ramble, ramble: my ghost like to travel I don't like rambling, but I'm doing Critical Mass for the first time since October so I'm just hanging out here at work until it starts some time after 6:00. I've exhausted my usual web/blog surfing, and I guess there's work I can be getting done, but the next two weeks is plenty of time to get it done. I've been churning stuff out this past week. If I had been working this efficiently for the past year . . . I don't know what. I would have gotten a lot done? Boss-lady came by my cube this afternoon and we chatted for the first time in probably over a year. I don't think we've chatted since Ms. Case Manager got her promotion and the big freeze started. Two weeks left, the final stretch. People are starting to give me knowing looks, envious looks, jealous looks, "You're almost outta here", "Dude, you are SO lucky", "You SUCK!!" Ron refers to me as "short-timer". It's funny thinking of what their perception might be of my leaving and why. That I'm off to something better? That I'm off to Tucson? No, probably not, all they perceive is that I'm outta here, and that's all that's important to everyone here. Very few people still want to be here. As it feels, I'm picking up the eraser for my dry erase board, erasing the processing time information for various government agencies, and then continuing to erase away the dry erase board, the Pokemon and Totoro origami that Joycee made, Tiff's postcard, the Akira Jimbo Yamaha drum ad, my speakers, my CDs, my headphones, big bottle of Advil, lens cleaner, mini Zen garden from Jen, the stone Zenaida gave me, my Wet Ones, my Pinky and the Brain mug, my Sylvester the Cat mug from Josefa, my paper stand, my architect lamp, and the various and sundry junk piled high in pack-ratted drawers, including Ritu's CDs that I got stuck with after she wigged out, and decided I couldn't sell to Amoeba after she died. There's no sentimentality here, it's just a job I'm erasing myself out of. I'll be erasing the floor behind me as I walk out. It will just be white, a blank page or canvas behind me. And if all goes as planned, when I step out of the building and look up and down Sacramento Street as I always do, my entire reality should be different. No plans for the future, nothing there, nothing to strive for, nothing to desire, no pleasure, no infrastructure *burp* ew, Dove dark chocolate I've been eating all afternoon, nothing I can point to behind me that connects to a possible anything in front of me. I'll be done. I should feel finished. Which also is a good indication that this weblog as it is should end then. I started another weblog that is on a trial run and, as predicted, is boring the bejeebus out of me, and that's fine. After this one is abandoned and everything goes there, it should pick up. No dramatics, glib, just plain life as seen from the outside. Ish. Wrap things up, float through, connect with myself. My needs are mine alone. And if anyone here thinks that I'm off to go explore and figure out what I really want to do, and then finds out what I do do and is surprised, let them be confused. I know what I'm doing. And I'm going to do Critical Mass, it's 5:55.

 

January 31, 2003; 7:01 P.M. - Critical Mass paused at Civic Center because a DJ was playing. There's someone holding up their bike in the air in the back. 

Dancing to the street DJ:

"Poetry Corner", a series, by Gage-O:
#5
"Poem for the Millenium"

Grandma!
WHERE ARE MY SHOES?
Hey! Hey Grandma!
WHERE THE FUCK
ARE MY
FUCKING SHOES?

ANSWER ME!

as good as it gets: (and it's pretty darn good)
thought of the day: life is too precious to continue living it when it's lost all its meaning. life is too precious just to live it just because it's there.

"Poetry Corner", a series, by (and sanctioned by) Gage-O:
#4
"Rainy Day Blues"

today, it's raining
and I've got the blues
so i do whip-its

HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHHAAHa
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH
ohmygodohmygodAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
AHAHAHAHAHAHAheehehhehehheeehehheehehh
HAHAHAHA

#5
"return of the cajun monkey"

whilst thou comest to thine shrine?
cajun monkey?
whilst thou skip to thine coal mine?
cajun monkey?
whilst thou play with thine cheese grater?
cajun monkey?

mom?

The muscles in my left leg have been killing for the past two days. I thought they were just sore after I got locked in the wrong stairwell at work and walked up and down 12 flights of stairs. But it doesn't add up.

This isn't like a stiff soreness of the first time running in the Spring after taking the Winter off. And considering I've still been riding my bike, a light exercise of walking up and down stairs should not have brought about this disproportionate degree of soreness.

No, this is more a tight, sharp soreness, like a blunt force impact. A hard blunt force impact. And most strangely, it's only my left leg, pretty much the entire calf is tight and sore, and a large part of my thigh. Outer thigh. This was not caused by walking up and down 12 flights of stairs.

Would anyone believe if this is related to my accident last month (the SUV hit me on the left side), after which I was totally fine and healthy aside from a few cuts and visible bruises, and was back on my bike the next day?

Is it possible that Armeen nailed it on the head that my psychic reaction was related to control issues? But that the control issues go so deep and profound that my body absorbed the impact and the damage and held it latent in my muscles? Until a good brisk walk up and down 12 flights of stairs (13 really, I was in the basement) was rigorous enough to unleash it? Did I mention that I come from a family of medical doctors? They won't be introducing me to any of their friends in the near future.

Armeen nailed the control issue knowing nothing about my past except for what's posted here, but it's nothing new. I can list past and present behaviors which boiled down to their roots find control seeds germinated. Drinking, for example, started with control, not to lose it, but to maintain it. And suicide, of course, is the ultimate control. Always has been.

An aggressive regimen of Bengay and heating seems to be taking care of this, and it should be gone by tomorrow, and shouldn't stop me from going for a ride today.

"Poetry Corner", a series, by Gage-O:
#2
“Super Fun Time in Wacky Town”
I whoop your ass with stick
ack ack ack!
then I breakdance
then I play Super Mario Brothers

#3
“God’s Other Son”
Sometimes I feel
like God’s other Son
then I tell the
doctor
and he
laughs

January 23, 2002; 11:32 P.M. - My default shot outside my front door, during an electrical blackout. I had just come home from a show at Bottom of the Hill with Sadie, but it was also blacked out and we didn't go in, even though the band was doing an acoustic show by candlelight.

Me, as we headed down 17th Street to the show: Hm, it looks pretty dark down there.
Sadie: We call it "night".

A lot has been going through my mind these past few days about quitting, and . . . I'm not conciously aware of most of it, but I know it's there. I feel good about it, my thinking is less muddled, more solid, more clear, less tortured, less hating, but that's just what's going on up here.

Quitting my job still means something, it's still symbolic, and I'm alright with that. Objective trigger? The objective trigger to quit my job? Like . . . reaching a certain age objective trigger? God, it just fits too perfectly!

I'm very motivated at work because when I walk out on my last day, I want all my cases in order. I want to know that whatever was the product of my work will smoothly transition to whoever is taking it over.

Any one of my files can be opened and anyone will know what needs to be done. I don't want to dump clutter into someone's lap. I don't want anyone walking into my apartment and wonder what the hell all this clutter is.

presenting: "Poetry Corner" by Gage-O (of Sucka Booty Chump fame), a series
("Poetry Corner" was a random series of emails he sent to random people )

#1
"THE LOST FREEDOM"
Our relationship
was like
losing my freedom

It began with
understanding
and
ended with
accusation

ANTS ANTS!
ANTS ANTS!
ANTS ON MY BODY!
ANTS IN MY MIND!
ANTS ANTS!
ANTS!

Is that all?
Isn't that a U2 song? And are those the only words to the song? Because that's the question going through my head, and I hear it in Bono's voice.

Eric: It's the end of an era.
Zenaida: What era?
Eric: pause The Koji era.

Ironic that it was Eric and Zenaida who first came over to my cube when they heard the news, as they were two of the people who made the firm interesting and entertaining, and I hadn't talked to either of them in months. I still love Zenaida, and Eric is still probably the funniest person to walk through that firm's front door.

So, I got a job, proved I could do that, and had a job, and now in a month I'll be done with the job. Mission accomplished. Is that all? What, if anything, is next?

I've got nothing concrete on the glowing green radar screen except a fanciful roadtrip to Tucson, and a cross-country romp in June. And at some point I should clean my apartment.

-----Original Message-----
From: Worker-drone
Sent: Friday, January 17, 2003 3:05 PM
To: Boss-lady
Subject:

Hi Boss-lady,
Can I grab a moment of your free time when you have it?
Worker-drone

I've been trying to nail boss-lady down for an hour. I remember wondering once if anyone would ever blog a suicide. If it were possible, it'd probably be me. Actually, no I wouldn't, that would be too private and it would just be too twisted. I'd better watch it or I'm gonna get myself committed.

OK, I'm gonna do this. I have to do this, if for no other reason, just to do this, to prove I can do this. Why do I play these games and puzzles with myself? Why don't I do what I mean, and mean what I say, and shut up and say nothing? Why is everything shrouded in symbolism or allegory or metaphor or double meanings. I'm not in a fucking movie. Maybe I am schizophrenic. But no, I'm not, I can function, I can tell the difference. Even though when I left my apartment this morning I wasn't about to get on my bike to go to work and give notice. In my mind, I was locking my apartment one last time and head for the beach, and it was just past midnight with the sun rising in the east. I can tell the difference, but it's just some times the barrier between the emotions of my different realities run excruciatingly thin. If I'm just going to work, I shouldn't be having this feeling. Hang on, here goes the roller coaster over the top. Smile and get ready to scream. And smile and scream I will. You have no idea. This isn't hard. This is just a job. But this job isn't unbearable. I can do this. Other people have left because it was unbearable. So why am I doing this? But how would I know if it was unbearable? I'm numb to my whole experience. Isn't that, after all, why I have to prove every once in a while that I can feel, and that the sight of blood is something to fear. What the hell does that have to do with this? Nothing, it's not even right. This isn't about bearable, this is about kicking the comfort and stability that my privileged upbringing has afforded. I don't have it bad at all, in fact I don't have any problems, so go to hell. Leaving life while you're trying to live it is far preferable to floating through it just because it's there. I have a feeling this isn't the last time I'm going to write this entry. . . . alright, I just needed to get that out of my system. *whew* Now I really sound nuts, I'm sure. Here I go. Bravo. Let's get connected. Into the scree, Rael!

dress rehearsal:
There’s a reason why I won't go skydiving or bungie jumping. Because I know that from the moments leading up to it and then actually jumping, in my mind, there won’t be a parachute or a trained professional strapped to my back. Never underestimate the power of imagination on a fragile psychology. Oh yea, and I'm afraid of heights.

get help, you sick puppy!

I just disclosed to Melissa that I dreamt of having a wild make-out session with Katie from upstairs (it always gets wild after someone says, "you don't kiss very hard, do you?"). Melissa pointed out that she saw me talking with Katie by the Fed Ex's yesterday. She then suggested that maybe the dream was really a nightmare about Fed Ex. That would make a whole lot more sense really.

The two ugly projects at work got filed before their deadlines. I didn't give notice today, but I have a legitimately good reason. I still plan to. On Friday. After I take two sick days off. I want to start using my sick days before I give notice, and if I gave notice today, or if I give notice on Friday, my last day of work will be the same, February 14 (our office will be closed on Feb. 17). I'm at 99% committment.


January 15, 2003; 7:47 A.M. - Corner of my bedroom.

That sleeping pattern persists. Frustrating. But I noticed something new this morning. At the point I wake up, my body's clenched like a fist, and when I relax to begin the wallowing in a half daze, my sheets are completely cold, like I had just gotten into them, and I'm freezing. But then that changes quickly, and it gets too hot to stay on one side of the bed too long. ental may or ysical phay? Whoops, ixnay on the ental may.

Methinks me scowl a lot. I need to stop scowling all the time. Why do we scowl? Go ahead, let's make this interactive, scowl at the screen. Give it the scowling of its life. Done? What are you communicating when you scowl?

Scowling is my natural face when I concentrate, so I scowl when I play bass, or ride my bike, or . . . not play drums, I look pissed when I play drums. I'm also hard of hearing, so I probably scowl when listening to people, too. But I also scowl when I'm just walking down the street. Why?

I was just walking around outside forcing myself not to scowl, and it felt weird. It felt . . . placid. Lobotomized almost.

Actually, this reminds me one time when I was walking in Dolores Park, and was apparently looking pretty intense, because some black guy passing by randomly said, "Relax, man, it ain't that bad". That made me smile. I was probably thinking about pizza. Or where to get pizza, rather, since pizza itself generally makes me smile. :D

No doubt I scowl when I sleep.

I'm gonna try to stop scowling. I feel peaceful already.

Sleep has stopped being the refuge it once was. The pattern that has developed is that I fall asleep fine, but I wake up four, five, six hours later, get up and drink a glass of water, and then lie in bed in a half daze until my alarm goes off. When my alarm goes off, I can't quite tell if I had been asleep or not. If I can't even get into the half daze, I'll fully wake myself and sit quietly for 20 or 40 minutes.

I hate fragile sleep. Often while I'm lying there, I will get too hot, and I will slide over to the other half of the bed where the sheets are cold and it will be refreshing until it gets too hot there. Then I will slide back over to the side that has sufficiently cooled. My nights are like that.

I don't know why my sleep should be so disturbed. My mellow cultivating measures of last month have continued and I'm optimistic about 2003 in that I've accomplished my goal of even reaching 2003.

Might it be my impending unemployment? I might just need to get over the hump of giving notice. I've set so many dates for giving notice and steamrolled through them. I may be worried that I won't do it. This time it's different. This time I had an objective trigger, and I reached it.

This time, if I don't quit, that means nothing is going to change in my life and it's not worth living or not living it (I refuse to die if my life isn't worth anything), and all my life is worth is floating through it in perpetuity for its entirety like a zombie.

I'd rather kill my meaningful life than live a meaningless life. I know, I know, if there's meaning in my life, why don't I just live a meaningful life? I don't know, I'm just not programmed to think that way. This isn't supposed to be dramatic, it's just fact.

2003:
After I quit, road trips are in the cards. Road trip to Tucson to see if I like it, swing up to Grand Canyon on the way back. My brother's getting married in June, so I'm thinking of a cross-country dealy, hitting Portland, Seattle, Sheboygan, maybe Minneapolis, Chicago, and Cleveland.

Otherwise? Otherwise the ocean's the limit.

Some things are just too sad to bear. Oolong, rest in peace

I left work listless and directionless as I often do.

I decided to ride down Market to Streetlight Records in the Castro, and to see if the Castro Tower Records had the issue of Pulse Magazine with the Peter Gabriel cover story. They didn't. Will have to go to the Stonestown Tower to get a copy and hope they still have it.

As I rode in the cool evening air, I imagined holes going all the way through my head, front to back, and the wind blowing through, clearing away the negative . . . stuff. stufF stuFF stUFF sTUFF STUFF. I do shit like that. It actually works.

Resonant Quotes:
"To me, those two areas, psychology - I'd say more than psychiatry - and religion or spirituality, have gone hand in hand. In a sense, they're both searches for truth, whether inner or outer. But once religion gets into it and you use organizations to interpret things, for my taste, you start running into a lot of problems and you can lose the truth." - Peter Gabriel, Pulse Magazine, Oct. 2002

"Those who have known death from close up and survived turn into Eurydices: they know that something in them recalls death too clearly and that it is best not to look at it in the face. Like a terrier, like a room with closed curtains, like solitude, death is both horrible and seductive. We feel we might be happy there. All we have to do is let ourselves fall into hibernation. So compelling is Eurydice that sometimes we forget why we should resist her." - The Character of Rain by Amelie Nothomb, pp. 39-40.

"Did I feel disappointed that I was still alive? Yes. Was I also glad to have been taken from the waters in time? Yes. I had chosen indifference. At bottom, it was all the same to me, being alive or being dead. It was only a question of time." - ibid., p. 131.

Boring blog
Boring blog on a log
Boring blog on a log, agog
Log on, boring blog
Log on boring blog, agog
The dog nogged the boring blog

That is all.

Thank you.

Reflections on 2003:
This obsession with the change of year from 2002 to 2003 is probably the result of 2002 having sucked (can I put too fine a point on it?), although some may argue that most of it was just dull and annoying. The final nail in the coffin of 2002 was that ordeal getting out of San Francisco on New Years Eve.

So, what? I started 2003 with family. Very odd. Three full days there was just about my limit, perfect. There was a hint that getting out of New Jersey would be problematic, foreshadowing a sucky 2003, but my flight arrived in San Francisco on time. There was a hint that problems getting new tires on my car after getting a flat last month might also indicate a sucky year ahead, but that turned out alright, just delayed.

Hmm, maybe that's the theme for 2003 - delay. If I have the patience to make it to 2004, everything will be alright and start coming up roses. A) No, I'm tired (sorry, Madoka, but that is a good enough excuse in my book), 2004 is not even a twinkle on the horizon; B) Everything being alright and coming up roses is just not a goal I have.

I kid you not, this was the result:

What Self-Mutilation Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

What the hell is "cutting" anyway?


January 4, 2003; 11:42 A.M. - Cerritos Avenue, St. Francis Wood, San Francisco. Walking in the rich part of town waiting for new tires on my car and my bike to be repaired.

little finds:
Every time I visit my parents, I go exploring through the house to see what relics ring bells. This time I found an old hard cover copy of "The Little Prince", with "4/29/75" penciled inside the cover.

I've owned and given away so many copies of this book, all in paperback. I'll keep this one. Personally, I feel this book can always be given as a gift, even if they have it already. Every time someone gives it to someone else, it means something different. You can't have too many copies of this book. I don't know where this one came from.

The airport experience turned me into a frenzied writer. Writing? Yes, writing, since I didn't have a computer since leaving San Francisco, all of this since then is in writing somewhere. I wrote it knowing I'd be transfering it to computer screen. Why did I need to transfer it to computer screen? How else would anyone else read it? I'm not writing this for my health, dammit!

burning airlines:
I used to fly United all the time. My first flight to Japan in November was booked on United. Missing that flight was my own dumb fault, but the bad memory had me re-booking on Northwest, and what a mess that was. Bastards. For this flight to New Jersey, United has since declared bankruptcy so I booked on Continental. What a mess they made, too. Bastards.

Dear Northwest and Continental Airlines,
Can you please make sure your fucking airplanes work BEFORE you put them on the tarmac? Is that asking too much? Because it's the very least most of us expect. If your plane can't fly, figure that out before you take it out of the fucking hangar.

Continental had me running between the north and south terminals of SFO to get me on another flight. I finally got on another flight. A United flight. From now on, all I fly is United.

It's like all those years of flying United has become expected of me on some intangible plane, a new definition of corporate takeover. If I try to fly something else, nothing good can happen. When the flight was delayed for seven hours, Continental bent over backwards to get everyone else to Newark through Cleveland on other Continental flights. They ran out of seats before they got to me. Like I had "regular United flyer" written all over my face. Go back to where you came from. You're not one of us.

on the air:
It was sunny this time as the plane lifted into the sky, and it flew east over the East Bay. I could make out the spans of a bunch of my cycling courses in San Francisco, Oakland Hills, Berkeley Hills, Contra Costa County, and Morgan Territory. I can't wait to start riding again.

I know this area. I can call it home in a way I can't New Jersey, the "Garden State", for those of you who don't know. So why does it feel like it's killing me? It's like a black hole where I don't belong and nothing good will come to me. Don't answer that, I know the answer. Pathetic. I can leave the Bay Area and do what? Or I can stay and let it kill me?

January 1, 2003: Like, 3:00 A.M.
United did what Continental could not, albeit 4 hours late. If I had booked on United, I wouldn't have been late at all. My brother picked me up at the airport without a hitch, but it was too late to head to Philadelphia to spend New Years with our other brother there. So we just went to our parents' house, all of it ordinary and polite, a subtle forced pleasantry. I played my part and didn't let things get uncomfortable, kept conversation going (the TV was on as backup), and help out and be pleasant.

My father slipped on ice several weeks ago and hurt his back. He isn't getting it treated, so he's still in pain and walks like . . . an old man. Dude is 70, he is an old man, but he's taken up ballroom dancing. He shouldn't be shuffling around like an old man.

We watched New Years in Time Square on the TV. We drank champagne. They are lightweights and the champagne went to their heads and they retired soon after, leaving me to finish the bottle in the familiar silence and smells of this haunted house.

Our family moved into this house 22 years ago. I can only take a very brief inventory of memories and all that happened in this house. I look at us now, and yea, this house is haunted, but in a way unique to each of us.

Exhausted, I pulled my comforter out of the cabinet, turned off the lights and collapsed into bed. Then I turned on the light, hunted down my pen, and wrote all this down. Now, I will turn off the light and collapse exhausted into bed.

Reflections on 2002: 2002 

It all started with that missed flight to Japan, that expired passport, early November. 

I think of all of 2002 as sucking serious monkey ass, but it really was just dull and annoying. But it was at that point, when I first saw the expired expiration date in my passport that things started getting dark (that and Daylight Savings having ended). 

November and December have been my old nightmare, the ones with spiders, demons, and sharks. And mental wards and me. It was only the last two months, but those two months tainted the rest of the year, and not even 10 months of dull and annoying could redeem the year. 

And the result? The end of 2002 finds me trying to "connect, George. Connect".

Partly connect with who I was before, a me I liked, who walked through life outside of it; detached from it, with compassion, and not the negative hater I've become. 

In an effort to make that connection, I've found myself going through the motions of what I should do, might have done, said, think, feel, given circumstances. I'm learning to do the right actions again, and I know the actions are right because I've done them before, but the understanding, the sincerity is no longer there. I need to connect the actions with the understanding on a visceral level. 

But there is something else that I'm trying to connect with that is more elusive. Something about a past life, or a past character, or maybe a past ghost. There's something else out there towards which every fiber of my being screams, "Connect, George. Connect". I'm not sure what it is, so it really is very, very flaky.

<music="start" value="Something's Coming - West Side Story"> 

Could be, who knows? 

There's something due any day 

I will know right away 

Soon as it . . . 

STOP! STOP! STOP THIS, NOW!! 

</music> 

My blog is now making fun of me. 

Happy New Years suckers folks!! 

Reflections on 2002: 2002 in a list of 10: 

1. Moved from Noe Valley to the Mission District. 

2. Started blogging. 

3. Quit the band, Fiction. 

4. Work started SUCKING!. 

5. Weekend riding. 

6. Befriended Sadie after being rejected as drummer for her band. 

7. Getting hit by fucking SUV. 

8. Visited Madoka in Japan. 

9. Peter Gabriel released a new record and toured (finally met Meghan, yay!), yay! 

10. Officially gained born-again virgin status!