On The Road--Asleep

Wine God

2009-04-23T22:18:00.001-07:00

Bacchus, huh? I like that.

Encounters Trying To Write

2009-04-22T22:07:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, a PH.D student recently moved to Venice heard a noise. No, not a noise really, but a beat, constant, suggestive, bouncing off the cement guards of the beach and through the residential areas. Eh. He thought nothing of it, until he went with a friend to find these beats himself. Herein lies the story of the biggest lifestyle change he had yet to encounter.

The Ideas Three

2009-04-14T12:36:00.000-07:00

1. Frogs and the Internet: Am I an annoyance now?

2. Misty Mornings: Ideas spring quickly into being here, and then are quickly forgotten.

3. I Suspect Aliens.

Tapping on keyboards has become the new cure for the early morning hangover, replacing the early morning workout that you never get to. Beware the marsh mellow overdose, but when it does make sure to record your thoughts.

2009-04-05T03:56:00.001-07:00

It is now as it always has been: heavy vows uttered in the lightness of commitment. This marks the end of that bond, remember the words.

Outage

2009-03-26T14:32:00.000-07:00

You're too much of a good thing,
I said,
And so am I.
When I talk to you, I make it sound like destiny.

I slept on a floor,
In a living room.
Lately the place has gotten
quite dusty, and
given me the incentive to vacuum.

Life got in the way,
but, but, but and but.
I never did, and pulled my
sleeping bag closer to my face
each night.

Fuck it I cried out
on the last day.
I yanked out
the chord and paced the room,
music exploding in my head.

That night I closed
the door on my clean living
room floor bed,
and did not sleep
there. Fuck my life.

Cause Of Death Cited As Steak

2009-03-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

Back in early December, I bought four steaks for our annual UCLA-USC football game tailgate. Only three got cooked and eaten. I left the other in an ice chest for the duration of the game, then the subsequent ride home through horrific Pasadena traffic.

It was a friend's ice chest, so the steak wound up in his freezer after God knows how many hours outside. Two nights later I retrieved it from him. By now the marinade, mostly olive oil and salt with some vinegar, had compounded into a white, sticky solid, and was clinging to the sides of the plastic tupperware. Horrified at the sight, I stuck it back into my freezer, where it lay forgotten for eons...

Until a few days ago, when I came back from a trip and found a devastating lack of food in the fridge. So I defrosted that steak, cooked it today, and had the best, juiciest steak that I've ever made for myself (although meat was a little tough, probably from all the freezing).

Still no signs of death, but if it comes, you'll know what did it.

God Is Pulling My Leg Tonight

2009-03-26T00:03:00.001-07:00

In all the wrong directions, and using what I love to do it: The New York Times. I'm an optimistic person and deal well with stress. I don't freak out. Maybe I just have two copies of a gene dealing with Seratonin that puts me in the 'low-risk' group for depression.

There's something troubling about writing off this essential part of me, that I take a lot of pride in, as genetic. It says, "hey, you can't take credit for these anymore, someone gave 'em to you and could've easily given you the two genes that put you in the 'high-risk' group for depression.

Of course, changing rails and getting on the religious train, you could say God designed this trait in me, and probably did it for a reason. I should count myself as lucky, maybe anxious to see what comes of it. I'm so jaded with religion that this doesn't make me happy or satisfied, and that's a little upsetting.

People aren't entirely responsible for the things that happen to them, but they are somewhat. Certain genes can make you more likely to get mugged. For example, if someone seeks experience and adventure, they're more likely to walk down seedy streets and encounter a mugger.

So that's me. Suddenly the kid pre-disposed to a lot more things and responsible for a lot less. This is a certain blow to the ego.

Another blow: a strange bump/cyst below my wrist. I've had it for as long as I can remember, but today it started to bother me. I should get it checked.

Band-aid

2009-03-14T01:26:00.000-07:00

The cold night air pours in from an adjacent window, and the sound of laughter drifts from behind a closed bedroom door. I resent both. There is very little to laugh about tonight, I am a mess of greasy cheesy Cheez-Its and exactly twenty-four unopened bottles of beer. I am a mess inside, tired, but sleep holds little comfort. It is too soft or too hard, with no middle ground and very few good feelings when I wake up.

The cut running perpendicular to my index finger had all but closed, thanks to the band-aid I had kept on it for several hours and the Neosporin I applied earlier too. It took the band-aid off because it was tight, and ran my fingers through my hair. Instinctively. A thread of hair caught the cut, got underneath it, and goddamn pulled the skin up to re-open the thing. A big drop of blood spread from the newly reddened cut. I watched as the blood drop grew bigger and bigger, a case of interest fed by my own circulatory system. Then I stuck my finger into my mouth, and put another band-aid on my finger. Things have not healed.

How Long Has It Been? 6 Months?

2009-03-11T22:34:00.000-07:00

The first time, we rode a pillar of stone into the starry night sky. The air was dirty was smog, but we still thought we could see for miles. The city was ablaze that night with shouts and protest, marches that we would soon join. But that night, we only saw the lights from the helicopters, getting closer and closer, like shooting stars suspended in that moment of time.

But the time passed, and we discovered that time was the enemy all along. Today I looked up at the sky through a narrow slit between two buildings. The sky was clear of starry reflections, just like the patchwork layers of window openings in the buildings on either side. I was a good distance away from her, and I stood and paused in this temporary solitude. The only lights in the sky, two tiny, blinking and dim, were on a propeller plane that had temporarily skimmed beneath the cloud cover. The plane was flying away.

Directions For A Simple And Successful Lifestyle

2009-03-09T01:22:00.000-07:00

Take in more Vitamin C. Sleep the requisite number of hours. Keep your surroundings organized. Use a coaster for your beverage. Report any instances of mildew or arsenic. Pay attention to FDA recalls. Maintain good hygiene. Build stable relationships. Conserve as much as you don't need, and remember to turn off the lights when you leave a room.

Listen

2009-03-08T01:16:00.001-08:00

Drugs, my dear, are not poison. And if it takes a drug on your plate, folded into your quiche or thrown into your salad, to make you happy, then that's what you'll have!

QuoteRelease

2009-03-07T01:08:00.000-08:00

Time and again, he inserts two lovers inside his meticulous compositions, where they reveal passions that by virtue of their excesses remind us of how drained of life the modern world truly is.

I think I'm drained of life. I'm a reputation, I'm a word of mouth, I'm entirely defined by the vocal chords of others, all humming and vibrating and churning the different ranges of tonal sound, all saying around the same words. They are misinformed, and they hum the sweet chords of deception.

That's the most interesting thing to me, is to look around and wonder, who really knows me? Can anyone? People are so guarded, myself among them. Perhaps I, in particular, suffer from this syndrome. I tell people I'm a compulsive liar, when actually I don't think I am. That probably makes me a compulsive liar.

There's a very real comfort in this. You don't have to be anything to other people, and you don't have to commit to anything if you never reveal yourself. You can allow yourself to live in indecision forever, and if you're good enough, you can manage to come off as mysterious, even charming.

Which is all very fun to begin with. The problems start when you really get to know a girl, and spend lots of time with her. What happens, see, is you never get any further than a certain point, because you're not there enough for it to happen. It's like you walk along a sandy beach and all of a sudden find yourself at the edge of a giant cliff, with a blackness just a few steps away. You can't see past it, and you hope there's something beyond it, but really who has the time in this modern life to take that risk?

I can't remember the number of times I've met a girl, hit it off really well, then just sat in this stupor--forever sitting at the edge of the void, with nothing in your pockets.

NotWrite

2009-03-04T01:47:00.001-08:00

Straddling that thin line between sanity and a freakout is a bad place to be for writing. You just don't have words in a time like that, and this is mostly thanks to worry. It's when the worry breaks over, you wake up and find the nightmare real all along, and now you're emotionally attached to the upper stretches of shit creek--that's when you write.

Thoughts On Being Happy

2009-02-27T00:55:00.000-08:00

Kentucky Fried Chicken. The greasy airport comfort food for those of us who miss flights. I miss a lot of flights doing what I do, that is, waiting 'til the last possible second to leave for the airport. Ok, sometimes I don't do it on purpose, like today, when I just didn't plan out how long it would take to pack and clean up the place I was staying. It was a friend's sister's boyfriend's place, you see, so we're basically best buds, and you gotta leave the place nice. I washed the sheets, washed his towels, put and packed everything we used in the closet all nice-like for that guy. I kinda liked him, and he was real nice, he paid for all our meals and everything, but then again you don't really know if he was that nice, or if it was just so easy because he was loaded. The guy's a lawyer, so you know he's got dough. He keeps this apartment in Manhattan, and he never lives in it, for Christ stake. Doesn't even bother to sublet it out. Now that's money.

As for me, I try to conserve as much as I an, which is partly why the end of this trip has been so crummy. True, I probably could have just taken a cab for $45 instead of insisting on playing the subways for $7. And true, I probably would have saved time if I hadn't been so insistent on having a light lunch instead of just sitting down somewhere regular and being done with it. I ended up paying $10 for a chopped liver bagel and some juice. This was a horrible idea, because not only do I hate chopped lvier, I also watched the movie Silence of the Lambs last night, and the thought of human liver--ugh. Let's just leave that one be.

But anyway, now I'm sitting in the airport terminal, my flight's due to take off in four minutes, and I'm probably gonna drop another seven bucks for KFC. I really hate that place, but it'll probably fit the bill for this occasion, I think. It always knocks me out too, which is the worst. I figure I'll get the chicken tenders or maybe some hot wings, keep it under 10 bucks, knock out for the few hours I'm in this terminal, then be awake by the plane ride. Times like this I wish I had a nice, fat joint on me. Pass the time in some ignorant, babbling bliss.

How did it come to this? The late thing, I mean. I'm just saying it like that, because for as long as I can remember, I've been either late or barely on time to everything. It's a very rare case when I'm early for something. Even when it's something important, and I know it's important, like an interview or something and not just class, I still manage to just barely get in by the alotted time. See, I think in the past I wasn't too sure of myself or something, and I didn't like being the first few people there and having to talk to people. It just made me uncomfortable, so what I did, I got in the habit of purposefully going a few minutes late. Then the teacher would already be talking, or the music playing and whatever, and I could just sit in the dark. That was really it. I was shy. Now I'm not so shy anymore, but I'm in this habit and it's just been impossible to break out of. I really hate it, actually. It makes you miss flights.

I honesty don't really know what my view of life is these days. I grew up an optimist, I think. If that means keeping your mind a little naive, a little ignorant, and seeing the world a little more airbrushed than most, then that's what I was. I think I still have that mostly, I tend to be a bit more naive and trust people more. But I also lie a lot, and don't trust myself too much. I guess I'm just so used to seeing good things, that when bad things do happen and shake up my world a little bit, I get so absorbed over them. That's probably why most of my blogs sound so damn negative.

I can't really say why it's good to be so optimistic. I mean, you get a lot of confindence in yourself, and on most days I go out and think I can damn well conquer this world. But then you miss a lot of flights in the process. That brings you down pretty low, like you realize you're only human, and you can't rise above this mess. I ain't got no wings, not enough anyway to float above all this ringin'.

I've just been thinking, and I realize that as a procrastinator is a part of how I understand myself. Like, it's really embedded, just like how I think of myself as Asian, as a person with dreads, as any other physical trait. Procrastinator. Like it's really a part of me, and I can't change it and all. I think that's probably why I'm so late for everything, because I think I will be. The habit has become trait, the trait has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Part of being an optimist is thinking that you can change the parts about the world that you don't like, which is to emphasize that you can change it. That also then means that youi can change the parts about yourself that you don't like. Now that I've realized this, I think I'll try to change my mindset. I think I'll try and procrastinate less, and leave myself more time for things. I mean, I think it's pretty important now, and I'm sure it'll be pretty important in a few years when you gotta start playing around with big money and stuff. So this'll be the new leaf for me.

One day I'll look back on this article, and realize that as an optimist, one of your overriding reflexes is to want your blogs to end well.

A New Mental Manifesto

2009-02-27T00:41:00.001-08:00

I used to be rather unhappy with myself. I didn't like the way I looked, dressed, talked, acted around people. The only thing I really did, that I thought I did well, was play video games. Maybe some basketball, but in any sort of social situation I was a horrible klutz. For one thing I stuttered. Like a madman. Maybe a bad tape deck. I was also chubbier than I liked, and for the longest time I had no idea where all the cool kids bought their clothes.

I prayed a lot more back then. One of my prayers was, see, I asked God to make me cool. Popular. I wanted to be loved, just like everyone else, but I believe this desire screams a little louder in me than in others. I had good parents, but they were never too affectionate or nothing. And I've never really had a girlfriend. John Mayer says it pretty well: "Just wanna be liked. Just wanna be funny."

The beauty of it all, though, now that I'm here, is this: The genuine dissatisfaction with myself really spurned me to greater heights. I became the person I set my sights on. I really did. I got to be pretty happy with the person I had become. I'm not sure if God worked this out for me or what, but I guess I sorta believe it. Anyway, I started getting all complacent-like, see, and that's the dangerous part. I feel like I havn't really grown ever since I started feeling this way.

So what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna go back and take my old mindset, with some caveats. The mindset is that I'm gonna be dissatisfied with stuff about me. That won't be too hard, I don't think I'll have to dig too deep for that. The caveat, though, is to take some sort of real, progressive action to fix it. See, I think the stuff I fixed before was some real silly stuff that you just kind of get rid of by growing older. This new stuff though, it's pretty persistent. So the caveat is, I'm gonna force some growth on me.

You see, I believe that the greats in this world, most of them, didn't start off so hot. They were slobs and losers, kind of like me, maybe even worse off, some of them. But what made them great, was they were all, at one time or another, in a position where they either had to do something, or die. Not necessarily die in terms of really dying, you know, but just die in terms of not surviving.

Here's what I mean. A few weeks ago, we interviewed this film director. His name isn't important, but he isn't even 40 years old yet, and his movies have bought in one and a half billion dollars. That's huge. Anyway, this guy he said that if he hadn't gotten into NYU and gotten his start there, he probably would have just sat on his mother's couch all day and been a nobody. A forty-year-old nobody. So that's kind of how I feel about success. You find yourself in a position where you can either do it, or not, and the complications for 'not' mean something that would be certain death.

How that relates to me, is see, I plan to put myself in a spot where I'm either gonna grow the way I want to, or I'm not gonna get any further. I have a half-baked plan for how to do this, that might take about three or four months. I havn't figured out all of it though, so you might have to wait for the next entry to hear about it. It'll be pretty extraordinary, though, but I might have to not tell my parents about it. They'll probably freak out.

New York:: Quick Whirlwinds Massacre, Followed By Boredom

2009-02-22T20:13:00.000-08:00

New York City has probably gotten the better of us.

It's the end of our third day here, Jack and I. He spent the whole day in bed, laid low by some disease curse that this city has thrown over his head. He was throwing up early this morning, and as far as I can tell, has spent the day indoors in our tiny apartment, recuperating. I have had slightly better luck, being on my feet most of the day and getting to see the hip Museum of Modern Art. However, I will remember this day to be the first and last time I will eat at White Castle.

The first few days where a whirlwind; we challenged the city, stood tall for as long as we could, garnered what little drug-induced sleep we managed to steal, and generally lived hard. Jack's sister has lived here long enough to know what's what, and with her help we hit a good mix of art galleries/hipster restaurants/expensive restaurants during the days. Our nights we spent at strip clubs and bars that, in a rare occurrence, not only sold Natural Ice in 24 ounces but boasted that as its most popular choice among its patrons. In hindsight, this is probably what pushed poor Jack over the brink.

I find myself acclimatizing to the city faster than I thought I would. I remember being very intimidated at first. The people seem unapproachable, the pace too quick, and the help seemed ready to yell at you if you did anything out of line. This has all but faded away, thanks to a few good drunken nights and a couple of rides on the subway. Navigating the public transit always makes you feel like a local. I walk faster, going back to my frantic half-walk half-race that I controlled before I bought my bike in LA. This is a place I could see myself living for a while, and enjoying the hell out of (although I would need more money).

Too Many Waking Hours

2009-02-17T13:30:00.001-08:00

Strange phenomenon squeezed into small packages, then packaged together in giant monstrosities of foam and plaster and astro-turf. The city of Las Vegas is not real, but the lights that float above it are. Loud arguments with smiling faces, shoving each other and tipping off the security. These people need to go, they said, and escorted the two of us out in different directions: on towards the castle, the other towards the bay. Never step foot in this giant black pyramid ever again for the rest of the night! They said this at 7am. It would be a hard, difficult day.

It had been a grueling night. Several hours of bumper-induced hysteria, throttled downwards by the drugs, then bought upwards once again by the screaming rage. Cars parked all around us were silent one second, then screaming, flashing, gnawing on their dashboards the next, the scream of tires and wind, gorillas manning every steering wheel. Their white knuckles clutched around a dirge of greed and lust. Dear lord, would you look at this strip club! You couldn't buy a dream like this anywhere except the place next door, and every place next door, for the length of this city. Good luck fella, once you walk out those black painted doors you transform right back into the poor schmoe in a cab, over his head. Good luck with the recession, ya bastard. No re-entry, and cover charge cost thirty dollars, see you in hell you sonuvabitch!

Spa treatment was hell, hours and hours of painfully alert paranoia fighting against the stupors of too many waking hours. You couldn't move too much, it would upset the vitamins from entering your skin. Guy wouldn't stop talking, but when he did he took the shape of a mystic, smoke coming from his hair and a million snake skins dangling from his belt. His white coat transformed into an unsteady haze, and he stared down at your naked back with a primal focus. No way around this one, he'd have to beat his way down through the pulp. But then you looked at him and he looked like... well, he looked Polish. Only the film will tell for sure, at this point.

Walking Dualities

2009-02-17T13:13:00.001-08:00

There are two kinds of walking for me, and a lot of my life is dependent on which one I'm engrossed in at the time. The first, by any conventional means of measurement, is faster. Walking this way is walking with a purpose, driven, heading to class, walking along dark city streets to warmth, and such and such. Depending on where I am, I tend to walk as fast or faster than the people around me--however, irregardless of where I am, when I walk like this I see very little.

The second type of walking is not really walking at all, but something more akin to meandering, or wandering, and sometimes I just shuffle back and forth in the same area. I think I might look like a ghost. Speed-wise, this tends to be much slower than anyone else' pace. It's the kind of pace where you're part walking, part considering how speed itself is entirely relative, and that a rocket ship flying inches in front of your face seems to be going much faster than one flying perpendicular to you a hundred miles away. And I meander, often with music playing in my ear, and I notice people. I see the interesting things that people wear.

In this second state of walking, I tend to smile more than I like to. Smiling to strangers can do a lot of good things for you like make you seem endearing or non-threatening, but only the right type of smile, and the one I usually find myself with is not of this nature. The one I have on makes me look stupid and empty-headed. This is why I try to suppress this bastard smile. And there is nothing more silly than an empty-headed individual wandering around in a crowd trying hard not to smile.

Running With Devils

2009-02-08T21:54:00.000-08:00

Joseph Stieglitz walked by the same apartment each day, but he did not live there, nor did he need to pass by it to go to school. A girl lived in this apartment, her name was Frieda Milton. She was not pretty, cooked only decently, did not choose to live vicariously, and spent most of her life indoors. Which is why Joseph Stieglitz would always pass by the apartment where Frieda Milton lived, because he knew she would be there. The two never spoke a word.

One day Joseph Stieglitz was walking up a hill, the same hill he walked up every day. He was a very thin man, and lanky, with great bony joints that stood out at such odd angles that when he walked, he looked like he had two or three more joints on each limb than he really did. Which is all to say that he moved like a puppet, haltingly, and at odds with himself (except sometimes he would drink, and then his movements smoothed out considerably). On his particular occasion he was not drunk, rather unfortunately, because today he planned to knock on Frieda Milton's door. And he was nervous. The tall, lanky, bony man had a face that was constantly biting its own lip, with furrowed eyebrows forever in a parabola of doubt. The eyes were big and round, but never stayed fixed on one location for too long, and the cheeks were deceptively rounded. There was not a sure thing on this face, except for the nose, which was surely there. And the door was surely in front of him.

Knock, knock. The cruel rasping sound of reinvention. Joseph's knuckles had bruised themselves on the hard wood before he knew what he was doing, and all the thoughts he carried with him up that hill exploded into a white frenzy of panic. She might answer the door now, he thought. Footsteps. But wait, where they really footsteps? Nothing yet. She isn't home, she went out, she had to run errands and he would leave a note or better yet just leave and turn around and "Hello Joseph, what you doing here?" And she answered her door. Stammer. Silence. Silence. Silence.

This was all going horribly, not that Joseph had any idea how he wanted this to go. Why was he here anyway? And why was this room so bright? And why was Frieda smiling so much? But she kept smiling, her eyes narrowed, and at that moment both Frieda and Joseph understood. No one said anything still, yet the silence stopped. Frieda took Joseph's hand, and a warm tingle ran in between. She led him in, closed the door behind him, and made passionate love to him on the couch. Then Joseph woke up in his bed, sat up, and went to his kitchen to get a drink. That day, he walked up the same hill and did not knock on the door.

This was all about fourteen years ago. I know because Joseph told me. "Dreams," he said "are when the body separates from the mind. The body stays behind, but the mind wanders as a spirit, and whatever happens in your dream, wherever you find yourself, however cold or hungry or excited or scared you feel, you aren't imaginging it, your mind spirit is actually there, right there, experiencing it. If you dream about going to Paris, it means your mind really went to Paris."

"This is why you shouldn't wake anybody up too fast, unless you really want to harm them. You don't give their mind enough time to wander back. If the mind happens to be too far out, it might not make it back until minutes after the body wakes up, and those minutes can be terrifying."

I am a skeptic. "Does the mind ever get lost forever?" His probably did.
"No, the mind always makes it back."

Joseph was a wack job. He told me he dreamed every night, and he always claimed he could remember them. But he would never tell me about them when I asked. "When I leave," he said, "I don't want anybody to know where to find me."

It was a particularly bad dream that did it. Joseph called me at 3:30AM one night. His voice sounded strangled. He asked simple questions about himself "what's my name? Am I married? Why do I own so many pairs of socks and but only two pairs of pants?" He sounded more and more frustrated, then violent, scared, anxious, and then finally, he grew quiet. "All I have left are dreams," he said. "They're more real than me."

A few hours later he walked out into the cold morning air. It was still dark. I never saw him again.

Sitting Hammered In Your Automobile

2009-02-08T09:02:00.000-08:00

Some names in this article have been changed to protect the innocent.

We planned a fun weekend of good company, drinking and talking but mostly drinking in a cabin on Lake Arrowhead. To this end, unfortunately, we got overzealous and peaked too soon. We peaked in the car.

Lake Arrowhead is an hour and a half away with no traffic. It took us closer to two and a half. That's also how long it took us to get wasted.

Now, I'm not a proponent in any way of drunk driving. I do not condone getting pulled over for open containers in a car. However, I am perfectly fine with having them and not getting caught.

It started out sensibly, as it always does: pick up a few beers, let's say two six-packs, because when we get there it'll probably be harder and more expensive to find decent booze. Then we decided to drink a few as soon as we got past downtown and its requisite police force. There were three of us drinking, one driving. The conversation went from DUI's to other heavy drinking episodes to the people we would theoretically be sharing the weekend with (this would not come to fruition). We repeatedly informed one another that each had repeated what she said.

Somewhere along the end of the first twelve, I passed out, very much asleep, on the road. I am admittedly a lightweight, and sitting still on an empty stomach downing four bottles was... well, and then there were two.

And then I was back! A short nap later I woke up at a gas station, feeling completely sober (this was a lie), and about to run in to use the bathroom. Dave, who was in front of me, knocked down a 'wet floor' sign in his drunken rage. Jack proved unable to process the cashier's directions, and first went to the storage before he found the bathroom. I subsequently beat him to the ladies room. No regrets.

When Dave walked out he bought another 12-pack.

Stella Artois this time. We had already gone through the Red Stripe, and I forget what the other six were. Not that it mattered at this point. And somewhere from the gas station to the cabin (the GPS predicted a 53-minute trip) someone decided that we had to finish ALL the beer we had.

Now that I think of it, it was probably Dave who said: "we're gonna be cleaner-uppers today, right?" Which means we're gonna drink everything, although usually not referring to everything in the car.

And what did we do? We drank. I was getting sick. Thankfully this paralleled a degrading ability to worry about personal health. I could tell Jack was getting sick, because he wise-cracked "after we get there, both of us should just open the door and throw up on each side of the car, on the front lawn." "That would be cool," I replied. Still, twelve beers after twelve in this short a time is nearly impossible. If it were not for the heavy fog that settled in somewhere along our ascent to glory, we would have not stood a chance. As it stood, visibility cut down to nil, you could not see brake lights fifteen feet in front of you, and the pace slowed. The fog was heavy, just like the fog in our minds. Fear and screaming were in good supply It was looking good.

I love college,
I love drinking,
I love women,
And I love college...

Blasted on the stereo a total of four times consecutively, each time bought on by loud, angry requests for 'that song again.' We decided that if one of us had been driving (and therefore driving drunk) in this fog, we would immediately pull over and go to sleep on the side of the road. ("I'm sorry officer, but the driver just ran into these bushes there--no, I'm not the driver, can you see how drunk I am?") The snow built up. We were getting closer. In desperation, we double-fisted the Stellas. Just when we thought there were three left, one for each of us,

"Jack, I found another one in the box!"
"Shit!"
"I'm gonna throw it out the window! No one needs to know, Jack!"
"Ok. Wait, no!"

Jack ripped it out of my hand, then ripped the bottle cap off using the seatbelt. We had lost both can-openers long ago. Bottle caps littered the back seat. Then we got there, and when we did, we were finished. Drunk, sick, angry, a little sadder, and finished, but we were beer-less. Jack tripped on a chain and fell in the snow. I threw up near some trees, and in the process of doing so, dropped my wallet in the snow (this was found several hours later) (we never did get our dignity back). We went inside, and our driver, the great Joseph Stieglitz, along with Jack went to sleep instantly. I spent the rest of the night recovering, feeling angry, and talking very little.

Stop Motion Stake Out Aftermath

2009-02-06T02:06:00.000-08:00

The tent was flooded, and there was no way to sleep in it. The night was colder than I had hoped for, and the fact that I was essentially tethered to a camera didn't help. So I rode home at 3am with too much on my back, the tripod on my rear shelf, and my sleeping bag wrapped around my arm. I had three jackets on and an orange extension cord curled around my neck. I immediately went to bed on arrival, and slept for... an hour and a half.

Stop motion didn't go for twenty-four hours, it went for closer to nineteen. No one was there, the place was empty as a caboose, even the real campers were leaving for the night. Barren, no doubt about it. And so I left with them.

A man dreams, and his physical body separates from his mental. The mental spirit wanders to the places he sees in his dreams: Paris, London, great rivers and mountain peaks. But they wake him up too quickly, too suddenly, and his spirit has no time to get back. So it's lost momentarily. Depending on how far out it went, the spirit may not return for minutes, hours, days, sometimes weeks.

When I woke up on the couch, I had the sour taste of exhaustion on my lips. It was hard to eat. Chewing took precise control and effort of the jaws. I walked out of the house fully packed except for wallet and keys, and didn't realize until I got to my bike and found myself unable to unlock it. A short walk later, I found myself with no pen or paper for getting names. So I shot groups. There was lots of smoking interspersed.

When I got back I waited outside listening to music on my portable player, and smoked another one. Waited until I heard my roommate's alarm go off, when it did I knocked on the window, got him to open, and collapsed on the couch.

Stop Motion Stake Out

2009-02-03T12:56:00.000-08:00

Sweaty pairs of legs walk past me all the time here, flashing glances indicating all the coldness that student athletes are used to. The requisite blue nylon, of course, follows.

I've been sitting outside the athlete gym for six hours now, nursing a stop-motion camera.

Stop motion can be a misleading term. It originally refers to the stuttering 'look' you get when you take a 26 frame per second movie clip and make it 30 frames per minute. But the purpose is not to stop any motion; rather you do it to show the progression of a scene over a length of time.

Things have happened in this length of time that, to an ant, would seem like the monumental building and destroying of empires. Skyscrapers have gone up in minutes, starting with colossal steel supports, bent and twisted by mighty hands, then shimmering canvas spread between them. The giants sported and played among their new creations, taking cover when the sun burned and, growing tired of their confinement, coming out to play again despite the heat. Unfortunately, the worlds of our readers are a little bigger, and for us, very little has happened.

The only thing I've found interest in has been seeing the stars of the day, the players themselves, walking to and fro. This happens rarely, but every now and then Darren Collison walks out of Pauley, across to Acosta. Bo Bo morgan walks, slowly, up a flight of stairs. The youngerster, Jerime Anderson, looks behind him as he walks. They stroll past the tents, this age 18-21 shanty-town erected in their names, their graven images in everybody's minds sinking three pointers and navigating the lane. And as they walk past, not a word is said to them.

Game Hunter/Beverly Hills

2009-02-01T23:30:00.001-08:00

The address of the neighboring house was 3598, as you could see from the numbers blazoned in neon letters atop of the... mailbox.

It was this kind of neighborhood, in which free reign and few gawking eyes invite the eccentric and rich to shape their belongings in all sorts of strange ways. These were middle class people one time, who made money quick, bought more fast cars than they could drove, and spent months at a time in Africa hunting big game. And they decorated their mailboxes, sometimes with beads and hemp, sometimes with purple neon.

And so we drove up the driveway to Chris' house, to partake in that red-blooded American pastime, the watching of the Superbowl. It's a steep driveway, probably to deter invaders. It's also long. We're almost ready to turn back, when we finally see the house. There's an alcove, and sitting in this alcove a sign that reads "drive slowly," along with three cars in tarps. The one in front has the low, hunched rear quarters of a Ferrari. The car to its left is very angular, and the third car behind both of these has the bulge of a supercharger protruding from its hood.

We decide not to park next to these beauties. Jack's BMW is nice, but not in the same league. We pull a little further up the hill, and finally, we see cars closer to our stature in life. Chris' 7 series, an old trailer RV, and a couple of old trucks. In a corner, as if to remind you whose property you're on, sits a shiny silver Rolls Royce.

Dear Lord. The inside of the house is something else. There are very few surfaces that are not emblazoned with some sort of patterned wallpaper, or, lacking that, the patterns of a zebra or leopard skin. In the living room above the TV a giant marlin hangs, along with several deer heads. A grand piano sits opposite this, and a giant zebra pelt is spread over the wall. There's a meat block taking center stage in the kitchen. The den is much the same way; the first thing you see when you walk in is a leopard skin on the wall. Walk a little closer, and you see an old picture of Mr. Shane kneeling over the dead cat it once kept warm. There's a pool table in the middle, full sized in all its glory. We find a Playboy Anniversary Edition hidden inside the front cover of a Life Magazine.

Smoking devices are everywhere. Ivory cigarette pieces. Pipes of all sizes. We probably could have found a knight's helmet filled to the brim with hash if we looked hard enough. Chris says that sometimes they get the dog high.

Our ideas about the place are finally solidified when Chris takes us outside to show us the cars. We start with the block: it's an old Cadillac. It's built like a tank. "Some movie star gave it to my dad," Chris says. The next is the one with a supercharger; turns out it's not a supercharger, just a giant hood scoop that feeds air through an enormous carburetor and into the crate engine of the 60's GTO. It's fiery orange, but the scoop is black. "Highway King" is printed on both sides of the scoop. You don't understand this car until you look inside and see the roll cage. Then you walk behind the car and see the thickest wheels you've seen in your life. "This car isn't legal on the road," Chris said. "My dad took it out, and when he floored it the tail just went back and forth."

The last car is the one we thought was Ferrari. As I took off the tarp, I had the feeling I was undressing a very beautiful woman. Oddly enough, when it came off the red paint was faded, and the car needed a wash. Then again, this car, positioned in front of the other two, was probably the one that got driven. And despite the dirt, it was still a Ferrari, made in a time when the Prancing Stallion was more about a rigid chassis and air-tight suspension than leather and driveability--when there was no such thing as a grand touring Ferrari. It was this time, one thought, where someone could still go to Africa and hunt leopards.

Washington Weekend Day 1: Cold, Cold, With Dirty Teeth

2009-01-22T23:51:00.000-08:00

Ok. So I havn't brushed my teeth since yesterday morning, because I've been so busy, and I might not be able to tonight because none of us thought to pack toothpaste.

I cannot wait to sleep in Pullman on my cot. It's warmer than the floor.

I am near a state of delirium. Several hours without sleep, a basketball game shot, weird ahhh oh my god, and some booze that I didn't need.

I'm sorry. What's happened today? My first meal in Seattle was at United States Bagel Bakers. The women working there were crazy and yelled Obama's name. We got ripped off for the rental car and paid $500. It's on my credit card, yay! Why the hell would anyone pay $500 for a 3-day rental? It's ridiculous! AVIS sucks. The trip here was uneventful, except for a few things like driving through Coalinga (Or colga or something) and finding a guarantee for unbreakable overalls.

I'd like to share a facebook message conversation:

My friend wrote:
or else I'm washing my hands of all of this photoshoot nonsense. would you be free that day after february 28, which is march 1? because if you are, then I could take you to disneyland on february 28th, since we already know you're free for that day. OR we could go to magic mountain that day, and then disneyland on a random wednesday so we could possibly interrupt elementary school kids' field trips while they're waiting in line to see mickey kiss minnie (never happens, since disneyland's so conservative and all). and yes, I threw in magic mountain because I figured you added enough dinners together to go on crazy rides! although, are you a fan of roller coasters? because I could see how that might be a problem if you did and I took you to some of the fastest roller coasters ever. like ever.

hope seattle was awesome!!!!!!!!

I wrote:
oh my god. i'm so tired right now, i did not sleep that night we talked outside your apartment, then I flew to Washington and drove through the snow and shot a basketball game. sooo you'll understand if your message is a little surreal to me. my answer, is yes. i actually don't know the difference between magic mountain and disneyland, although I love roller coasters (love great america!) and i suspect minnie might be a whore. I would love to talk to you when I get back about this, and when I am nearer a state of farther away from delirium. woo!

Washington Weekend, Day 1/2

2009-01-22T04:29:00.000-08:00

It's 4:30AM. I leave for the bus to the airport in roughly two hours. I've spent the last several hours shooting condoms, whips, canes, general sex toys, and fruit.

This is turning out to be a great way to start the trip. I've already handled several condoms of different flavors, and I must reiterate how much I dislike the feel of lubrication. This is true of my hands, at least. There is still a black bag of S&M toys on the carpet near where I sleep, and ironically. The bag is nondescript and, ironically, unintrusive. In a few minutes I will open this bag and photograph its contents, paying careful attention not to touch the anal beads.

Oh, it's all for a reason. And yes, I am still a normal human being, with two exceptions: I'm working on a deadline, and I'm shooting for the sex issue, that is, issue number two of the Daily Bruin Prime magazine. It'll be out sometime early February. My shot is on the cover.

The Washington trip will be something to look forward to, and I'm already sufficiently wired. I look forward to a good nap on the plane, getting off somewhere in the middle of the barren tundra that is Spokane and somehow getting to Pullman. There, I will weedle my way into the stadium, hope I bought my memory cards, and shoot two to three hours of basketball. The only thing that can stop me is the imminent snow blizzard. If you do not read another entry from me, I am either huddled in the corner of this room, feverishly awaiting the men dressed in white lab coats with the nets, or frozen solid in the snow somewhere in Pullman. To be honest, I'd much prefer to end up with the first option, because at least people would know where to find me. No one knows where Pullman is.

As the good Robert Frost says, I have miles to go before I sleep, miles to go before I sleep.

The Wonders Of A Few Moments Of Stopped Time

2009-01-13T01:25:00.000-08:00

I've been really enjoying Einstein's Dreams lately, largely in part because I've discovered it to be a book that you MUST read slowly. It is comprised of a series of very short chapters, each one imagining a world in which a different interpretation of time reigns. The short chapters are all 3-4 minute reads each, which tempts the impatient reader like me to try and get through as many as I can in one sitting. Really, though, they are better enjoyed one at a time, reading one article and savoring it for as long as a day, and especially letting the resting sleep state give insight on Einstein's dreams.

The only annoyance I find is with the title. There is very little to do with Einstein, aside from his initial theories of time space. This peeved me quite a bit at the beginning, and I am only now recovering from it enough to enjoy it, halfway through the book.

Giving that interview has been quite a draining experience on me. I have a couple of appointments this coming week with friends I am quite comfortable with, and I look upon all of them with a sense of fear. I need some time alone, and I found it tonight sitting in front of this computer, not talking to the people around me. I feel like quite the gargoyle in this currently lively apartment, but the night is still not done. The nature of my sleeping situation dictates that I must be the last to sleep, and right now, all three of its other inhabitants are still awake. There are pitfalls to sleeping in a living room, even for very little rent.

I have quite a bit to do, and much of it is starting to pile up. This will be the end of this post. Good night.

Still Roadin': A Recap of Sorts to Myself

2008-12-25T02:39:00.000-08:00

There's something you can always count on around Christmas, and that's nostalgia (probably a chemical imbalance resulting from too much time off and the fact that the calendar makes everything end in these few days, but I digress). So, per usual, I got the hankering to look at my own list of goals for the past three months, and along the line I had to confront the question: how much did I really get out of not having an apartment for a quarter? To wit, A world where the pros mix pros and cons in shiny silver shakers, and you only open your eyes when you pour yourself a glass.

I no longer own any furniture, and I count this as a benefit. There was something extraordinary about being able to carry everything you need in your trunk, and I played it generous too, which means I definitely could have cut more out of my life. You're more free, less tied down, and when you want to, you can just go. When I used to have work in downtown at 8AM, I would drive over to Chinatown the night before and settle in this nook that I knew about. Then in the morning I'd wake up at 7:45 and drive the five blocks to work, walk out of the car in my work clothes all footloose and fancy free, presto, no morning traffic, all the time smiling when my co-workers talked about having to get up at 5:30. Although to be fair I work mostly with women, and I hear there's some impediment where they need to spend a lot of time in the bathroom in the morning.

I stopped paying rent, although some of these savings are offset by other costs, like eating out at least one meal everyday and sometimes two. Towards the end I also found myself staying at one particular friend's place a lot, so I chipped in for their rent.

In hindsight, this is something I'm not too happy with: the fact that I eventually lost the sharp focus I had at the beginning. It's understandable, I think, when you're dealing with an increasing course load and worrying about other things, to take the convenient route and forgo the library for the comfort of a friend's living room. Still, I wish I hadn't so often. I remember waking up in the car one night, just shivering from head to toe, because I hadn't realized how cold it had gotten the past week. Then I realized I hadn't been homeless that week.

How much more do I want to do? This is a tricky question, because at the heart of it, I'm asking myself how satisfied I am with what I already did. The answer, like the answer to many of life's questions, is no. I've realized that my initial motivation was never enough to really go all out and do live-on-the-street homelessness. The only time I came close was sleeping on the beach for a night, and I recoiled so hard to that experience that I spent the next few days on various couches (that post is here).

Instead, I've discovered a lifestyle philosophy that's very appealing to me at this moment. I love the mobility of a drifter's life, and I'm going to try to incorporate aspects of it into my new found life as an apartment-humper. I'm still waiting to hear back from the Co-opt, but I think this would just be the perfect next step. It's cheap rent, squishing into small rooms with a lot of other temporaries, and with the possibility of leaving it all behind for a few nights (it's also furnished).

There's probably more, but not enough waking hours for it all. Merry Christmas! I'm three and a half hours into the holiday, and into about three months worth of nostalgia. Good vibes.

Home Life

2008-12-22T16:51:00.000-08:00

I've spent the last few days nursing some sunflowers.

They are nothing more than a naive gesture to begin with, hatched from the recesses of generosity and youth on a rainy day at the supermarket. Why not send them?

Since then they've come the 350 miles from Los Angeles to San Jose in the backseat of a car, and if all goes according to plan, they will travel at least 150 more to Sacramento, stuffed inside a box next to some chocolates.

The whole thing, of course, is just ridiculous. Dried flowers will never survive the anxious trip through the ham-pounding mechanical robot that is the postal service during the holiday season, no matter how many peanuts you throw in the box. Then, when the girl finally gets the box, she finds a handful of destroyed flower petals and thinks 'Oh great, dead flowers that's cheerful,' but of course she can't find them anyway because of all the peanuts, and soon she gets tired of picking through it all, takes the chocolates and throws the entire fucking box out the window.

None of which was able to stop me from trying. But it's been costing me. You see, drying sunflowers is a difficult process. Unlike most flowers, they need to dry with their petals facing up and outward for maximum appeal. You can't just hang the suckers up by their necks, no, it requires torture. I took a couple of clothes pins, clamped them onto their stems to keep them from rolling around, then shoved one right underneath the base of the head of the flower to keep it from moving. So now I've got a mini Guantanamo torture rack on my dining table. Then what? Well then you say "sayonara sucker, have fun getting all the moisture sucked out of you by the air."

It's not a pleasant way to spend my holiday.

A Short Car Ride of Considerable Consequence

2008-12-15T22:02:00.000-08:00

An early-model Nissan sped down the dark road. It had just rained, and the ground glistened under the glaring streetlamps. Very few people were out tonight, on account of the weather. And it was cold. The car left a trail of white steam as it accelerated around a bend, tossing leaves in its wake. It was an old soft-top, with all the dents that 16 long years of beating will give you. Not abuse, no, they were simply the beatings of existence, and as far as cars go, this Nissan had lived a full life; it had been used, loved, slept in, lived in, sold, bought, and taken to the beach on many occasions, and now it was an old, wrinkly man with a loose chin. Its windows were foggy.

Inside this car (which was now hurdling through the business district, plenty of streetlamps flying by, but still no people), a man, the driver, turned to look at the woman sitting next to him. The move did not mesh well.

"Will ya watch the road, ya maniac!"

"Don't tell me how to drive my car!" The man shot back. Like there's even a soul on this God-forsaken road, he thought, but didn't say. He should, no, he must be civil, because if there was ever an occasion for it, the time was now.

Just minutes earlier, the confession had caught him off guard. No, it was not even a confession, really it was just the one word, but that one word had come like a gunshot in the dark, or bird poop to the head, it just shocked. That word, the man had thought, it was all just that one word, the whole world is that fucking word. Still, it shouldn't happen to someone so young, the entire situation was-but none of this made it past his lips.

The car was raging now, barreling through the empty city streets, running recklessly through red lights and stop signs alike; there was no one to see, and no one to catch them. The shrieking engine note filled the cabin, where the woman now sat with her arms folded, staring straight ahead. She was younger than she looked, and still young enough for this to be flattering. Her dark hair, which ended just below her shoulders, curved upwards at the tip; a graceful curve, the likes of which she had many, even though she had lost some weight in the past few weeks. Now she knew why.

She was ticked off. Angry even, but it felt good, better angry than afraid. It had been worse those few minutes ago (how long had it been? 10? 15?) before she had said that word, and her entire world had crushed down all around. It had been like that since the beginning, shortly after she had first heard her prognosis, sitting around all the beeping monitors in those thin hospital sheets. She had the fear from the start, fear of not being allowed back to school, not earning her degree, losing her job, the bills, the incessant hospital visits, and the long confinements at home in front of the TV. Her livelihood was her world, all of it besides this man sitting next to her. Now she hated them all. She turned to face him.

"You'll have to cover for me at work."
"No way."
"What?"
"No way, because you're coming back to do your job."
"I'm not coming back, the doctors alread-"
"Then they'll hire someone new!" The man regretted the words as soon he uttered them. There is only a short space that separates two people in a car, and now he felt the venom between them. "Sorry," he muttered.

His partner sighed. "Look, don't apologize, alright? I hate it when you apologize, you do it so goddamn much. And slow down, will ya?" The man, almost on cue, pressed the gas harder. They had left the city now, and the roads were getting worse. It was dark. Every now and then the car would hit another pothole, bounce off its wheel, fly a couple feet, then drop with a sickening crash that shuddered the steel, creaking chassis, and it felt like the car might at any minute shred apart around its passengers.

"If you don't come back, you'll just disappear." The man sounded like he was pleading now.

"I never disappear, Mike." Thud. Lurch. Crash. "How do you think I got here? I know how to make people watch me."

The man looked over at her. This was Iris for you. Push her a little bit, make fun of her hair or find her on a bad day at work, and she could out-whine a formula one car. Have too many drinks with her on any given night, and she will for sure call in sick the next morning, and leave you to pick up her slack. But push her hard enough, threaten her, put her in danger, and you find she either doesn't get scared or doesn't show it, she just glows. Like some radiant siren song supernova saturated lightening hit her all over her face after she had had a couple of drinks and was glowing anyway, and then she would become crazy valkyrie minotaur woman. She could carry a fucking sickle, the man thought. Thud. lurch. Crash.

Iris was indeed glowing now, and she could feel the eyes on her, just one pair now, but there would be more. Oh, there would be more. "The whole world's gonna watch me, Mike." Her voice raised a little higher than normal. "They're either gonna watch me live or watch me die, but they're gonna watch me." Transformation complete. Minotaur woman lowered herself back into her seat, then closed her eyes for a while.

There would have been a full moon that night, where it not for the clouds. At this moment, though, part of it peeked out and illuminated a single red car, still shining from the rain, speeding along an empty highway. Of its two passengers, neither one knew the entire route, but the trip was over before they knew it.

I Spent Years Reading These Tombstones

2008-12-15T12:53:00.000-08:00

Light rain fell on the sidewalks of Westwood. I commandeered the sinking boat down the jagged cement streets, but parking was nowhere to be found. Thus forced away from my destination by honks and a screeching blond-haired twig, I settled for a spot two blocks away. It was a fine spot, if I do say, and it proved quite receptive to my receptacle, which I deftly maneuvered inward between two towering steel monoliths, swung my leg over, and finished by inserting a quarter into a slot.

With this in mind, I strolled down to my destination with my heavy burden, but they wouldn't accept what I had to offer. "None of these books will be used next quarter," said the shopkeeper. A shorter man, very nice allocation of facial hair, looked Middle Eastern with the twinge of boredom.

Books are the only physical reminder of the years I've spent here, but they have become the heaviest, most burdensome things I own. In the past I've felt indebted to them, to a degree at least that halted my hand from selling them like I had sold my furniture. Those times seem so far behind me now, that I am left with a box of eulogies, and I find myself making increasingly concerted efforts to bury these a pawn shop.

December 1st

2008-12-01T01:08:00.000-08:00

Hello December! You are an end of sorts, and this makes you extra special in my heart. Please take care to sweep everything out the door, as there's an awful lack of room in here lately.

The Tribal Chief

2008-12-01T00:59:00.000-08:00

You hear a lot of rumors about the tribal chief, and like any good Angelino in the public eye, he does nothing whatsoever to clear them up. Some say he has resided over the beach for 30 years, others say since 1962, back when the drum first started to beat, the beach attracted nudes, and “everyone was naked” (this last point is a source of heavy debate). One wide-eyed drummer piped that the tribal chief only kept to the sandy side of the 33 block boardwalk. “He never leaves the beach,” in hushed tones. Later I learned that none of these rumors were true, except for one: the beach really is about 33 blocks. It’s a big place to be looking for a little chief.

The only place you are guaranteed to find the chief is right in the midst of the drum circles, and he cuts quite a figure there even amongst that crowd. He comes to you in shiny black pants and a black motorcycle jacket, the kind with foam padding at the shoulders and elbows. A lot of foam is poking out, like someone dragged the thing halfway across a football field paved in hard concrete; then I realized, highly possible. On the other hand, next to the baggy handouts some of the others are sporting, the chief looks—well, he looks like a chief. The jacket fits. Talismans hang from his neck over his exposed chest. And the pants are cut from the same imitation leather that women so often find disagreeably sleazy in nightclubs. The chief is one of those rare homeless people who have found a function to their dress besides keeping them warm.

The End of the World is Lasting Forever

2008-11-30T02:07:00.000-08:00

These baby blue, cinnamon apple red and lemon colored candles that I keep around me are burning out. I go to pick up the bright yellow-colored one, the one with a butterfly shaped into the wax, but it hides sparkles in my palm. Now I have sparkles all over my face. My mom laughed, but the ones in my hair will probably be there forever.

My keyboard is sparkling.

Speaking of home, it's my last night here, and then off for a few more weeks. Time in a real bed has been something of an ironic twist. I sleep on a twin, circa middle school, sitting on a classic wooden frame from a garage sale re-finished in a garage to look like kiddie beds from the movies, covered with flowery sheets from the 80's (in China). I wake up every morning with a sore back. My body is more used to sleeping bags on carpet and lightly cushioned gray upholstery. Not for long though. Two more weeks and I'll have to get acquainted with this bed again, and to my last quarter here.

Everyone has those moments when they look back and wish they could have done more in the time they had. The difference for me is that I set the time limit. Maybe I'll cheat and set my deadline back a little longer. Two weeks into winter, maybe three or four, and by then I will definitely be done with 'social projects.' Until then, I still have to couch-surf a week with strangers, spend more time at the beach, and sleep with the top down once. I'll miss the candles.

Speaking of candles, there's a big difference between ending something and just having something die out. I have a friend who will never bow out a candle once he's lit it. The wax will settle in weird ways, and when you come back to light it later you just get weird light. In Buddhism, blowing out a candle is often related to achieving Nirvana. Everyone is surrounded by an overwhelming light of feeling, pain, 'being,' but you can make this light smaller, into the light from a candle, so small that you have no possessions, no family and no attachments, and then extinguish even this. Suffer no more. I am of the crowd that does not like to blow out candles. It all seems more poetic to cap it, cut off the air, and watch the light fade.

Harrrrrt

2008-11-26T02:42:00.000-08:00

For all his exploits, explorations, exhortations, and other such extremely exaggerated events of swashbucklery (exacting revenge and the like, you know), the pirate came back to the same room year after year.

This particular room was special for a couple of reasons. First of all, no one, no matter how hard they looked, could ever find it. It was hidden inside a house, that was built along a street of identical-looking houses. Ten houses on the left that differed only in the shade of brown paint used on the walls, twenty more on the right with a slightly unique lawn gnome as the only indicator that you were anywhere different than you had been eight houses back. And when someone did chance upon the right house, the pirate's house (which never happened), they couldn't find a way in, because they didn't have a key. Now this may seem silly to some of you, but for a pirate a key is a pretty precious thing that doesn't come along all the time. A lot of pirates out there don't have a single key to show off to their friends.

Perhaps the reason the pirate kept coming back, though, was that this room never, ever, ever changed. The pictures on the wall had been there for ages. They told a story; a portrait of a pirate as a young man. When the pirate came into this room, this eternal room, he stepped into a simpler time, where a feller didn't have to worry about bad wenches and sea monsters and scurvy. It was so simple, that sometimes this pirate would just sit in this room, from morning until nighttime. Then, when it was dark, the pirate would take off his hat, then his boots, then his breeches and overcoat and unbuckle his sword and take off his rings and jangly bracelets and just disappear.

Perhaps You Should Sit Down Before You Read This

2008-11-25T02:16:00.000-08:00

9 weeks into this, and the 'project' is still the biggest secret I keep from many of my friends. I decided from the beginning that it would be a 'need-to-know' basis, which meant either I could sleep at your place or I could keep stuff at your place. Since then I've revealed to a lot to people where there was no benefit, and shied away from it when someone truly could have helped me out. Every now and then someone overhears something, finds out that way, and everything turns into a sitcom for about five minutes. Neither of my roommates from last year have any idea. Maybe half the people I work with have heard from one source or another. Most importantly, my parents have no clue and I intend to keep it that way. I don't tell most people I meet, and when I'm pressed, I lie about it. So, here I come clean.

"I live on Veteran. Near Strathmore."
Well, actually... the graveyard side of Veteran is the best place to hunker down for the night because no one walks on that side of the street. So I "live" there as many nights as I can find a spot. The vague area around Veteran and Strathmore is also where Jack lives, and this has become a second home for me.

"I get a nice view of Westwood from my place too."
From any angle you could possibly imagine.

"I don't cook much anymore. No time."
No kitchen.

"I'm more of a morning person myself."
The sun is up by 7. On hot days it takes a good two hours before you can start to cook something in that sun. I'm up around 8.

(To the boss, interviewer, or judge) "Traffic wasn't bad this morning."
I slept in your parking lot last night so I wouldn't have to 'drive here' this morning.

"I'm going to bed, goodnight."
I've slept on a bed once this quarter. It was the night I spent in the hospital.

"Yeah you should come over sometime."
I'll show you around the trunk.

A Question of

2008-11-22T15:14:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in a long, low room that is dark, inside a dark mansion with brown walls located in a place that I can only describe as resembling North Carolina. The bad part of North Carolina. And a third person has just barged noisily into this room.

Alarmed, I stand bolt upright. Someone knocks my chair down. An empty wrapper rolls across the floor, and I stoop to pick it up. A shadow engulfs me on the way down. In the darkness, I vaguely make out beads, tattered silk, and a pale, beautiful face.

Hope twitters into my head, then the sharp prick of a new idea, but the rest of my head is so far away, it won't be here for some time.

Update on Bigfoot

2008-11-18T22:55:00.000-08:00

Right foot still large. Supersized. Left foot thankfully still small, plain-Jane dollar thirty-nine regular-sized golden french fries. Can't see veins. Pain still there. Cankle, overwhelmingly cankle. Cankle cankle cankle cankle cankle cankle. Balloon? Hippopotamus. Round, rotund, rolly-polly, racked-up, rear-end biased, re-sized to the extreme, really really really cankle. Cankle!

Fragme

2008-11-18T13:40:00.000-08:00

He is not famous. He is not widely known. Most people would not recognize his name, are unaware of his past, are unaware that he exists. They will never see him in US Weekly. Yet he is a public figure. He is a public figure in that everyone in a room knows exactly when he enters and when he leaves. If there was a coffee shop, and Helen Keller was inside drinking a French roast, and this guy walked in, Helen Keller would know. When he dances through the crowds, he looks straight ahead because he can feel the eyes drilling into him from left and right. If you had been with him for any one of these instances, you could see this too, but then you would not see it, because you would be too busy, looking at him.

Alive

2008-11-16T23:11:00.000-08:00

I've spent the last several hours alternating between feeling very cold and very hot.

You see, my right foot is infected. The infection began with a cut, a scrape really, that left untreated turned my right foot into a balloon. The infection led to bouts of fever, which explains the shivering and sweating. The fever led to delirium, which I always consider quite enjoyable, but this is besides the point. Pointedly, I have undergone what I would call a mild fatal experience.

There are things you learn when you are this close to death: water is the tastiest substance on Earth, eating is overrated and debilitating pain in the foot can be conquered by laying down. My right foot is so big, my Crocs which are usually a size and a half too big now fit snugly over said foot, and I admit this is kind of a plus. But the most important thing you learn is... love.

This piece just fell flat. I hope my shoes fit tomorrow for my court date.

The Problems of Smell for Derek Liu

2008-11-15T23:52:00.001-08:00

The problem with being homeless and being by yourself is that you never truly know how good or bad you smell at any given moment. Sure, you're usually a pretty clean guy, but then again you got your clothes this morning from a suitcase sitting in your trunk next to your shoes and dirty laundry (which sits in another suitcase, which sometimes you intermix). Or maybe you got your clothes yesterday morning, who knows? Then there's your car. I've done all I can to make it smell nice. There's an odor-deleter hanging from the rearview, a bag of pina colada scent under the drivers seat, and two (two!) vanilla scent sticks in the vents. But sometimes I still catch a whiff of something... strange. Is it the car? Is it me? Or is it the car, and by transitive property, me? Maybe I'm lucky and it's just my nappy hair.

Fortunately, no one cares if you smell bad when no one's around. I suppose you might, but you don't smell yourself that often, and honestly smelling bad sometimes is just one of the sacrifices I've come to accept with this lifestyle. I'm just afraid that I'm stinking up everywhere I go and none of my friends are telling me. Because seriously, I'm not sure I would tell my friend that dude smells like rot. That's just rude.

Return Of The King

2008-11-12T15:27:00.001-08:00

The Bag King is back!

He's got three this time. Disguised bags, or rather bags in a bag. Somewhere in there, he also has clothes, yet when I see him he's always in the same outfit. Same blue Adidas sweats with dark brown mismatched blazer, draped over his long, wispy shape. When he stands in line he stands a head and a half over the people around him, softly grasping a mangled five dollar bill with both hands. He holds the money out the way a thirsty man cups water from a basin to drink; his skinny elbows make such sharp angles that if he were to suddenly thrust one back, I think he might impale the face of the girl behind him.

When he gets to the counter to order, he briefly lowers the scarf that hides his mouth. I hold my breath- finally!-just as he takes a deep one, then another, then one more deep breath. He has a short, scraggy mustache, very defined cheekbones, and no beak.

He bears a passing resemblance to Dave Chapelle.

It's 11 O'clock. Do You Know Where Your Face Wash is?

2008-11-09T15:33:00.000-08:00

The showers in the gym are public. They are partitioned into sets of two, side-by-side, running down a white linoleum hallway. They resemble cells in a cloister. During the day these get a lot of action, as in you're showering next to one guy and across from another guy. And the past few times I've walked out of these showers, I've been forced to leave a little part of me behind.

It pains me to write about these experiences, considering the preciousness and sanctity of what I've lost, the sheer embarrassment was almost enough to silence my voice. But no, I just can't let this dark secret eat away at me anymore.

Those of you who have no stomach for grotesque descriptions will have no problem reading further.

I'm a face wash dropper. I forget face wash.

Just slips my mind. And really, you can't blame me. Here I am drying out, pushing my wet feet through my underwear, navigating through the maze of steaming bodies, all as quickly as I can manage without looking to the left or right. It's hard, but I know it's no excuse. I'm despicable.

And the worst part is, it's happened more than once. This past incident will make three total. Three bright-eyed little face washes, literally left out there to dry. Sometimes at night I can still hear their voices. I can still see their faces, full of innocence and promises of being oil-free.

I can only hope that a gentle, clean-faced stranger will have picked them up and given them a good home. I shudder to imagine them in the hands of some abusive, overly-compulsive face-washer, squeezing the last bits of cream cleanser from their twisted bottles.

Please, if you see a stray bottle of face wash, tell them I'm sorry. And don't tell them about the shiny new bottle of Deep Clean with Sea Salt Rub that I bought today.

On Sleeping at the Beach, Posthumously

2008-11-05T18:27:00.000-08:00

Fortunately for me, I woke up far too early that morning. I felt warm with my head underneath my sleeping bag, where I had curled up in a ball the night before. That night I had concealed my shoes underneath my bag, and when I awoke I was relieved to feel the uncomfortable lump protruding through the fabric, near my thigh. No bum had stolen it. Then I remembered I was a bum. My mind wandered to the plastic water bottle I had left near a rock, and hoped it was still there.

There wasn't much time to think though. The rain that had woken me up was still coming down. plat plat plat. My bag would be dry for another ten minutes at most. Or is it at least? At least, that gives me 9 more minutes to sleep. I beat back the idea, wiggled carefully out onto the sand, and turned my face up to the rain. My water bottle was still there.

It was 6am, the clouds were a dark blue of early dawn, and seemed to stretch well into the ocean as two pieces of fluttering paper, upset by the crashing tide. My glasses started to fog, so I took them off. I retrieved my shoes, took my backpack out of my sleeping bag where I had huddled with it the night before, and rolled up the bag. The sand around my bag had been shuffled. I wondered how much of it had already been like that and how much of it was made by me tossing around in the dark. Maybe people were walking around me, over me in the dark, mistaking me for another dead rock. I might've looked like a tombstone.

Maybe I could have stayed longer that morning, and sat down on one of the rocks nearby that didn't give me any shelter. I might've had an epiphany there, sitting in the rain, gradually feeling the wetness seep through my three sweaters. Something would have clicked, and I would have seen through the beach, sand, the waves, I would have seen through it all into something beyond, reality beyond the unreal. The truth of nature. I wish I could say this, but I don't believe it. There's nothing glorious about waking up on a rainy beach, and you have plenty of time to think about how much it might rain the next night as you make your slow, laborious way through the sand.

There was no nightingale, serenading slumber, no doves to herald the dawn. Just rain, falling on a vast graveyard.

The Bag King has a Beak

2008-11-03T20:26:00.000-08:00

There is a man who I have seen in the coffee house a great many times. I find him there at night, but I suspect if I were to come during the day, he might be still be there. Most of the time he reads; he is reading when I get there, and still reading when I leave.

Today I saw this man leave, and this would have been a hell of an ordeal for most people. You see, he had a lot of bags. They were plastic bags, the kind that the student store uses mixed in with nondescript ones, and he must have had at least a dozen of them. I don't know what he had in them, they looked lumpy enough to be clothes, but who knows? He could have had cabbages, for all I knew. Whatever they were, he planned to carry them all home on his bike.

The man is dressed the same every time I see him. He wears a dirty brown tweed blazer, not quite a business suit but close, mismatched with a pair of blue Adidas sweat pants, of the style you see volleyball players walk to practice in. Shiny black boots poke out underneath, and as he walks I think I can see studs. He is tall and undeniably thin, but with naturally broad shoulders. All this you can see from the way his blazer stretches out on top, then fits inward at the waist. He has the frame and arms of a high school basketball player. White earphones are always dangling from his ears, and he always wears a scarf over his mouth, and a dark woolen cap over his dreadlocks. As I look, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out what looks like a white plastic headwrap, and stretches it on his head over his cap. Before, I wondered if he had a beak. Now I have the sudden thought that he might transform into an eagle before my eyes, spread his long arms wide and fly away.

He stands very straight over his bags; so straight that when he bends to pick up a handful of his bags it seems to take him an eternity. When he finally stoops, it looks like it's causing him just enough pain that he can suppress it. While he reaches down with one hand he holds the other behind his back, revealing a silver chain dangling from his wrist.

And so he stooped, grabbed, rose, and put each bag on alternating handlebars of his bicycle with the speed of a 50-story crane. After a couple of bags I worried he might not have room on the handlebars to rest his hands. Still he piled them on, and when he had only one bag left, he paused for a little longer, stooped in his stiff, ponderous way, retrieved it as an ape would scoop up an infant, and put it with the rest. Then he wheeled his bike around and stepped into the night.

Guns Out, Weekend

2008-10-31T20:06:00.000-07:00

The gun this weekend is the D90. I'll be shooting with it on 10.5mm, 50mm, and anywhere from 18-200mm. I got the lights to send some errant splashes, 10, 50, and 200 feet away.

This weekend I'm traveling to Venice Beach, to live there for 36 hours. I plan to sleep on the street when I need to, but I will be trying to stay up as long as possible. I plan to find someone to trail, a fellow Venice-liver, someone who's been roughing it longer and can show me what's beyond the sand and concrete.

I used to take offense when I read about photographers who would stoop into the scullys of second-class life, taking in a 'foreign world' through the distancing perspective of the camera man. They were the bourgeois, and theirs was the world that is foreign.

Million Dollar Question

2008-10-30T02:46:00.000-07:00

Everyone wants to know: where do I go at night? Well it changes. Here, I'll list them in order of frequency.

1) In the car, parked on Veteran on the cemetery side. Pros: quiet, no one walks on this side of the street, trees nearby. Cons: first to fall to the imminent zombie attack.

2) On the couch at Jack's place. Pros: couch. Also food in the fridge and internet. But mostly couch, and oh indoor plumbing is nice. Cons: This is also quite close to the cemetery, so zombies again. Overstaying a welcome, and this is an understatement. And the more I stay here, well, the less I'm homeless.

3) Place where I got too drunk to go anywhere else. Pros: sweet, sweet oblivion. Cons: "I can't feel my face!"

4) In the car, parked at an undisclosed location. Nice try, but I'm onto you. Pros: can only be found by those who are pure of heart. Cons: too hard to find a bathroom in the morning.

5) (a tie between) Jose's place, the Daily Bruin office, and the library. I've spent one night at each of these places, and all with very favorable results.

Now, a small list of places where I plan to sleep, in no particular order:
-on the street (a la real homeless)
-in a stranger's couch, via couch-surf
-in a forest
-in a cave
-somewhere with the top of my car folded down

The Sum of All My Fears

2008-10-28T04:41:00.000-07:00

It happened. I didn't even realize until it was too late. I never thought it would happen to me, but I found myself standing in an empty parking lot, bewildered..

When I change outfits in my car, I often leave my shoes underneath the car instead of in the trunk after wearing them, the reason being that when you don't have much space to begin with, you don't want smelly sneakers stinking it up. So far it's worked pretty well.

Not today. Today I drove away and left my poor shoes sitting there by the curb of lot 4. Gone. Didn't even look back. Not just any shoes either, my favorite pair of Royal Elastics.

SO, I give to you, the countermeasure.

All I is is a boy trying to find his kicks

I Made it Halfway

2008-10-26T23:49:00.000-07:00

Poet laureates are halfway done, and I am five weeks removed from home with five weeks more to go.

The experiment in the past few weeks has become--dare I say it--easy. Those ever-increasing distractions like schoolwork and traveling have taken the edge out of the inconveniences by demanding more of my time and energy. In large part, though, I just got used to my daily routine, being better able to cut through the practical problems while finding myself dulled to the psychological ones. Those first weeks, the span of time from evening until midnight would sometimes put me in danger of feeling a terrible loneliness. It wasn't that I missed anyone in particular; I just missed having a place to undress, cook, to sit and stand without being anything but nothing. In another context, they call this being homesick.

So now I'm comfortable, yet the comfort is starting to throw me off. I get the feeling of slipping back into another box, maybe sized and shaped a little differently than the first, but still a box. Part of it, again, are the distractions. I have a book report due tomorrow, a midterm the next day, and another midterm the day after that. Once that passes, I will have to start doing other things. This weekend or the next I want to stay entirely on Venice beach, maybe sleeping outside on the street for a night. I have to start talking to that source for a story on the economy's effect on students. And I'll be in the process of preparing to leave this school.

The halfway point. When this is all over, my biggest fear will be to look back and realize that this "social experiment" with all its troubles was never truly incorporated into my goals, that it just served as a companion, someone to wake you up in the morning and tell you to keep going but who had an annoying voice.

Count Your Countenance

2008-10-24T00:33:00.000-07:00

For someone who can fit all their worldly belongings into a trunk (of a small convertible, no less!) I have quite a few outfits. There are three cotton tank tops that I wear consistently enough to bank on the short-term memory that my friends seem to exhibit towards my clothes. I have the standard light blue jeans, ripped for good measure, black jeans for my dress shirts, and neon blue jeans for Halloween. Then there's jackets. A long, soft cotton drapery that hangs down past my thighs, in the dark gray you always see on homeless people, is my favorite. Close second is a light blue with short sleeves and a stretchy bottom portion, which my friend's grandpa once mistook for his. And I have the black hooded sweater that I keep because it fits so well with the standard light torn blue jeans. All this goes in my trunk, except when I take them out to wear them or wash them.

My fashion hasn't changed since I became homeless. Everything is a bit more wrinkled, a little less fresh, but you could never tell I was living out of a car if you saw me. Unless you saw the car, or me changing in the car, or perhaps sleeping in it at night and emerging from the passenger side door in the morning to get clothes from that small trunk, and while I wormed back into the passenger to wiggle into those clothes you might think something was up. Well I'm just doing this social experiment man, minimalist living and mumbo jumbo sorta thing you know? You feel that, man?

I can't imagine what people REALLy think when they find out I'm doing this, especially those who already know me well. In part, I think they tolerate it because no matter what I just don't look homeless, and maybe the appearance has some role in keeping the signals from getting all the way to the brain. Like a car accident on the side of the freeway that people stare at, stare all the way until their necks hurt from snapping back after they crush the bumper on the car in front of them. Then you might not get home for hours.

A Practical Nomad

2008-10-21T01:09:00.000-07:00

Every day begins in one of three ways: sunlight streaming through a sliver of window that had been left uncovered; solar heat working its way through the obsidian that makes up the cloth convertible top; or an uncomfortably full bladder. The third of these represents the greatest immediate threat. Yes, I suppose in a tightly-shut car slumber can turn to suffocation soon enough if it's hot, more likely you'll just come out sweaty and smelling a bit off. But beginning the day invariably sets off a 10-minute biological countdown that must, absolutely without a doubt result in finding a restroom, and failing that a private bush or tree or large SUV. It's the one biggest way that living in a car can add stress your daily routine.

So you find ways to cope, and you cope fast. You know the closest restrooms in relation to anywhere. You do the daily trunk-inventory calculus: which books to bring, which clothes to bring, whether you'll work out, which shoes, how to fit toothbrush, toothpaste, and face wash into the small compartment of the backpack next to everything else. Park, throw things around, go. You think with the precision of a military commander. You look ahead like planned parenthood.

This takes you about twenty minutes into the day.