Greek Chorus

Saw a rusty car laying by the road today- a Detroit memento mori. There's nothing like the season of light to illuminate the gloom floating above everyone's heads. I never realized how brave adults were. Those smiles they wear, the traditions they cling to, the myths they encourage, the troubles they forget- a selfless facade for their kids. How easy it would be to toss the hot chocolate for some scotch and let the weather and the economy ruin everything, but they carol on. It's not scorn I'm showing here, or sarcasm. I'm geniunely moved. But maybe it's the season? Maybe there is such a thing as the magic of Christmas?

Orientation for U of M was on Tuesday. If I was offered a full ride to Harvard tomorrow on the sole condition that I had to go through their orientation, I'd decline without even blinking. I can't stand getting patronized for a whole fucking day. The damn program directors made all of us sing the fight song twice. Now, I know it's kind of exciting for a 17-year-old kid to sing his fight song for the first time, but our group was a bunch of battle-hardened sophomores and juniors. We even had a married lady from Florida. Needless to say, our 10:30 AM rendition of "Hail to the Victors" was not much more than a grumpy whisper, and the one following it, which they made us do because the first wasn't loud enough, was nothing but rhythmic groans and nasty stares. Before all the song and dance, I had to take a language placement test. Mi espanol es muy mal, but by some miracle of God, I got placed into their fourth semester of Spanish. DIOS MIO! I'm totally screwed. The last time I heard a Spanish sentence was when Shakira was on the radio. And there's just no way to "wing" fourth semester Spanish. Can you wing Med. School? This is a REAL class, something I really am not equipped for. Then, they made us go get our pictures taken for our new ID card. I tried to do my patented "gay face," but the lady at the computer told me to knock it off. There goes my easy conversation starter for Ann Arbor chicks, I thought. Next, they marched us out into the penguin-piss cold campus to look at any building with an embarrassing story attached to it. Sometime after the fifth stop, a VERY unsettling thing began to happen to me. All right, so it's ball-negating cold outside, and I'm standing next to some statue listening intently to instructions on how to approach the statue and how to cross its shadow and what to do if I haven't taken my first blue book exam before arriving at the statue nexus, when I started to regret drinking a liter of water during the exam. So, we walked on, ignoring all bathroom stops along the way, for about another twenty minutes, when something incredible happened to me: I could not tell whether or not I was pissing myself. It felt like I was, full-stream, too. I spent the last ten minutes of the tour looking not at the guides but at my crotch with total and utter amazement. When we finally reached the Union, I left the group to their Q and A session while I raced to the bathroom. In there, I tried to see if my reason could cook up any answers. All I could come up with was the numbness sort of played tricks on my hardware, creating the sensation of peeing. It just felt so REAL! Maybe coupled with the nerves of an orientation with a bunch of strangers at a strange new school, it was magnified to the point of feeling real. It's just that I've been numbed by cold hundreds of times, but never have I felt like I was pissing myself. Maybe I should grab a pack of Huggies to see me through Jan. and Feb. just in case. Holy Christ, was I scared!

Ever feel like you're getting only anesthesia when you need the cure? Man, I hope this transfer works. I'm a restless dude. What can I say? I get sick of everything so fast. People, especially. How awful is that? Eh, but such is the price of honesty. You have to face some kind of ugly truths about yourself.

Wings beat the Sharks 6-0. Merry Christmas to you too, God!

I guess one of my friends had been telling people that I was gay. When I asked him why, he said something like, "Can you blame me?" Hmmmm, I chewed that over for awhile. First of all, I'm not gay. What I tried to figure out was what would make me seem gay. I'm not girly, not really, not in tastes or mannerisms. I am sort of chatty, and my voice is high. I never had one of those gruff, half-asleep monotones I hear on most guys. So, next I looked at my behavior, insofar as what I do around girls or to get girls. I looked at my last two years of college and realized I hadn't made any serious advances towards any girls. Yeah, I thought, that might seem gay. Well, there's a perfectly good explanation for all of it, and it doesn't involve me crashing through any closets: I haven't met a single girl I would date. And why is that? Ohhh, there's a number of reasons. I don't know how boring or trite they are, but I'm giving them nonetheless. Well, first off, I guess I am sort of picky. I'm attracted to a strange type. I like loners, people with a very strong sense of independence and identity. Those are the girls that are the same around everyone, never warm and bubbly in large groups, but dismal and quiet one-on-one. I also can't date women that have sun beams streaming off their faces, either. I'd be breaking her heart every day. I like sober, logical girls, girls that my mopey ass has to cheer up. I like when I'm constantly doing the spirit-lifting, not the other way around. Otherwise, I feel like I'm just some chore, some gloomy head-case in need of a shrink-girlfriend. Also, she has to have wide interests. Some people phrase this as a girl "who can have an intelligent conversation," but what the hell does that even mean? "Wide interests" is more clear and way less cliche. I like girls that know a bit about everything, that have a nice smattering of trivia, not some piece meal obssessions. Curiousity is a big one, as well. I like those people that have to run to their computer to look something up on wikipedia before they forget what it is, who call their friends at 2 AM to answer some question that's keeping them awake. It shows a strong tie to this world. There's nothing worse than those apathetic assholes who shrug and sigh their days away. The luckiest person in the world is the one who has the most wonder. At my orientation this week, I remember being jealous of the girl from Florida because she had never seen snow before. You should have seen her face when we told her it was going to snow that night on the way home from Ann Arbor. Quirkiness is a big plus, as is humility. There is nothing more attractive than an eccentric, scatter-brained girl sandbagging you with her smarts. Physical features? Ha, last year, I could have given a laundry list of them. What I really like, though, is dark skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. That would include all Meditteranean and Levantine peoples. But, really, this is secondary.

I've been seeing people do end-of-year lists and stuff, but I'm not sure if I have the energy for those. I guess I'll just go ahead and say 2008 was the worst year of my life, and I'm glad it's in the history books.

Had to go to the mall today. We really need to start thinking about legislation concerning the proximity of pungent candles to one another because when you get three Holiday Huckleberry's on the same shelf, it kicks up something fierce into the face of the passerby. There's not a lot of things that can make me vomit from a single wiff, but the entrance to Bath and Body Works is one. Also, I believe that the government should raise a committee to study Spencer's Gifts. If that place can stay in business, so the fuck can America! I mean, come on! They must have the most narrow demographic in capitalism! No one buys that shit except for frat boys and their begrudged girlfriends. The government should forget about the Big Three and start investing in shirts with dick jokes.



I've been trying to be more creative with this blog. It's been fun for me. So, here's a poem I just wrote on the fly. I don't really like it, but like I've said before, just writing anything helps. It might seem kind of pretentious, but I've had it in my mind ever since someone explained Nietzche's dichotomy to me.




Apollonian Anomaly


String the lyre.
Pluck the strings.
Draw the bow.
Ride the sun.

And how long can you last before your order is gone?
Rejected, replaced, and finally removed
In the face of a world dark, lit by torches,
flames brushing the dancers, their shadows flashing on the walls.
Your music, your chords, your keys, your arpeggios
can't face the drum, the drum, the bang bang of the drum-um.
Grab this krater and take a long drink.
Gift of the Gods it is.
Immerse yourself in the great spirit of this world.
Belong to these lives, young and beautiful.
Dissolve your golden locks, your handsome face, your Arete.
Destroy the difference.

Dawn from my brow.
Poems from my tongue.
Medicine from my hand.
I am the male ideal.

You can't go on, my brother.
You may know the truth, but you can't see the secrets.
Put your light away and sway.
This is the moment you are alive.
Be here, here stay.
Come down, fly down, be here at the center.
Waves, shivers, trembles, shakes, shifts will
change you, make your heart light, your eyes close
your voice loud, your breath fast, your tongue loose.
Silence the genius, awaken the beast.
Dance, animal!

I see wonders.
I make miracles.
I bring you hope.
Ascend, reach my cloud!

You fool, you poor fool. We stay because want to.
The earth is dirty, but it brings pleasure to our feet, and
the satyr hoof grinds it into an intoxicating powder.
Be gone with your ichor and your ambrosia, then.
We'll trip over the roots of the earth, we'll crawl on all fours.
Rocks and fires scratch the skin,
But this ecstasy burns and burns still within.
Your cloud can stay. We may see it in the morning.
But for now, let mist shroud us, darkness envelop.
No more light from you, you have lost.
We dance on, heedless, mindless, deathless!

But death you are.