coming back around to the gray of the coming days, I look forward to spending brisk walks bundled inside the trappings of my winter's preparation. Evenings spent on the couch with a cup of coffee, a good book, a friend, and a conversation.

Michelle and I are already staking out certain sections of our break for movie nights, dinner parties, and cloves on my balcony.

Julia, she and I are planning on attending Cabaret this coming Tuesday night.
I'm really hoping we can get in.
If not I'll be purchasing tickets for the last week of the recently augmented run. A few of my work friends are going as well and look forward to brights lights and lap dances.

I grin to think of what is to come this season.
More academics, more talks of the finer points of life, existence, and our role in this massive social construction.

I left you a phone message asking this same question but I figure repetition ensures clarity:
What will be your new mailing address?
I have something I'm intending on sending you in the near future.
This of course implies that I'll have somewhere to send it.

Having just humored my random love of childhood cereals, I have a mostly-empty bowl which formerly contained a heaping mass of Cookie Crisp.
That's another thing I look forward to about this Fall into Winter season: breakfasts of sugar cereal and toast as the Sun comes up over the ridge.

How has life at your famed Soho bakery come along?
I hope you're enjoying it immensely and looking forward to your now unlimited access to pastries and croissants.
I know I would be.

Wednesday fast approaches.
For what it's worth, know that I'm thinking of you and hoping for only your best.

Michelle and I talked about your upcoming meeting with this director and were mutually giddy with the expectation of your charm and wit winning them over.

We're rooting for you.
It's like I told you in the truck right before slipping from the side door and descending to venture city-ward, "you'll always have people here who love you."

You're finding your feet.
You're doing what you love.
Never lose that, my dear boy.

I hope to hear from you soon,
With Best Regards,


-Noah C. Buck

Having Been Far Too Long

I'm sitting in the newfound relief of being told that I do not have to work this evening.
Not to say that money wouldn't be useful but I am so tired all of the sudden (again).

I want to take a nap and then do some homework and then possibly go to a movie.
All of this hinges upon just how fast I get my work done, of course.

I spent the evening last night with Allena and Evie.
Evie was absolutely wonderful.
I was incredibly attracted to her not only as a person but in a very sincere sexual manner.
Odd.

After the two of those lovely girls, I spent the rest of the evening with Michael Newman.
I know, blast from the past.
But the truth of the matter is that I really enjoyed myself.
We ended up staying up far too late (something close to 3am) talking and taking random pictures of cell phone keys and hookah smoke.

By the time we went to sleep I was beyond delirious and awoke in a cloud of dazed exhaustion.
I still made breakfast (because apparently Michael is not in the habit of eating in the morning) and then went to church.
I saw my sister and Ted there for a few minutes and that was a welcome episode considering the fact that it has become something of a normal thing to encounter one or the two of them.
I'm happy about that.

I also saw the Leisure family at Imago Dei and that was random.
It was lovely to get a hug from Diane.
I've always liked her.
Chelsae was there as well and she looked lovely.
Although she did mention that she's with Mode and I made a pointed effort to let her know about the inconsistencies of the agency and reps.

We'll see if she heeds my words.

I'm really tired right now.
As I previously mentioned.

I'm tired for many reasons.
I feel like I am in need of written output and yet I don't have my usual knack for it.
It's almost as if I have it until I really need it and then it's gone.

And I don't even know for sure if this illusive "it" is talent, ability to copy, natural and organic output...I just don't know.

I want to write all about Drew.
I want to write about Aleks working into the concept of Drew.
I want to write about me.

I feel like I can't.
Like I really am unable.

I think I just need sleep.

Waiting For 15 Minutes

Having spent the last 48 hours wanting nothing more than just a voice, just a word or two, I feel the most pathetic I've felt in ages.

This pathetic weight has been resting on my shoulders for the last little while and yet I wish I had had it for a long, long while.

These are the times when I fully embrace wishful regret.
I wish I had met Drew months ago, I wish that I had had more time with him.
I wish that I had had more of a chance to be with him and know him and just lay next to him...knowing him. Breathing the same air and stirring in the same midnight chills.

Waking in a cold, damp sweat and being happy to be in such discomfort because I would have known that it was due to his proximity, his closeness.

Now I am having to rest with the knowledge of his departure.
Having to hold to this hopeless romance which is necessarily temporary.

He's right. It will be easier for him than for me.

I'll be adjusted in the cupboard to find my place behind the cereal boxes and soup cans.
I'll be that cardboard corner poking out from behind the bag of sugar, just wanting to be seen, let along brought out. Opened, tasted.

I want him.
I want to be near him.

I just want this pain to stop and I want him to be the band-aid.

I'm going to have to let this heal in an open manner and I will scar.

Sipping A Cigarette

I just spent the last 10 minutes on my balcony, in the wind, accompanied by a cup of coffee with floating bits of cinnamon and a lone cigarette, listening to the haunting strands of desperate songs coming out from the warmth and safety of an empty apartment.

In that time I allowed my unchecked imagination to hope for the possibility of a romance like you see in the movies.
I would fly out, I would pick up and move.
I would continue to work, to finish what I've started while beginning something brand new.

In those moments of caffeine and nicotine my body responds to the lick of the passing gusts in a manner not unlike an infant to his mother's caress. Wanting to find comfort in the touch of a chilled hand. Wanting to slip into a sleep so deep that the dreams feel like the most brilliant reality.

It's in this momentary lapse of judgment that I find a truly awakening sense of freedom.
Perhaps I should hold myself away from this dangerous flame of passion, looking only to the solid, blocky corners of the set constructed on this stage of my life.
Platforms and framing nails are my strength and power.

My control is in the knowledge of my supporting places.
I am holding to a fastidious discipline of reality.

Throw me to this wind.
Let me sail about like a half-burnt fall leaf riding alongside the fiery brilliance of the butterflies I see inside myself.

Burst forth with new passion and embrace the bleak of now as the hard, flat road leading to the golden mountains on the horizon.

An Utter Separation

I am feeling that same sense of loneliness I remember having felt and forgotten...


...felt and forgotten.

...felt and forgotten.


And now I've come to a place of decision: sink into the depression so easily succumbed to or make the painful effort of learning from what I am in the midst of right now.

It's like Jenny tells me oh so often, meditate and be outside of the moment so that you might see the whole picture. Observe and take from it what you can.

A Quickly Developing Romance

I really like Aleks.

Granted I only just met him and only today actually had anything of a lengthy interaction with him.
After he picked me up from work the other night I had an inkling of how much I felt I was going to enjoy his company.
However it wasn't until I actually had brunch with him and then walked about the blustery, wet leaf-ridden boardwalks of the pearl today that I began to come into full realization of just how drawn I was to him.
It's so compelling, his presence.
It's so comfortable and appreciated and I just want to be close to him in the innocent and unassuming manner.
I want to cuddle up next to him with a book, blanket and fireplace.

The book will no doubt be forgotten as he grins over my shoulder with his teacup resting on the cushioned worn leather arm of the couch. I'll simply nuzzle into him and find a place of safety. A haven. A respite.

Rest.

Rest for me...and my name means rest.


I fear the distance and the timing and yet I will not let the fear continue.
I think he likes me.
I told him I like him...a lot.

I told him that I think he's adorable.
I actually used that word.

I feel like I'm being too sudden, too direct.
And yet that thrills me.

I want him to hold me close.
And closer and closer.

I'm sighing to myself as I write these words.
I hope so sincerely.

The Cycle Goes Up And Down

Having now realized just how much I am willing to trust Chris despite the jealousies and pains I still hold I come into a new sense of emptiness.

Perhaps it's because I've scraped clean the insides of my innermost chambers in order that I make him see that he's inflicting pain.
Perhaps it's because I need someone to know who won't think I'm crazy.
Perhaps it's because I ought to be committed and I'm looking for someone who will send me on my merry way to a small room where I can sit and ponder why I didn't ask my mum to cook me breakfast more often.

These are the rolling and colliding questions which make me willing to lie to myself.
I am deceived by the confidence of a fast-paced day.
The smooth rhetoric of a happily encouraged friend or colleague.
The clever smile of a lover in my future as he glances at the time to make it look as if he has some reason to stop looking at me other than sheer embarrassment at his inability to tear away his attentions.

Having come to a very firm place of decision a short while back about my intentions to seek a deeper and more meaningful understanding of myself I am constantly battling the distractions of poorly formed old habits and trial-ridden new tradition.

It's like there's some sort of cutoff between my hope and my reality and yet the two operate so effortlessly synonymously when I merely close my eyes.

I have to keep listening.
I have to keep wanting to love.

The moment I stop wanting it is the moment I begin to glance longingly at the bladed edge of a wine key next to a half-empty bottle of blood-red Cabernet Sauvignon.

Feeling Me Out

You wanted to stay, Chris, and you wanted to stay alone.

It was like you were pushing Jenny out because she was in your special way.
Perhaps what I am writing is dripping with pain, annoyance, jealousy, but that's why I have this journal.

I know now, more than ever, that I cannot stand when people act two-faced.
I know why this is.
It's because I've seen it in myself.

Call it projection, call it unfair, it's still the truth.

I would like you to be happy.
However I would not like you to have your cake and eat it too.

I think that when I said I wanted you and I to stay close, to be a part of one another's lives, I was meaning in a way where we were still of some sort of paramount importance.
I feel like I am being slowly slid down some notch of measurement.
Like I am losing my appeal and/or importance to these new friends you're so eager to meet...on mother fucking Myspace.

Yes, I lied.
I don't respect it.
I find it tragic, pathetic.

Yes, I have met ONE person via that website and yes, we're still friends, but it's not as if it's this all-consuming passtime.
It seems to me, in my upset and looking-for-reasons attitude that this whole myspace canvassing for males (check), gay (check) 18-25 (check), within (10) miles of (97201) has become a regular thing.

What ever happened to really meeting people.
In daily life, at work, through people you already know...that's how organic relationships work.

Yes, I am being judgmental.
It's because I am spewing it all out right now.
I'm purging, in the emotional sense.

Since it seems that in these types of situations I am the common denominator that I am part of the problem.
I'm too attached to the consistency of a single person.
When it's gone, I'm thrown off balance.

When I choose to let it go I am able to ready myself but when it's all stored up and then dropped on me I feel kind of floored, exhausted, and excluded.

Exclusion still lies in the circle of my largest, most over-developed fears.

I need to practice more meditation, more centering, less object-referral.

I need to be okay with this and not snap.

Rid the Self of Hate

Having come to a point where I'm actually making a concerted effort to be a more fulfilled and peaceful person, I'm somewhat simplifying my life.

I say that with a little bit of a chuckle because it comes across as if I'm just another one of those wannabes who found the "fountain of youth" and are under the impression that it's brand new and just for them.

I know I have an incessant need to clarify myself in order that I not be taken the wrong way...then again...

(there's been something of a break in this)

I think I'm just on the constant verge of frustration for a bit.
It's like PMS.

Pulling a Dried Scab

Jeremi is seemingly asleep on the couch in my living room as I sit here in the dark, peering somewhat painfully at the stark screen of this plastic prison for my thoughts, feelings, habits, and communications.
I really don't know what to think about me lately.
I've been sexually active in ways which I would call irresponsible.

First, I did not allow for a clean break between Chris and myself.
Unwise.
The fact that I allowed myself to sleep with him even after we had fought and separated tells me that while I may be over he and I in the permanent relationship sense, I am still very attached to the idea of someone knowing me...just knowing.

Second, James was a person who was little more than a quick physical attraction which I attempted to culture into something more for the sake of it "making sense" not to mention my goddamned need to fix other people's problems and make them happy at my expense.
I can't even find my own happiness.
What business is it of mine to try and force my ideas of happiness upon them?

Third, Tony.
I fell hard.
I couldn't really venture a realistic guess as to why but for right now I still have the unerring feeling that it was a true and untainted attraction and hope for something more.
As with James, nothing more than kissing occurred.
And yet emotionally I was so sexually invested.
Yes, I do see the two as inextricably intertwined within myself.
I can understand how others would pull the meaning of one from the other and hold them at arms length from one another, much like the crucifix.
And again, like the crucifix, there is a deadness, a cold.

I'm far too sanguine to fall into such a diffidence.

Fourth comes with the title of Jesse.
He is someone I don't even know and I have had something of a latent attraction to ever since meeting him the night we all went to see 300. Nothing to the point that I couldn't help thinking about him, merely a light pleasure at his recollection.
The joking, flirting, banter, etc. was always an option.
A Safety.
A Cruel, Selfish Knowledge.
If I needed anything, there was an availability right there.

I refuse to even attempt a lie to myself in stating that I'm interested in dating him.
I guess he was right.
He doesn't do second dates.
Undateable.

Then a brief reconvening with Chris.
I felt so passionate but once again, it was due to the fact that I was in the midst of being known.
Perhaps now the biblical reference makes more sense. Hits more keenly.
Adam and Eve were in fact the only two of their species and they knew one another.
They were all that there was to know of anything other than their tasks.

And finally, I just fucked Jeremi.

I cannot write any other description because that's really all it was.
We both understood that.
We find some odd, latent attraction in each other.
We were at the "right place at the right time" and then it occurred.

It wasn't because we loved each other.
It wasn't because we were overwhelmed with passion.
It was just because it felt inevitable.
Like there would be no avoiding it so why not just get it out of the way now...no question makr because it was no question.

I feel like I should feel.
I see all of these things as typically invoking of some sort of emotion: regret, excitement, sadness, thrill, a dirty guilt

Not so.

I just go on feeling the same mediocre I have been feeling.
Where did my reactivity go?
How did I reduce to this?

It's a seeming battle to stay random and diverse and yet I want it so badly so I fight harder and harder.
When will I give out?

How long will it take me?

I don't want to be like this, this wanton thing.

I feel like my sexuality has become nothing more than an exercise.
It's so devoid of reality.
The romance once saturating my physical thirst for another's body is now robbed of me by a culprit with a face much like my own...except there is no fire in his eyes. No curl in his hair. Not even a sneer of victory.
Only a blankness.
A deadness.
A Cold.

When Thinking of Change

I talked to Chris today.
Finally.
It took me nearly a week to convince him that it was worth his effort to spend a single conversation with me.
The conversation took place at the Starbucks next to the old house.
I met him there and felt a stirring sense of panic in the pit of my stomach as I took more and more strides down the heated concrete.
I began to gnaw determinedly on the dry skin at the tips of my already hideously misshapen fingernails and it was then that I realized how fully nervous I was.

The truth of the matter is that I never know quite what I'm going to utter verbally when I make a point of having a planned conversation. I simply hold to the repeatedly proven fact that I will be profound and my thoughts will come out in a new way which will in turn improve my perspective causing me to learn new things about myself. About my ability to be happy. About my life.

These things could be said to be the sole drives for what it is that fuels my daily reason to get up and tackle yet another morning routine before yet another afternoon routine into yet another evening routine.
Can a person be afraid of doing the same arbitrary thing twice?

I guess I have no idea about people in general, only myself.
Even then I don't always trust what I have to draw from.

I have realized that a large part of what causes me this overall sense of insatiable craving for something more from life stems from my inability to find contentment in anything over which I do not hold any power or command any level of respect.

It's as if there's a certain amount of harnessed surety I need in order to embrace the fullness of everyday.
I need to know everyday will be everyday.

Chris is a constant reminder of my lack of ability in this area.
I cannot always know.
I cannot always hold it in my lanky, warm fingers.

I cannot always know him.
I cannot always hold him in my lanky, warm arms.

And yet now I seem to have found an increased confusion.
I can't see what's right...only what my lying emotions tell me "feels" right.

I don't want to make Chris another quote-unquote.

I don't want to love him and I don't want to want him and yet I cannot help the fact that I do.
Oh, so sincerely.

I don't feel safe with anyone.
I want to feel safe.
I want to make someone feel safe.

The Luck Of Me

I'm lucky.
I can accept that.
I cannot assure it and I'm getting scared that it's going to run out.
Should I have to be afraid of good fortune?

I love it and I hate it.
It makes me comfortable while making others frustrated and sometimes jealous.
I just want to live.

I got signed with the International Modeling Agency a few days ago.
It's official, I am a model...well, on paper anyway.
I just want it to come to some huge point of fruition.

I want to make a lot of money right away and pay off my credit care bills and get everything back to zero.
I want to go from zero.
Actually, I want to go from far above zero.
I want to go from raving success.

I'm betraying the selfish side of me which is always so carefully hidden or glossed over.
I just want to make a royal SHITload of money and not have to worry about finances for awhile.

One More Secret

This is the space usually occupied by angry, embittered outpourings of jealousy and hurt.

Not anymore, that is...not like it used to be.

Christopher and I are engaged.

Engaged!

It's the strangest, most surreal feeling to think of our now-solidified committment.
I just want to get going on the rest of our lives together right now.

I'll admit that right now I am feeling a slight amount of jealousy at he and the rest of everyone's probable activities for the evening.
I mean, I was going to eat the magical mushrooms as well...yay Charlie!

But it wasn't to be for now.
I am going to try and get some here anyway.

But overall, the wistful semi-jealousy I had felt is now more of an "oh, well" feeling.

This is much better.

He Has Become

Words are so powerful.

MY words are so powerful.

I have gone from utter silence to a deafening roar of blatant evil.
Looking over the writing pouring from me into my hemlock has shown me just how twisted and terrible I am...and most likely always shall be.

I am vengeful.
Hateful.
Malicious.

I will to bring pain...and I succeed.