A HAIKU

i think i'm in love
shaun made steak and cookies, yum!
too bad he's a dude.

PERPLEXED

i faced it today, for the first time in a long time.

and, you know, it wasn't a big deal at all. in fact, i felt hardly affected.

now what does that mean?

ON INSOMNIA

the noise didn't help last night. still couldn't sleep.

i've been somewhat trying to ween myself off it, but i always think too much at night.

last night the topics ranged between "i don't think hell really exists" to "i really should have been nicer when she came over on sunday." there were other, more trivial ones... but i didn't spend as much time on them.

as far as hell goes, i've been pretty convinced it doesn't exist for awhile. or, if it does, it's not at all what we think it is. actually, i bet we get all of everything wrong. in my mind, hell is pretty much just separation from god, which could be hell enough. but the whole eternal damnation never sat well with me. infinite punishment for finite sins doesn't seem just. and really, i think the whole concept of evil is man-made.

blarg, a blog hardly seems the proper medium to write about the concept of hell. i don't even know what brought it on last night, really. its not like i just made up my mind about it last night, i've thought that for a while. but that's the kind of thing that happens at night when the world gets quiet.

it has gotten to the point where i have to bring my laptop with me if i'm going to be sleeping somewhere different. my mom makes fun of me and says things like "you just can't go anywhere without that computer. what would you do without the internet?" but really, it's so that i'll be able to sleep at night. i really need the noise of something so i don't go off thinking about things and keep myself up.

clock just struck 4. looks like a long night tonight, too.

most of the time i don't complain about it. i always thought there was something exciting and poetic about nighttime. i remember one day talking to my dad - he used to always wake up hours before everyone else. he'd wake up, go downstairs, make his coffee, get the newspaper and work on the crossword puzzle, toss on some light jazz music and smoke a cigarette in the kitchen. he said something along the lines of "i love that time of the day. that's my ME time. everything is quiet. the world hasn't woken up yet. its just me, doing the things i like to do."

i feel that way late at night. in fact, i used to sneak out of mom and dad's house sometimes after everyone was asleep and just go for a walk down the street. its comforting being the only person in the world sometimes.

but lately, i haven't been able to enjoy it. i guess there are too many things going on in my life right now that i feel scared about, and i don't necessarily like being alone in the world lately. i think i've found that i enjoy companionship.

LIFE DRAWING

so there's a life drawing class up here in austin that only costs 5 bucks to go to. i've started going there with an old friend i knew when i went to school here. since it was the first time i wasn't actually being graded or criticized or had anything to worry about with style, i just messed around and had some fun.

WHY I HATE TALKING ABOUT ART SOMETIMES

kind of ripping off robert rauschenberg and ralph steadman, but it's fun.

FLYCATCHERS

so, right before i packed up all my stuff and moved to austin, i went to an art show in houston. one of my good friends was working with the curator there, and she said it was a pretty cool show, plus i wanted to just see her before i left anyway.

i was planning this move for awhile, so i had been setting aside every little bit of money that i could. i had set a goal to have X thousand bucks saved up so that i would be able to have a little time off once i got to austin. i came into an unexpected amount of money thanks to a check from my grandfather and a nice bonus from work. so i decided that if i saw anything at the gallery that struck my fancy, i would buy it for my new place in austin - as long as it wasnt too expensive.

then i saw this painting called flycatchers by heather bause. i really, really liked it.

so i decided to buy it.

i talked to both my friend and the curator of the gallery, and they were both happy and excited to bring out the red dots that signify a painting has been sold. the curator said "if you like, heather is here and you can speak with her."

honestly, i didnt really want to talk to her. i sometimes fancy myself an artist, and personally i dont really like talking about my work. and most of the artists i know dont like talking about their work either. its actually pretty surprising how unpretentious most artists are. anyway, i didnt want to talk to her, but i didnt want to be rude, either.

so i said i would talk to her.

first of all, she was not bad to look at. so that made it a good decision right off the bat.

i started with the real general stuff. i told her my name, that i really liked her painting (all her work in the show, really), stuff like that. we talked about the formal aspects of it. the graphic quality of her style (turns out she was a graphic designer). the lines. the diagonal feel. the brown background (my favorite color, and i told her so). the linen she painted it on (special stuff thats apparently only found in germany).

then she started telling me "the story".

she had grown up in texas, gradguated, became successful, then met her husband, married him, and moved to germany (her husband is german, she told me). she quit working when she had her son. when he turned three, they decided to move back to the US. so her family packed up and came here. she still wasnt working. she started to feel a little upset. like everything was in chaos.

during this time, she studied birds in her free time, and her and her son would go birdwatching together. she said that birdwatching with him made her happy, so she decided to start a series of bird paintings. all the birds were native to north america.

she said, "then suddenly i had all these paintings that made me happy. and life didnt feel chaotic anymore. so thats what these are about. finding happiness amist chaos."

i was shocked. "wow. well, you arent going to believe this, but i quit my job and im packing up everything and moving to austin even though i dont have a job lined up there. so now this painting holds a special place with me."

THE POST ABOUT NOTHING

i was going to write something.

first, it was going to be something proud, proclaiming my masculinity and stubbornness.

but i don't really feel masculine or stubborn.

then i was going to write a haiku about how i miss her sometimes.

but who am i kidding? i don't really miss her. and i was having trouble thinking of a good 5 syllable way to start it anyway.

then i realized that sounded pretty stubborn.

but i still wanted to write a haiku, and that's really not that masculine.

my stomach started hurting, so i became preoccupied with that for awhile.

i want a sandwich.

no, i want to write something.

what i really want is to be able to go to sleep.

see, for years i've needed some noise to be able to fall asleep. i've normally fallen asleep with the tv on or my computer playing a dvd. i need the noise so i don't think about things.

thinking about things makes it hard to sleep.

not even deep things. sometimes i think about how old my nieces and nephews will be when i'm 40, or that when i'm 33, my mom will be 66. and when my youngest niece is 30, my sister will be 60.

sometimes i think that i've spent over one-fifth of my life without my dad, and i wonder what it would be like if i could talk to him now. i never got a chance to drink a beer with him.

so i need noise. so i don't think about things.

i didn't have noise tonight, and my stomach hurts. so i started thinking about stuff.

the only other times i've been able to sleep without noise is when i was sleeping next to her.

when i started out, this post was going to be called "ma jolie".

god, that's french.

and so pretentious.

it means "my pretty". it's a painting by picasso that i like a whole bunch.

its supposedly a woman with a guitar, but of course it doesnt look like that. but it doesn't have to, because it's beautiful.

i used to call her ma jolie.

it was supposedly love, but of course it didnt work like that. but it didn't have to, because it was beautiful.

i guess that sums up my thoughts about it better than anything else.