The world is decaying in front of me. Looking back, I can read between the lines. How long have my eyes been deteriorating? Soon, I’ll be no good as a hunter. No good as a soldier. No good as a lover. You’re shivering as we walk around this man-made lake. I give you my sweater and put my hands in my pockets. My best friend lent me a guitar before he left and I’ve never played it. I’ve had so much within arm’s reach and I’ve squandered it. I’m listening to my far-away sister’s voice floating up through the floor. I can hear every word. You’ve never met, but you’d like her. You seem to like all my friends. I like that about you. I like everything about you. I’m a solitary person and I’m becoming more solitary. I need a strong drink and a haircut and the highway out of town. One shirt, two pairs of pants. I’m the last one in a glass tower, scribbling equations on the board, my hair standing on end. People are avoiding me. I don’t answer my phone, anymore. The people I care about are far away. She dances for a living and she says I look sad. What am I doing here? I can’t answer the question. She’s probably as good of an expert in sadness as we have. But I’ll persist, come what may. Our forefathers were jumping out of planes at my age, fighting in trenches. I’ve let everyone down. But it isn’t over yet.
new work
Ideas and photographs.
-
2012-05-18
-
2012-05-17
“Not sure that I’ve ever been so honored to introduce someone as I am right now.
Gac Filipaj is a refugee from the former Yugoslavia. For the past 19 years, he has worked as a janitor for Columbia University. His job title is “Heavy Cleaner,” which includes emptying the trash and cleaning the toilets.
During this time, he worked until 11pm every night during the week. After his shift concluded, he would start studying. This weekend, after twelve years of study, Gac graduated from Columbia University with a Classics degree. Rarely have so many qualities I admire been wrapped up in a single person.”
(via youngfolksociety)
Source: humansofnewyork
-
2012-05-15
Forever tilting at windmills
I guess I was being foolish, idealizing the simple and sincere. Looking for the precious in a world that was eating its young long before I was born. Maybe all the love and kindness, all the selfless acts, are just payments on some unseen ledger, some debt I’ll never repay. Or maybe it’s hubris to think I’m anything more than carried on the waves. I remember meeting the ocean, being sandblasted along its floor, carried by huge invisible hands. I remember falling from the sky. I remember the quiet longing of when I was sixteen. I remember feeling like things were going to get better. Now we network instead of making friends. We try to live the lifestyles of artists instead of making art. If you can’t say what you mean, is that because you don’t mean anything? We’re as bad as the krusty-o’s, daddios forever caught between two times, neither theirs. We’re as bad as the people that made our teenaged selves lose hope. I can’t sleep at night because you can’t sleep at night.
-
2012-05-12
Anonymous asked: who are you?
An interesting question to ask anonymously.
-
2012-05-06
I’m trying to keep my head above water. I’m trying to keep my feet on the bottom. The water’s rising, and all I can think is “what a lousy drink.”
-
2012-04-29
Lord, I’m discouraged.
You are what you eat, or so the story goes, and it makes sense. If we’re so prone to osmosis, then, it seems shocking that we’d be so vigilant about our bodies and so careless about our souls. She’s doing laps. She’s mastering the canvas one stroke at a time. Disciplining bodies while I’m mastering the craft of self destruction. I’m not interested in dragging my rotting flesh through more years of compromise. I’ve compromised enough. This far, and no more. We aren’t marching in the streets for a revolution. It’s all been soft, hazy complacency for as long as I can remember. A rallying cry goes up wearing the same clothes and songs, but the message is “don’t you take my entitlements away.” All the while, the pimps and weasels still run the show. So-called artists. Totalitarians. Student athletes. Soulless aesthetics and silver-spoon ethics. Handsome brown-shirts. I despise their substance. I’m afraid you’re fooled by their style. I’m afraid I’ve been fooled by yours.
The assumptions are there for a reason. If you isolate variables you can test them independently. It seems wonkish, but what alternative do we have? Everyone knows that this ship is sinking. I’m trying to police the points where these realities converge.
For a while, I was foolish enough to think I’d been succeeding. Movers and shakers, hybrid junkie-musicians, bright-eyed refugees and constantly craving a drink. Rolexes and grinding debt. The carboy fails and the basement floods with imperial stout and shards of glass. The valve fails, and I’m riding a bike on fire, making a highway-speed decision to accelerate, stop, or bail. I’m cutting weight. I can’t finish songs. Bad red wine, black coffee, and oatmeal. Fucks given = 0. It seems so tempting, to be a part of something beautiful. Long legs crossed. An interchangeable cog in a TV drama. A bit part actor.
There’s no value to these studies of egotism and astral bodies, just decorations, embellishments. Pagan exoticism and far-away lovers. Baby, I’m a patriot. Baby, I’m a citizen. Beyond the noise of the political chimps, and the indignant elite and the hooting of the rig workers trying to mate with the women at this table, there’s something worth loving in these clear skies.
He told me not to be so hard on myself. It’s never taken long to put another sleeping body in your bed. There will always be some clear-eyed footballer ready to fill the technocrat’s shoes. When I left, the band kept playing my songs. At the time, I was offended. You pour your heart and soul into something…
But I’m glad the song will go on. Looking forward to death kept me alive in darker years. Maybe someone else will find solidarity in the harmony, the dissonance, the violence. If nothing else, maybe that’s what I’ve done. I thought I’d build a family home, fill a broad kitchen table with lingering friends and chattering children, energetic german shepherds and travelling musicians.
I’m bankrupt, disgusted, hog-tied in red tape. I’m on the outside looking in at girls in short, tight skirts and full, pouting lips rapping along to songs I’ve never heard, and I can’t understand the words. I’m a hundred years too late. I’m losing faith in these enlightenment ideals. I’m not about to take lessons on duty from a text proclaiming there is no god but god, or from cartoon heroes. If “great power comes with great responsibility”, those of us without consequence ought to be free to fuck off and focus on insulating walls and installing wood stoves. Fifty thousand for quarter sections near Smeaton.
-
2012-04-28
Start where you are.
Use what you have.
Do what you can.
-
2012-04-26
You ought to know
Getting wrecked doesn’t make you a wrecking crew. It’s hard to smash the state wearing shoes with a swoosh. There aren’t clothes “for people like us.” What you’re wearing is a costume. What I’m wearing is a costume. It doesn’t matter if you’re tearing off your sleeves, or being measured by a tailor. It doesn’t matter if you’re growing out your hair, or shaving in the mirror. I’m pricing options. She’s telling her mother about me. And all the colored girls say…
Take a walk on the wild side.
Overdraft and compost machines. I want to opt out without turning off.
-
→
Anonymous asked: Question generating software! I'm insulted. If you could teach one skill for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Insulted? The narcissist is flattered by internet attention. The fool writes about himself in the third person. The Miss America answer would be teaching people to read. Maybe I’d teach something simple, like how to ride a bike, or make eggs bennie, something I could continuously improve at myself.
-
2012-04-20
Anonymous asked: What were you like when you were in grade four?
Curious, mouthy, a bit of a troublemaker. I’d put more into this, but I suspect it’s some type of question-generating software, and not a person.
