Why should today be special. It’s just Monday, it didn’t rain or anything.
I listened to our song. It HURTS. I love you and I miss you.
I don’t want to be one of those people who compares all future relationships with this one.
Why the fuck did you think I would want to know about your new boyfriend?
He won’t love you. Not like I have. He doesn’t dream about you. Not like I do.
Why did I have to type your name into facebook and see my favorite picture of you?
i’ve been thinking about my ex. Who shouldn’t be my ex. He should be my right now. But things happen. He loves someone else. How pompous to think that the second you’re over it is the second I’m over it too. So, now that you’ve got some random bitchy little fag at your side you can just show up and you and I can be close friends with nothing else.
Why did all this appear today?
Dear Aunt M,
I didn’t know you. I mean, I knew your face and name and that you were Mama’s sister and you knew my face and name and that I was her grand-son, but there wasn’t anything past that. I don’t know if you ever found out about how you died. It was on the news.
It was your husband, G. I don’t know why he did it, but the same string broke in him that broke in an unusual amount of men in that side of the family. One day, while you were in bed with your emphysema and Alzheimer’s he scooped you up in his arms and carried you outside into the summer twilight and laid you on the dark, warm lawn. Then he shot you. I don’t know why. I know that for more than fifty years he loved you more than anybody loved anything. So, it wasn’t the real him that did it. But, he shot you. Then he shot little J, y’all’s nine year old grandson. He was running and screaming like he does and G shot him. I’m sure he’s not so autistic in whatever place you are now, but I wouldn’t tell him what happened anyway. He doesn’t have to know these things until he’s older.
After G had done these things he sit down in a lawn chair beside were you were laying and shot himself in the heart. Then he dropped the gun and followed you two.
What most people still here said at the funerals was the worst part was that your daughter, D, saw it all. That’s how I know these things. She told S who told Mama who told my mother who told me while I drove her down to Norcross so she wouldn’t be alone that night.
I watched a reporter on TV stand in your backyard while I ate left-overs.
I’m sorry you were killed. I don’t know why it happened. I hope that were you are now you can breathe easily and that your short term memory has returned. And I hope you’re with G and that you can both see through the frail, mortal, misery that rotted out his heart for that one moment. The way Mama talks about you I know you couldn’t resent him.
You’re buried near R., who I called Granddaddy. If he’s there with you when you get this letter, please, tell him I love him. And that his wife, G, who I call Mama, didn’t break when he left. Tell him that she’s made of stronger stuff than stars, and that we all look up to her. And that when she leaves to be with y’all that it might be us that break.
With love, your grand-nephew,
Joshua
A dim unpleasantness shined on by the kindness of an actual Christian. Yes, they exist. Not the blabbering, angry, greedy and hateful bunch you see on the 700 and at my family’s holiday dinners. But the real ones, those people who’s kindness and love for their brother and sister homo-sapiens is a true testament to human potential.
I have high hopes that the two foreign countries I held in my hand on the bus this morning may one day light that candle in each other.
In the course of inhuman events we find the smallest gestures do nothing that the gesture entails. Kindnesses are like oases in Sahara days. And they tell us this: I’m on your side, I root for you, we are allies.
I wrote a letter, it’s here. I need to find pleasant things to include in the envelope as the letter itself is a bit heavy. Not heavy like weight, heavy like Marty McFly says HEAVY.
There are two people here that I would have known anyway if my life hadn’t changed. I mean, I know ‘em now, but I would have known them anyway.
Would I still have come to Columbus is my path had directed me toward Dacula High? Would I still want to be an artist? Would I have known all the same love and childish enterprise Flowery Branch gave me?
Would the group of athletes have yelled “We don’t want queers at our school!”? Would I have had that beer bottle thrown at me from a moving truck?
Would it have been worse?
Bless (v.t) 1. To make or pronounce holy; to consecrate
Halloween is a-comin’. Light a candle for the vampires and witches and autumns lost.
Love is a-foot.
Filed under: Blogging
There’s not time to do anything related to what I want. It’s all other things and I’m too far away to get any of the good stuff.
to ten-thousand fireflies
I’m weird ‘cause I hate goodbyes.
What do I ever do with myself. How lame is THAT? It’s in this place that I get yelled at so much. In this place mentally.
I don’t know anything about Roman Mosaics. Nor do I care to.
There, I said it.
There’s not time enough here to do art. It’s all work for other classes. I paid for an art degree damn it. Not a mental baby sitter making sure my thoughts don’t run off somewhere interesting.
Suite-mates too loud. Really.
Teachers ought to give me more time for assignments. Stress is born of fear. Fear is a powerful ally in controlling others.
Filed under: Blogging | Tags: adoption, blog, Blogging, blogs, bob dylan, bullshittyness, college, dylan, family, gay marraige, homosexuality, journal, journalling, journals
"Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’."
-B. Dylan
I’m not going to write the blog about gay news. I can’t handle it. The more I read news about gay issues the more depressed I feel. My kind is so fickle and tiresome. If It’s legal for me to get married when I’m ready for it, then I will, if it’s not, then I won’t.
The argument that the other side has about how gay men are so carelessly promiscuous that they wouldn’t know what to do with marriage even if they had it is honestly a pretty reasonable stance. Not that it hold water according to the law of course, nor is it reason enough to withhold the rights.
Still, I have a hard time disagreeing.I’ve realized something about myself. It’s weird and strange, but I hope this feeling stays: it’s more important for my life to have a family than a romantic relationship. I mean, I’ll always want significant, loving male companionship, but I realize when I think about being older all I imagine is myself making art and being a father. Not that I’m about to run out and adopt me some kids, I can hardly take care of myself, much less children. But, in the future, that’s the plan. (Projected ETA for Pseudo-Spawn: Approx. 30 years old.)
Geeze, all this talk of the importance of family, I guess I am a Jarrett after all.
I’m almost done with Physical Journal #5. It’s exciting, my ex, David, bought it for me on Halloween last year. He’s gone but the volume remains. Good trade off.
When taking this picture I noticed that it smelled like age and knowledge and bookishness and fall leaves and love. This has made me happier than anything else.
I think it’s the best journal I’ve ever owned. It’s certainly see some of the most difficult moments in my life.
Other notes about the photo: hooray for library and big headphones.
My hands smell like cigarettes. I sort of smoke now… everyday. I haven’t bought any though, I just bum from friends. I feel less guilt than I should for this.
Feeling like I want to do Gay Blog Thing, but not sure if I have the time to devote to it. If I feel strongly about some gay issue, I’ll write it here. Save time.
A friend let me borrow his fish eye camera, so, when those are developed i will post them here. Should be exciting.
There’s a possibility that I’ll start a news opinion blog soon, and just leave this thing as an art/personal blog.
Just a thought. There’s some… interesting things happening in the world and especially regarding gay rights and my thoughts and feelings about such things are ringing loudly in my head.
hmmm
So full of frustration and anger and everything nasty I don’t have anywhere to put it so it ends up directed at other people and they, like the predictable mammalian vertebrates they are, draw away from me. This fills me with hate and anger. Repeat.
This is my high school experience. Also, it seems, my college experience.
And here’s the song I associated with the most destructive person I ever met.
I hate being so separate from other people. I like this blog though, it’s like writing in a journal, but public, but unread. It’s soothing.
The way I write here is different than in the journal. In the journal I think it’s more forced.
Here, it’s sporadic.
My room mate is pretending to be asleep here in his bed near my desk. He resents me. I’m resenting him too.
I miss Flowery Branch. The cool orange light of my street.
The quiet feeling of my wood, the trees will be turning right now.
I don’t feel cut out for much.
College should be this: Stress – from classes. Positive Energy – from friends.
How is it that some one as universally disliked as myself can still waste time with friends to avoid homework?
Fuck I’m tired. But Room Mate makes so much noise coming home that there’s no point but to go to bed after he arrives. I feel so alone. Drunk people are outside screaming slurs and slurring screams. I wonder if they smile this much without chemicals in their brains…
Friend I Rarely Talk To is right. I do need a hug.
BTW, no one cares, but this is my fiftieth post.
The most surprising thing about the antlers was how much it bled when one was broken off. The blood was hot and it splashed red over my ear and shoulder. Why are the people most unwilling and unable to fight given arms and forced to? I looked up at my opponent in the blue, he’s younger than me. He was smiling. He was smiling because he won and he broke me and I was bleeding. There was no point to this contest.
The grass around the clock tower was green and short and coarse, and for a moment I registered the brown dirt beneath. The shock and pain arrived then. My vision went fuzzy and dark and I vomited, and I could still feel him looking at the back of my head, content and pleased with his work.
That morning I woke up and something was wrong with the world. Grass grew up in the halls and all the architecture was stones and living rock. I walked barefoot through the trees and my friends and comrades commented on the antlers growing out between the strands of long brown hair on both sides of my head. I sat on the parking deck and looked at the water tower, and thought about fighting. There’s no one anywhere who’s really worth fighting, not in this context, not when the world had grown so quiet. When everything we were and built started drifting backwards and sideways.
I have dreams of orca whales and owls but I wake up in fear. There’s no framing for the fear, it’s irrational but it’s there.
I get up, get dressed, and there are antlers growing from my skull. Not stumpy ones either, biggish ones, a little like an adolescent stag. I immediately know what they’re for, fighting. Why am I being armed? What quarrel are these bone knives here to resolve?
The day passes normally. I ride the bus; I drink orange juice; I sit in class. Everyone has about the same situation as me. I see plenty of other students with horns or antlers, each dealing with it in their own way. Most of them felt the same peace and normality about the whole thing that I did. There were a few though that didn’t take it as well. One boy just denied that he even had them. We pointed and showed him and held up a mirror, all he said was that didn’t care if we had antlers, but he “wasn’t like that.” Another group just tore off all their clothes and ran into the forest. We never saw them again except late at night standing in the road and looking nostalgic and terrified.
I recline on the steps of the clock tower and watch my peers go about their day, some moving in safe groups, others out on their own, and a few of them in pairs. I was jealous but I’m not sure of whom, the ones in pairs or the ones choosing to be alone, their antlers the largest and strongest.
My opponent approaches me in the summery haze, I recognize him immediately. I understood those tender limbs and quick eyes in an earlier time, but that time is now over. This is why he wants to fight: he lied to me and I rejected him.
We clash. We beat and bite and converge. Blood and sweat and it’s over quicker than you’d believe. I should have won but I didn’t; my horn is broken. I want to gather up the pieces but they sicken and terrify me, so my roommate does.
I survive but I’m very badly injured. The antler begins to grow back; it is covered with a thin membrane of soft skin called velvet which will supply blood and oxygen to the maturing bone. When it gets large enough the velvet will shed and the horn will be revealed, dry and lifeless. It’s only considered finished growing and mature once it’s dead.
Today a college student woke Himself up before Noon
Just to be awake and Watch the sun come Up.
Years ago he did this
In
The
High
Hills,
But now his cliff is a parking deck; his vista,
Four Church Steeples lit by diffracted orange light.
We’ve never seen YOU before, says the First Steeple,
But, surely you’ve come to see US.
“Nope,” he says,
“I’m here
For
The
Sun.”
Silly! says the Third Steeple,
The Sun is ANOTHER ONE of our Spectators. It lights US.
“No, She is not,” says the freshman says (without gusto),
“Light touches you same as it touches me.”
The Sun then shone
From
The
Tree
Line.
Our Greatest Admirer is Finally here!
The Fourth Steeple can barely contain itself.
See our Flying buttresses, our great gargoyles and iron crosses.
We are the greatest structures in creation. Rejoice!
But the Sun
Didn’t
Give
A shit.
