journal, yes?

nocolorworld @ 2008-10-20T01:41:00

2008-10-20T10:02:55Z

The dorms I live in are the farthest 'regular dorms' — as opposed to the 'stick me in the middle of the fucking wilderness, please' dorms — from central campus. That, with the fact that they're all basically strange houses, gives them a really different feel from the other dorms. For one, we're actually closer to the off-campus 7-Eleven than we are to the campus convenience store. So I end up going to the 7-Eleven a lot late at night, because I get the munchies vicariously from being around people who smoke pot all day. Also, all the good food in Commons is closed by 7:00, so if I want anything besides a burger or a piece of lettuce or something I have to eat before then.

Anyways, this intimate relationship with the 7-Eleven. It's run by a Middle Eastern family. They seem pretty nice. As in, they gave free slushies to Reed students at the start of the year. They also never seem to question my clearly-not-21-yet friend's clearly fake Maine driver's license as she buys absurd amounts of alcohol every Friday afternoon; that is, if they card her at all...but I don't know that that really counts as "nice," per se. But I rarely see any of that family anyways. I usually go at sometime between 11:00 PM and 2:00 AM. This Eritrean guy, Yussef, works then.

I take walks every day, and I was out for a night walk with a friend when we stopped by the Sev to grab some drinks and taquitos. We started talking to Yussef, and he turned out to be really intelligent. His accent is really thick - he's only been here a month - but he had a lot to say about AIDS. That's part one.

The next night, I suggested we go back just to talk to him. Apparently he's from the highland of Eritrea, and apparently that's the place to be from if you're from Eritrea because the coast totally sucks. At some point I asked him what the food was like in Eritrea, you know, if they have injeera, and he got all excited because I knew the name of something he eats. He had my friend and I come back behind the counter with him and wash our hands. He heated it up and said some sort of prayer. Then we stood back there, while he helped customers, eating delicious Eritrean food.

It was incredibly satisfying for me. I love the sensation that the world is an infinite web of adventures and experiences, a patchwork of billions of interesting people with quirks and with stories to tell. And I felt so liberated to know that I had the power to break out of my shell and meet someone with these interesting stories. I felt I was blindly embracing everything, and I felt it turned out well. I don't want to sound self-important or egotistical, I'm just happy about it.

nocolorworld @ 2008-07-20T01:45:00

2008-07-20T06:47:15Z

If you want to read [most of] my blog, just friend me. I'll friend you back, and then you'll be able to read it.

Or, if you don't have a LiveJournal, just leave me a comment, and I'll try to come up with something.

I'm sorry about not being able to make it public anymore.

woah!

2008-01-31T03:44:25Z

i was just talking to one of my friends, whose house i went to recently.

it sounds like an insignificant thing, but it made me think. before i had ever been to her house, i had this image of what it was like. what the living room would look like, and what the backyard would look like.

i do this all of the time with places i haven't been to yet. i put them into context for myself by imagining what i think they'll be like. i also do it sometimes with situations, like going out to eat with friends: i imagine what the experience will be like well in advance.

so for everything, i have two things emblazoned in my consciousness; i have the thought of what things really were, and i have the thought of what i thought they would be.

but that's all either one is: a thought. whatever i may have experienced is in the past, just as disconnected from the present - from reality - as the imaginary. i can't reach out and grasp either one, and all that remains of either lies in my memory.

so is either one really more valid than the other?

and another question: is there anything out there better than livejournal? i'd like to start anew, with a brand new blog of sorts.

tuna.

2008-01-25T03:14:15Z

at lunch today, a sudden desire came over me to tell josh about this type of canned tuna i really enjoy. it comes packaged preflavored, and the one i especially like is thai chili flavored. so i walked over to him and asked him if he liked tuna, and he looked very confused. "...yes?" he said, backing away from me. "why?"

no reason, i tell him. there's a brand of tuna i really like. i just wanted you to know.

he chuckles and gives me a strange look. "ok... what brand of tuna?" he starts laughing a little. bumble bee, i tell him. josh starts laughing. somebody behind me, who i guess must of overheard the conversation, asks me if it's honey flavored. josh asks me if this is a practical joke; did i put tuna in his backpack, or something? no, i say, but i can't stop thinking about how absurd this all is. and it's so ironic, considering that all of these people were just a few minutes ago talking about which direction they wipe themselves. i wasn't vexed or anything, i just found it really ironic. so i smile and start laughing.

after that - after the laughter, i mean - it was really hard to get josh to take me seriously. it's a shame, too, because i think he would have liked that type of tuna.

my day felt like it had such great potential, but nothing ever happened. there were too many tests for anything interesting to happen. my day's potential went largely unrealized, like a child prodigy eaten by bears.

maybe it's better this way, though. this way, i can dream up things that could have happened today, and let the wonderful "what if?s" drift ambiguously through my head.

dream sequence.

2008-01-24T02:10:52Z

the following is a conversation i had immediately following possibly the strangest - and certainly the most life changing - dream i have ever had. i initially tried simply retelling the dream in this post, but was not very successful. i had this conversation is a sort of otherworldly euphoria, and i don't feel that i can ever again explain the events (and their effects of me) as correctly as i did then.

with that being said, i have literally changed nothing (except the name of the person with whom i was conversing). thus, please excuse any spelling and grammar errors, or any general sloppiness on my part.

nocolorworld: i had the COOLEST dream last night
nocolorworld: it had northern africans in it, and movies about elephants
[Other person] became active (11:01:14 AM)
[other person]: oh.
nocolorworld: so like, i was in charge of this school event. along with somebody else. and we decided that we'd work it on the honor principle - we'd let people put money in a pile, and then give whoever wanted a ticket a ticket. we thought that people would be so grateful about being trusted that they'd overpay.
nocolorworld: the problem wasn't that people were underpaying, and not paying at all - they just weren't paying in dollars. literally like 1/3rd of the money we had was in moroccan dirhams, and everybody was yelling at each other, certain that the other was causing problems by paying in dirhams.
nocolorworld: i told everybody to calm down, and went to look for people who would except all of these dirhams in exchange for dollars. ah! phone
nocolorworld: excuse me
nocolorworld: ok, yeah
nocolorworld: sorry about that
nocolorworld: anyways, i was getting more and more frantic, because i knew people would be like "well... that's cool. but i won't pay $100 for $100 worth of dirhams." people simply had no use for dirhams, so i didn't even bother asking most people
nocolorworld: as i'm walking past ms. matsu's room, i hear mr. dewey and mr. smith say loudly "oh, so you're african?" they're not angry. they sound happy. they're just speaking obscenely loudly. i look over and see a solitary berber standing in the field, over to the side of school... you know, by ms. krieger's room.
nocolorworld: as i make my way over there, i notice there's more and more of them. probably about ten total.
nocolorworld: i walk up to one and ask him where he's from. he tells me he's from - and then says an arabic country name that i don't recognize (arabic countries always have crazy different names. egypt, for example, is "misr")
nocolorworld: i look at him kind of confused, and he clarifies: northern africa
nocolorworld: would you like some dirhams? i ask
nocolorworld: he suddenly looks very happy, and begins flipping through the dirhams like he's reading a book. yes! yes! he says.
nocolorworld: i decide that this is going well, and i decide to practice my arabic
nocolorworld: so i start "mumkin...
nocolorworld: AH! he yells, very excited! he instantly pulls out a book and begins reading to me in arabic. it's a book of arabic folk tales; i can tell by the pictures it has. it's very surreal, because i can tell he's speaking real arabic - i recognize certain words, and i recognize it when he gives me the date of the story - but i can't recognize the rest. i realize later that that's a really really bizarre thing to happen in a dream.
nocolorworld: the bell rings, and mr. barnes calls to me. he wants me to help him carry things from the media room back upstairs. apparently sashi isn't here today, or something... he's very vague.
nocolorworld: when i go to the media room, mr. barnes isn't there. sashi is hiding behind her projector, giggling. "i'm here! i also didn't really break my leg!," she says. she giggles. "don't tell anybody!"
nocolorworld: i don't even respond, and i run out of the media room again. suddenly, the court yard is very big, and half of it is filled with rows and rows of freezer compartments, like you see in the grocery store.
nocolorworld: ms. krieger and some other people are walking around. they AH! phone!
nocolorworld: excuse me again
nocolorworld: ok
nocolorworld: so anyways
nocolorworld: they demand i come over there. there's something very important, they have to show me, they say. i'm sure it's the berbers. as i come closer, though, i can tell it's not the berbers - one of them, by the way, is still conversing happily with mr. dewey, and the others are standing around awkwardly, looking at their feet or off into space.
nocolorworld: look at this! one of the people with ms. krieger says. all around them are those giant water bottles - you know, like those little cooler bottles, that people get to keep in their houses? they have a way to get water from them, and they store like 5-10 gallons?
nocolorworld: in any case, there's a bunch of those lying about. "do you know the diet coke and mentos experiment?" ms. krieger asks me.
nocolorworld: i tell her yes.
nocolorworld: "we've modified it. we put the diet coke and mentos into these very hard bottles, and then put the lid on. the bottles are too hard to break, and the pressure isn't strong enough to do much. so rather than creating a jet stream, it just spills a little. observe -"
nocolorworld: one of them puts a bottle on it's side and fills it with diet coke and mentos. then they seal it with a lid. it becomes very frothy inside, and then the lid slowly pops off. liquid spills out slowly onto the ground, and they all cheer.
nocolorworld: i didn't find it very interesting, but i didn't tell them that. i just told them that i had to get to class.
nocolorworld: on my way to mr. barnes's class, though, i get lost in the freezer aisles. all of them are filled with either lowfat chocolate ice cream or lowfat vanilla ice cream. they're all almost empty, and inside various carnegie students in jackets and sweaters move the ice cream about meaninglessly. they'll pick up a carton and set it down in a slightly different location, and then move another one. they're not stacking them. they're simply moving them about.
nocolorworld: i suddenly feel an urge to buy low fat vanilla ice cream, and pick up one of the cartons on the ground. i put it in my cart. just then, mr. barnes walks past me with a cart, also full of low fat vanilla ice cream? "shouldn't you be in my class?" he says. he sounds hurt. i apologize to him, and take the vanilla ice cream out. instead, i put a chocolate one in. "there", i say. "much better", he beams. he leaves the cart and skips back upstairs. he stands on the edge, looking out through the caging on the side of the upstairs hallway, and cheers me on. it's like it's a challenge to get to class, and he's my cheerleader.
nocolorworld: an elderly woman asks me where the low fat ice cream is. she assumes i work here. "there" i tell her, pointing no place in particular, and sprint. when i get at the top of the staircase, i turn around. i feel a need to go linearly across - and above - the staircase to get to the main hallway, rather than simply running around the corner. but all there is to carry me across is a little paper ladder. i don't trust it, and mr. barnes has stopped cheering me. i rip the ladder down and run back down the stairs. i circumnavigate the building, running the length of the hallway, then back upstairs, and then the length of the hallway back to mr. barnes's room.
nocolorworld: i run inside, where the class - only half-full - is glued to the television screen. on it, there's a movie where a cartoon purple elephant talks about his experiences with god. disney music - the music from when something romantic happens - plays in the background. i tell mr. barnes that i'm sorry for being late for his class, but he just shrugs. he's too wrapped up in the movie
nocolorworld: "what is this?" i ask. "the shining", he says. i tell him it's not, and he hands me a box. on it, there's a black and white picture of three people - two identical kids, and a mother, all of whose faces are blurred out - eating oranges. i turn to the back and read the description. "a surreal thriller", it says, "about two twins who must find their brother, whom everybody else denies ever existed." i look back at the screen. "that's not what that is!" i say. but by now the movies over, and there's no cartoon purple elephant to prove my point. "sure it was," says somebody else. and then i woke up.
nocolorworld: and even though it all meant nothing, i can't remember a time i felt quite as carefree as i did right then.
nocolorworld: it was a bizarre experience for a bunch of reasons. it was weird that it made me feel so happy and light.
nocolorworld: it was weird that somebody spoke to me in a language i couldn't understand, all in my dream
nocolorworld: and it was weird that - when i looked back at the clock - i had only been asleep for about 10-15 minutes.
[otherperson:] wow.

i have told my body that i need to have more amazing dreams like this. since, i have met a friendly spanish merchant and have been lost in a labyrinth of fire escape stairwells. neither of these, however, have come close to having the same effect on me.

bark.

2008-01-23T02:57:49Z

i wonder if there's a certain type of person who takes joy in having his dogs bark at passers-by. as i walk through my neighborhood, and all of their nasty heads bark loudly at me through chain link fencing, i can't help but wonder how much of their drooling, pointless anger is a reflection of their owner's. perhaps, i imagine, their owners yearn to bark at pedestrians all day, but are afraid of what their neighbors would think of them. instead, they watch gleefully from the windows as their dogs do it for them. if only they knew how many there were just like them.

sometimes, as i turn the corner and start up a new block, i'm confronted by a nasty mutt who growls and snarls at me. as i walk down the block other dogs follow in his lead, barking at me as i pass. it's an invigorating feeling, like i'm moses parting a sea of tranquility and leaving only the chaotic, noisy sea bed. it's like i'm in a surrealist play, or am acting out a performance art piece for the confused old people glancing suspiciously at me from behind their curtains.

but then again, i can't imagine what it's like to be a dog. i find it difficult to believe that the grand plan for an entire species was to poop on people's lawns and to walk about complacently on leashes. i suppose it comes with the title of "man's best friend", "loyal servant" and all of that, but i don't know that that would cut it for me. if i were a dog - and if i thought too hard about crap like that - i think i'd be pretty pissed. and yes, i'd probably bark.

one thing that's been happening to me recently: i see a "beware of dog" sign coming up, and i brace myself for some very violent barking. when i get there, however, there's... nothing. no dog in the yard at all, and sometimes there looks to be an easy way for the dog to get out. it's the worst, most terrifying feeling in the world - at least in a hyperbolic sense. i know the dog is probably just inside, but i can't keep the paranoid feelings from spinning in my head. my eyes dart around nervously, and then i check the bottom of my shoe. i've been checking the bottom of my shoe a lot recently.

to be honest, i'm really unsure that updating this is worth my time. i mean, not if nobody reads it. so if you read this post - and, i suppose, if you'd like me to continue posting - go ahead and leave me a comment. i'd really appreciate it.

back

2007-08-28T02:16:21Z

the a/c at my house blew out and, if i had been younger, i probably would have learned some new words from my dad. after cursing and stomping about, he proceeded to run around the house turning off every light. "it'll be cooler in here this way," he said ,"it's already 78." i'm sure it felt alot hotter to him though; with all the running, all the stomping and all the anger, who knows how much energy he was expounding and how hot his body was getting.

all of this made me curious: how hot was it outside? so i looked at the thermostat: somewhere between 68 and 70. the perfect weather. so, while my dad and my sister sat inside, i went outside and frolicked in the rain. i ran my toes through the grass and stood in a clearing in my driveway as the water fell over me; of course, all i could think through all of this was that i wish there was some creature, some force that created all of this perfection because i would really like to shake its hand.

i went back inside, refreshed. "i'm hot," my sister said, and my dad followed with "me too."
"suckers," i thought.

i bizarre thing has happened to me: when i think about my junior year as a whole it all seems so short, so fast, and so compressed, as though everything occured at once on different layers of reality - yesterday. when i think back to individual happenings, though, they seem so distant. skooter hitting me in the face with cheese, for instance - it seems so far away, and yet it was what? february, at the very earliest? yet junior year seems so recent, as though it shifted forward in time but left all of the events it entailed behind.

i'm updating because someone asked me to - i might be a little rusty, and some of the things came out a little more awkward than they probably should of. i think i'll keep journaling though, and maybe try to have a post a week. that way there's a consistent flow of updates without me rambling daily about stuff that nobody cares about.

"s0 sarah had t0ld me like 2 wks ago tht she was takin pe 5th but she isnt n ms chapman wont change the schedule stupid bitch."

you know, 7th grade xanga shit like that.

i'm also thinking about maybe changing to a different blog server; if i did that, i'd leave an update with a link to the new one.

chrysalis

2007-06-25T03:34:20Z

There I sit, on the banks of the Nile, with sand blowing on me from all directions; specks of dirt and water find themselves into tiny crevices in my face, digging deeper to make room for the next spit of sand; a heat grasps onto the sand, and onto me; it pulls itself closer to me, into me, and as it creeps up my spine I can feel myself melting, becoming one with the sand. So there I sit, this man engulfed in sand, and an alligator crawls up from the water; her teeth motion to me, tell me to retreat, to back away; but I am sand... how shall I do so? So I sit, granulated and amongst myself, and she approaches, closer and closer so that as I await the sting of her teeth she turns, from she to he, from he to pharoh. He stands, says nothing, and yet I can sense his reason from coming.
“Sir”, he says, quietly but menacingly through those teeth, teeth that, although now of men, glare with the same frightful power as the alligator’s teeth, “your services are required.” At first the meaning of these words escape me, but as a fog of sand lifts I see his creation behind him - on the other side of the Nile - on the side of civilization. There it lies... stands?, his creation: a chaotic shape which I do not quite recognize... Next to it, on a ladder, stands a man, stretched the height of the strange... “thing”, for lack of a better word, or even concept, to further identify it. The ladderman then, gracefully, puts in the final block, completing it... a sphere! Perhaps I exclaimed this outloud, or perhaps somebody else, closer to the sphere, thought it a little too loudly; in any case, the sphere recognizes that he is a sphere and, recognizing his duties as one, rolls - away, to the ocean perhaps - never to be seen again.
Yet as fast as it all happened yet again is it gone; I am left - like the others - sphereless, facing the pharoh. “What do I do?” he whimpers. “My problem, right there, is one you can understand more completely now. Thirteenth time this week; they keep rolling away.”
“Just as the spheres recognize that, as spheres, they must roll I realize that, as a wiseman, I must say something, short yet perplexing, that appears to solve the problem.” “So,” I say, “As sand, I granulate. As sphere, I would roll.”
This grand society, the foreverlasting Egyptians, has sets of rules which we must abide to. Not just the humans or even the living; but the dead, the neveralive, and the concepts. It is this firm commitment to the rules, this unquestioning obedience, I attempt to summarize in my ten words, that creates our humanity. It is, in fact, the name and the rule that comes with it which brings the rolling, not the shape.
Perhaps in saying this I implied that the pharoh must rename something which already had a chosen name; perhaps I had broken the rules, because the sand bites back at my eyes and, as I open them, gone again is the pharoh, replaced by the alligator. Her teeth scream at me this time, “You’ve broken the rules!”, and I can see the anger at my filthy idea. I can feel the guilt inside me at making this moralligator so upset; but no time for that now. As she eats me, my legs first, I find myself to be the alligator; inside her, I think like her. Then, my next words: “Let’s compromise.”
That is to say, I told her to build another sphere. So she became he and he became the pharoh and the sphere, recognizing his potential, rolled away. Then, as the weather broke the rules set up for it in Egypt, it began to snow. The pharoh, angry, slammed himself against the ground. And the world shook and the air conditioning blew on me and the world stopped shaking at I hit my head on the seat.
Like this I awake, the air conditioning blowing on me, cold, the bus lurching forward. The stop has come as the bus halts so rapidly that all those, the ones who would get off, are thrown sideways, into the aisle into a neat line, then down the aisle, then once again sideways out onto the street. I see the chairs of thsoe who jugst got off; seats ready to throw me off when my time has come to leave... so I alone gather my things, my self, and move both to a throwseat where I shut my eyes. But what if, in closing my eyes, I have given the bus the idea that he is no longer watched and judged so the bus, now free, drives himself onto the sidewalk? Squinting, I see everything in order, so I shut my eyes, shut myself out and, unwatched and unjudged the throwseat forgets his place and leaves me there, unthrown into a neat line in the aisle as we stop. I do it myself, the throwing that is, through the door, onto the pavement, into the rain.
I take out my map, the blank sheet of paper , and I mark two points; draw a line through them: the one point where I am, the other where I will be, should I follow the line. But, as I turn the paper as does the line, my path becoming dizzier. So I stop, sit, on the fountain in the traffic circle, and so great is the rain from the sky that it leaves indentations in the fountain surface after it hits; indentations for the fountain rain to fill. A man, like me but with an umbrella, sits down beside me, hunching over as the rain he clearly hates bites agains him, mocking him and his raincoat. He spits, his own little bit of rain to hit the ground, then cursels the sky rain. He looks, makes sure I’m watching (for a reason I’m not sure of), pulls out a cigarette and lights it. Hit by rain, it goes out; he relights it, it goes out, he relights it and it goes out as he spits as he curses the water falling down ontop of him and his cigarette. Then, composing himself dignifiedly all while grunting, he speaks harshly: “So, uh, you except Jesus?” But I don’t look at him, only at the map; I nod, shake, and tilt my head, ignoring him - maybe - and try to follow the evermoresmeared line with my finger.

the ant

2006-12-10T22:46:50Z

the walls of my shower are some sort-of slick stone, or maybe plastic; the kind of material that basically has no friction. anyways, today i'm taking a shower and i see this ant in the corner, trying to climb up the walls, but failing because it's so slick. he makes it a millimeter or two before sliding back to where he started.

so anyways, i have no idea how this ant got there, but it's been there for about a week now. i never really paid much attention to it because i'm rushing to take a shower in time to catch the bus, but today i wasn't feeling rushed so i got some time to think. and here's what i thought: all those religions out there that stress that killing is bad; they do it to get rid of cruelty, right? like buddhism, for instance, where you have to take a vow to never kill anything... the point of all of that is to keep you from hurting other creatures, right?

well, here's ant. who knows where it came from, but let's be realistic: it's going to spend the rest of it's life there. if i was the kind to squish insects it would be dead already, or maybe it would have been washed down the drain; or, if it managed to avoid all of that, perhaps i would just keep struggling to get up the walls until one day it just flat-out died. and what's really more cruel, anyways? letting this ant suffer, struggling up the walls for the rest of its life, or just killing it, right there, on the spot?

well, this whole situation was a dilemna for me because, although i absolutely despise being cruel to anything, i'm not the kind of person who likes to just go about putting an end to other thing's lives. maybe that's weird. yeah, it probably is. but that's me.

so, after thinking about that for a while, it hits me: i can pick up the ant, and put it on the counter! and then, once i'm all out of the shower and dressed and the like, i can take it and put it outside. the ant will be alive, and it'll get to experience the way the world is supposed to be; that is, not trapped in my shower.

as i tried to pick up the ant, it died. it's not that i was being careless or anything; it's just that the ant was so small that i was literally millions of times bigger than it. so i washed it down the drain where, let's be realistic, it was going to have ended up anyways.

perhaps i should have used a paper towel, and let it climb onto that. in any case, writing this has inspired me to be listening to the music i'm listening to.