30 March 2002 (Saturday)

atticus finch, where are you?

This is terribly frustrating. I'm listening to a 44-second clip of a gorgeous song, and wonder of wonders, a Google search turns up nearly nothing about the band that created it. Maybe they broke up long ago? Met a gruesome end in a back alley of the music industry, beaten and bloodied until their spirit was broken and they went back to their day jobs? I can't think of a happy reason why they have no web presence whatsoever, except in a handful of mp3 playlists and on the audio-samples page of this producer/mixer's website. When a kid's face appears on the back of a milk carton, you assume the worst.

A town, polite, receives you
Could bring you to your knees...

posted by enjelani @ 03:29 PM PST [ link ]

cryptical

Sleep is welcome, like folding your arms around a friend. A body comes to rest. A body in motion, always in motion. Friction, tension. Hair and fingernails: their absence is frightening, and we gladly accept the chore of keeping them tame, on leashes of reasonable length. My brother shaved his head the day before finals. My roommate plays death metal at very low volumes, so as not to disturb me with his suicidal angst.

Two people I know are aspiring to write a novel. One is my father, who has conjured himself the nom-de-plume of Simon Montana, and wants to tell a thinly veiled autobiographical tale about a man who nearly lost it all in a stock-market crash, then came to realize it was a blessing in disguise, awakening him to all that was truly important in life. I haven't the heart to tell him how utterly banal this is. After all, it isn't important. I imagine writing it will be strictly a journey for himself anyway.

The other is a friend who claims I inspired a character in his book, one who rejects all social boundaries and becomes one of the first truly free people to walk the earth. I haven't the heart to tell him how utterly false this impression is. I guess "inspired" can be a loose term, though.

Much of the above is facetious rambling, of course. I'm sleepy.

Sweet dreams, love.
I've been having boring dreams lately. I miss my sprawling black-and-purple landscapes, tsunamis, hurricane winds.
Well -- dramatic dreams, then. Sleep vividly.
Thank you.

posted by enjelani @ 01:55 AM PST [ link ]

28 March 2002 (Thursday)

slip

There was a typo in there. I originally typed "I aspire to me." Which is true, too, actually.

posted by enjelani @ 02:04 PM PST [ link ]

that was fun! let's do it again!

Someday I'm going to wake up in a place of my own, with early morning sunlight streaming through the window by my bed. It's going to be a bigger bed than I have now, and with nicer sheets, dammit. And I'm going to get up and greet the morning, the way I seldom do now, and I'm going to put on my running shoes and slip outside into the slightly dewy morning to go for a run. Because someday I will actually like running. And then I'll come back and take a look around the place and smile, and put on some music, mind-blowing music hopefully, of which I will have a nice solid collection, and think about what I want to do with that corner of the living room. I'm not an interior decorator type, really I'm not. But I aspire to be. Sort of. Well, maybe in the same way that I aspire to be a dancer, and an architect, and a stand-up comedian, none of which have any presence whatsoever in my little corral of talents. But interior decorating can be learned, maybe. Like cooking. Oh, I'll be a good cook too. I'll know how to make sushi.

Someday.

I bet the other engineers around here are wondering how the hell I can be coding this fast.

posted by enjelani @ 01:59 PM PST [ link ]

27 March 2002 (Wednesday)

stream of consciousness

I tried doing this once. I opened a word processing document on my computer and just started typing, without stopping, wondering what my brain would come up with as it scrambled to stay ahead of my steadily tapping fingers. It was kind of disappointing, really -- I always thought my neurons fired a lot faster than that, and with more intriguing interconnects between random subjects, but apparently the act of typing was so thought-consuming that I really had nothing to say. Like right now, I suppose. Ugh. How terribly unoriginal.

>> more...

posted by enjelani @ 09:58 PM PST [ link ]

wee hours

I'm a bad girlfriend. Soren's got some kind of cold/flu thing ("I have a raging headache and I sound like a frog" is how he puts it), and somehow we still managed to stay up until 5 a.m. last night. Talking, as usual. There's something about the stillness of the world at that hour, the dormancy of all usual distractions, that's very conducive to opening one's heart and mind in conversation. In some senses it's my favorite part of the day.

posted by enjelani @ 12:20 PM PST [ link ]

26 March 2002 (Tuesday)

zoom zoom zoom

I am back and have plunged straightaway back into the heat of things. Whooeee. The world does not stand still for vacationers, no sir. Perhaps more later, but for now, a few single-serving updates:

1. A breakfast of catfish-'n-eggs in which the catfish is not quite fresh, combined with being woefully out of shape, combined with a bout of altitude sickness, do not a pleasant uphill bike-ride make.
   
2. A newly discovered talent of mine: puking whilst pedaling.
   
3. Pain and illness are, without a doubt, blessings in disguise. When they come in full force and then finally recede, everything ordinary becomes a miracle. "At this particular moment, I DON'T FEEL SICK! Glory Hallelujah!"
   
4. Southern Utah consists largely of two colors: brilliant orange and brilliant blue. I am utterly in love with them.
   
5. Emmett kept my crawling bicycle pace without complaint, coaxed me into jumping across a crevasse to a stunning overlook of the valley, and let me sleep on his shoulder on the plane. He is a man of great patience and kindness, and I'd trust him with my life.
   
6. Emmett also eats like a hog and farts like a cow. (After figuring out the latter, I claimed the motel bed closest to the window.)
   
7. Emmett can't sing, knows it, does anyway, and I love him for it.
   
8. I don't understand how we can be best friends after so much time apart. I do know that I'm very, very grateful.
   
9. There was a black Muslim bakery at the airport terminal. Uncultured bumpkin that I am, I'm not entirely sure why a black Muslim bakery would specialize in tofu burgers and vegan carrot cake, but damn, those were tasty.
   
10. You know you've been found by the spam harpies when you've got six offline IM messages upon your return, all trumpeting the latest breakthroughs in penis enlargement.

posted by enjelani @ 04:50 PM PST [ link ]