matttoddphoto's Xanga

Bar, this is Kamikaze

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:20:21 GMT

The Misadventures of Andy Fennelberg

Like any other Wednesday afternoon, Andy set off from his flat in midtown to his favorite spot for a drink. He'd order a pint of Adams and sit around waiting for his buds to arrive and chat. Most of his friends worked until early evening so he spent a great deal of time waiting on nobody in particular until 6 or 7 o'clock. He didn't mind this, being alone was comfortable and enjoyable sometimes, and even then he always had the company of The Who to move him into rhythmic thought and introspection, and occasionally, deep remorse and drunken rambles.

He was especially good at drunken rambles. He'd become known as the Pilot around the bar due in part to his amazing mid-air acrobatics and the way he always seemed to fly himself right into silliness. Andy wasn't completely oblivious to this fact, either, and even began to announce his downward fall into drunkenness with a memorable phrase, "bar, this is kamikaze!" to signify his committal to irreparable liver damage and probable social inadequacies.

His friends never did anything to stop him, it was always a good laugh. By the time they'd all arrive, Andy would be slurring his words, feeling less of his joints, and seeing double; it's almost as if this was the only Mr. Fennelberg they'd ever known. Mike Schoemacher and Deryl Valens had actually known Andy for almost 6 years, and Sam Didier for 4. To them, Andy was a good guy, funny, whimsical, almost dream-like, barely even touching the Earth: one had to consciously recall Andy to even remember he existed in reality. He was ghostlike in more ways than one: his eyes were dark, almost but not quite sunken, his skin pale as death, he was skinny and his joints creaked like hinges on coffins, but mostly it was his words. They were haunting, disturbing, cold, yet uncannily humorous, friendly, occasionally sharp-witted, and prescient. It was more than one time Andy pierced the hearts of his patrons, the visitors to his slurry, hanging reality.

More (maybe) later...

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 06:15:32 GMT

sometimes i fail to see
the shardlings inside of me
my mine a splintery, spiraling grave
magnificent if only for chaotic
yet ordered
violence and fear.
sometimes i see
the green and red and orange and purple
the sharp the soft
what's far and near
and that thing that looms
so dear so near.
minds wander and cross roads
to meet, make inroads
on conflicting subjects and hurtful thoughts
what i'd like to say and what she'd rather not.
triangles and squares reflect the lairs
or expose the rare mind within that fucked up skull —
a rotting victim to their own device.
we shouted across fields in order to whisper our sentiments,
blather, really.
vomitting insults and lathering praise
all served one purpose
to get fucking laid.
but conflicts burst, shatter ones mind:
conflicts create what we all want to find;
comfort in hate, love in fear,
a wonderous journey through tears and smirks
and fists and jabs
and words with sharp edges
and blunt meanings
that all tear and destroy.
we like it.
but it didn't help us get fucking laid.
so we rebuilt reality once more;
fashioned it to a model of something a bit more eclectic:
love everywhere.
but it was, of course, shallow, and cheapened.
we soon hated love, honestly.
it hated us, anyhow, right?
and still sometimes i fail to see
what it all meant to me.
what did it all mean to be
loved and hated, disgraced and distrusting.
filthy, no, atrohphied minds shatter in the end,
and i still fail to see.

Immortality

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 18:07:26 GMT

I was reading an article about Atheism and immortality and I had some thoughts that I wanted to record, if for nothing else but my own benefit. (I hear writing while thinking can be productive, sometimes.)

I am under the impression that when we die, our bodies are gone and that we cease to exist. That's my reality, and I think that is everyone's reality.

In reading the article, though, I'm surprised (or alarmed) at how many Atheists believe that there is some form of life after life, or some form of soul. I kind of like the idea of a sea of consciousness that we all share, and that we continue to exist only in that our collective consciousness continues existing after our instance of life is finished, but I don't actually think that it's true.

What I do find compelling about immortality is that it can be portrayed or executed in a number of ways: through living forever on earth in human bodies, or possibly in simply having our memory carry on through whatever means. I'm acutely inclined to believe that the only way we can assure ourselves immortality is to produce information, knowledge, or impacting innovation that attracts or compels others in some or fashion, such as written language, song, and possibly even memory.

Inspiration is one form of immortality, to some degree: to be inspiring or to be inspired requires influence from an outside source to change ones ideas or to create new ideas, potentially creating or associating something lasting... potentially immortal.

A black man was able to gather a group of millions and give his thoughts to them in front of the White House, compelling them to push forward for their rights as a people... that created his own immortality by a special day we celebrate for him, by changing humanity in the general, changing how lives are lived, how society treats its members, etc. Immortality means change.

Creativity and inspiration are two of the most awkward, rewarding, beautiful, ugly, exhausting, maddening forces in all of existence, and to become creativity for someone or to be inspiration, in their own creation and inspiration, allows us to become immortal.

At least, that is how I believe immortality works.

I hope that what I say, how I think, how I lived (parts) of my life will compel and inspire some, and will last until they're found to be completely and ultimately destructive, and maybe even after that. I hope to have inspired someone to create in some fashion, be it through a web application, a book, a picture, a painting, a word, a number, a view, a philosophy, a frame of mind, or even a way to talk. I hope my creativity in my life will extend forever, or at least until it doesn't matter anymore.

Because, you know, things will eventually stop mattering, and then immortality just becomes a burden.

M.T.

yet darkness

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 03:43:11 GMT

darkness / darkness
blackess,
engulfing my eyes.
not that they mattered anyways —
but the tingling
      in the tips of my fingers
has faded... drained out slowly.
a head crash,
distorting reality
into reality,
bending what i see
         with what should be
and back to what is —
it scares me.
and fucking synapses are
shaking and jerking violently
at the inputs / stimuli wreaking havoc
on my mind —
and how i feel not making sense of sense.
yet darkness
         continues
   (consuming),
now at will... willingly... almost exerting myself into destruction —
such quiet, sedated destruction.
— yet darkness

fracture & 784

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 04:49:26 GMT

plain, white sheet

a canvas for my thoughts

with lines dancing and entangling themselves

in a sort of sexual exploration,

erect with excitement.

the sheet becomes glass

and lines become cracks —

fractures beginning subtly

but erupting into

          violent clashes

   with word

      and thought

         and (literary) device

a musical interlude into the     (soul)

and random pauses dotting where

            thoughts could've

   exploded

but where meaningless creates its home.

the focal point

               a

      single

point of reference,

   my fist meeting glass

   (and the splinters finding paths to the edges from this point)

i find to be most entertaining

'cause it fucks your mind up

to look at it —

my words piercing through the next

as if to create meaning

   void of meaning

but eyes leave pages

grasping for self and familiar things

only to find alien experiences —

   words becoming experiences

each vein cutting through the glass

   becoming yet another

         fucking

thought to throw our minds around

which makes us more alive

— fracture

Samantha

Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:54:05 GMT

hey hey troublemaker
why don't you shut up
and open your mouth for a moment
let those beautiful lips flutter
for a moment let that tongue fly

your quiet, timid ears
raucous innovations for quiet contemplations
a hidden debris amongst your hair
flowing, growing upon the stars, your eyes

brilliant synapses dancing upon those nerves
tingling, struggling, understanding
a breath or two too short for my own hue
speak softly, shut up and yell

i'm tired, you're tired, i'm tired of you
i'm tired of you're quiet
speak up and shout, quiet darling, shut up and yell
— Samantha

Stare or Suicide Note

Sat, 19 May 2007 21:14:26 GMT

     All her life, some twenty odd years of it, her eyes had always been her most striking feature. Not necessarily because of their beauty, though they were beautiful, nor for their power in perception, which they were quite the tool for, but simply for the fact that they never stayed focused on anything for longer than it took to recognize shapes and lines and forms. Most saw it as a sign of her own uncomfortability, and often really only noticed when their eyes made contact, but then that contact was broken so suddenly. They saw it as a sign of her instability, which was actually a simple mischaracterization. In her work and life, though her eyes never rested even for a moment, her mind could focus, and her communication was coherent, if not expert. For those that knew her, they grew accustomed to this peculiarity, this tick, they assumed.
     And today, unlike any other day, unlike any other time she sat in her car on her way back home from a long day at work, she looked about, ever changing focus, ever seeing a shape, then another shape, then a line, then a form, then an idea. But this time, something caught her so off her guard, if there was even a sense of a guard, that stopped her suddenly... to a stare.
     It was early in the evening, and to be sure she had plans for later. Her mind, though, was never too unfocused or wandering elsewhere from her present task as to be so shocked by something she had not seen. In fact, it had never happened before: she had seen just about anything and everything in her field of view. The sun was just beginning to fall, and the beams of light were highlighting the crowns of the trees and the puddles from the earlier rains. She was driving at a constant speed very close to the legal limit, which wasn't very fast at all. The bright green yards, nourished by the unusual amounts of nitrogen in the air, were soothing, if not entertaining in the simplest of senses. Children were out playing, strangers were walking down the sidewalks, cars passing by, clouds soaking up some of the light, still heavy with more rains to come, the smell of the fresh cut lawn: all of these things she'd noted, and more.
     But this single thing which she had not noticed, a thing which baffled her, was her own death.
— M.T., Stare

Fuckers:

     This I write as my time comes to an end. I do not regret but a handful of things, one of which is not waiting for something a bit more natural to end my life. But, in reality, we all end our lives at some time or another. I let myself die when I stopped caring, and being cared for. There is no life without connections, and I have let my connections rot and waste away, as is my own volition towards.
     I'm sharing my final thoughts with you, or rather, the thoughts that I compose before my final thoughts, because I think you might care to know why I am leaving. But really, the truth, the reality, is that I want to know myself, and to know why I do this. Every day I've done this to myself: I've sat and thought about who I was and who I wanted to be, I cried over who I was and hated who I wanted to be. But who I wanted to be was not even close to reality, or the reality with which I wanted to form around me, and the layers with which I wanted buried. There was a disconnect between the end result and the time now, and I couldn't connect the two. At one time or another, I determined that this was, in fact, where my life had ended, when there was no connect. Perhaps this has been evident to you, or perhaps it is totally incomprehensible. Regardless, life has been severed from me, and that is why I must dispose of this shell and disentigrate into nothingness.
     I'm certain this will find you strangely: writing this has produced a bit of a strange feeling over myself, or whatever is left. Release, certainly, but also anticipation for a final chapter to be concluded, and yet another chapter, in complete parallel, from another source, to be yet opening. I am only a piece, though a fractured, fucked up piece. I am glad to find myself at wrest, this constant, violent vibration within my self has torn me asunder and left me to rot.
     I don't regret whom I've known, nor what I've done. I am quite happy to be quite mad, and quite mad to be quite happy. I've explored my edges and my core, I've delved through the layers and produced only meat and sin and barrenness. I am comfortable with calling this my life, and having it narrated to emptiness. I would prefer to be known as "your crazy relative: he wasn't connected to reality". Reality was fucked up anyways, or at least what I saw of yours. Perhaps you're crazier than me.
     Regardless, let me say my farewells.
     To the women I've ever loved, fucked, or wanted to fuck: die well.
     To those who have ever loved me, I pity your waste.
     To those who showed me a piece of their own reality, I thank you for expanding my own.
     To those who have shared in contempt or love, continue.
     To those who have hated, explore yourself.
     To my relatives, be at peace, or whatever it is you choose, for it will be with you until you die. I never regretted you, only the time or lack of time we spent together, battling it out, or just plain fucking things up.
     To my friends, be well, and be yourself. Life is exactly what you want it to be.
     To strangers, fuck off.
— M.T., Suicide Note

Perhaps this blog will be fiction, if I ever write in it again. Perhaps it always has been.

Ends are so bizarre, anyhow. Things never really ever end.

inspired/tired or I Like The Edges or Layers and Frames

Fri, 11 May 2007 01:15:35 GMT

I'm tired, yet I have a fleeting sense of careless inspiration. My mind's finding branches and following, taking dips and dashes, abrupt leaps and gradual descents inward and unward and aroundward. A nucleus of reason and order exponentially, at least at first, until the values become erratic in and of themselves, start to converge and convolute into obscenity to rationale. A mirror striking itself and finding a reasonable shattering in the middle, but finding patterns and imagery and strange notation amongst the edges.

I like the edges.

It is time for you to shatter, to start a story and let it unwind itself. Embrace the edges of sanity and explore your own self. Create me a narrative, truth or fiction (or both, depending on the layer and the frame), with your own words and thoughts and experiences. Make it short, or make it long. It doesn't matter, but tell me a story, and dance along the edges.

If you have a hard time figuring out where to start, here are two ways to start...

A boy ran across the yard, watching her eyes. She was great...

One foot left the rubbery tubing, and the second flailed behind it. There was a moment's breath...

trickling / stroking, frigid fingers

Fri, 11 May 2007 01:04:33 GMT

Apologies for the lack of a followup, but I was summoned for Jury Duty last week and was fairly busy and tired for the majority of the week.

On the case, a man was accused of armed robbery, aggrevated assault, hijacking a car, and kidnapping. Fortunately for him, there was not enough evidence to indicate that he was connected with the crime, so our verdict was that he was not guilty to all four accounts.

The interesting part was in the deliberations; a middle-aged white male indicated that he thought he was guilty on three of the four accounts. (Obviously he was swayed in the end, but only through some legal technicalities.) What was most concerning about his decision, when he was asked to persuade the rest, was his simple statement that he was convinced without a doubt that he was in fact guilty, and that we should just "look at the evidence". In fact, that's about all he could say, except when he showed a bit of his conception of reality by expressing that the man looked guilty, or at least that he would do something like it, and that his eyes gave it away.

Eyes give away a lot; in his eyes, we saw fear, unfounded fear.

He was facing life. I'm glad he is not going to jail. He might not be completely clean or without fault, but at least he wasn't punished for something he did not do.

From a postmodernist's view, that is, someone who is aware of the layers of reality, it's interesting to see someone unawares of the many layers and contexts in which layers shape themselves. By interesting, I mean also scary yet, as always, enlightening. We create our own realities, and they are a function of our experiences and how we interpret those experiences. I've always been a little more aware of the meta of the thing than I have of the thing; if you find yourself discovering patterns and such in what you're doing, I'd bet you're nearly the same way as I am.

This man, I've decided, was not at all aware of the meta, of patterns, or of any reality but his own imagined.

It didn't surpise me that he was a believing man, and by that, I mean that he was Christian. This was one of the scary ones, though; the kind that interpret things in light of the Truths of God as He has given him and has taught him through Divine Wisdom, that he is right in all he does because God is his teacher, and that his Faith in what he believes to be his understanding is right without question; his Heart will Lead him To The Truth.

I don't have a problem with someone who is a Christian; you know that. What I have a problem with is when they allow their Christianity or any faith of theirs, or even their non-faith, to stop their own thinking and simply make them a robot to an idea. I think that's an accurate way to describe it, but I cannot be sure. Perhaps it's right because of the image of being programmed to behave a single way in certain circumstances (and crash in others) is what I'm after. Perhaps.

There's a difference to being whole-heartedly committed to learning and exploring and knowing than to programming yourself to behave a certain way. It's easy to program myself to say "it's in the layers, dude", but that's ridiculously shallow and doesn't really explain anything; there is a lack of effort, of exploration, and of self.

A lack of self. How can you lose self? Can you lose self at all? Is self a layer itself? Or perhaps it is a meta-layer, or a combination of layers. Can you lose self by not being aware of the layer of self, by focusing too much on the layer of faith or religiosity?

Is self a layer?

trickling
stroking, frigid fingers
sharp but gentle
piercing through a visage
to an essence of lust
and love
of lust —
and...
no, that's it

Some plans were made and rice was thrown
A house was built, a baby born
How time can move both fast and slow
Amazes me
And so I raise my glass to symmetry
To the second hand and its accuracy
To the actual size of everything
The desert is the sand
You can't hold it in your hand
It won't bow to your demands
There's no difference you can make
There's no difference you can make
And if it seems like an accident
A collage of senselessness
You aren't looking hard enough
I wasn't looking hard enough

An argument for consciousness
The instinct of the blind insect
Who makes love to the flower bed
And dies in the first freeze
Oh I want to learn such simple things
No politics, no history
Till what I want and what I need
Can finally be the same

I just got myself to blame
Is everything up to fate
When there's choices I could make
When there's choices I could make
Yeah, my heart needs a polygraph
Always so eager to pack my bags
When I really wanna stay
When I really wanna stay

When I wanna stay (x4)

The arc of time, the stench of sex
The innocence you can't protect
Each quarter note, each marble step
Walk up and down that lonely treble clef
Each wanting the next one
Each wanting the next one to arrive
Each wanting the next one
Each wanting the next one to arrive

An argument for consciousness
The instinct of the blind insect
Who never thinks not to accept its fate
That's fate, that's happiness and death
You get to the next one
You get to the next on down the line
You get to the next one
You get to the next on down the line

The remedy of longing that
Distills each dream and the song I had
By morning watered down again
On silver stars I wish and wish and wish

Move on to the next one
Move on to the next one down the line
Move on to the next one
Move on to the next one down the line

You get to the next one
You get to the next on down the line
You get to the next one
You get to the next on down the line
— Bright Eyes, I Believe in Symmetry

Silence and What It Brings

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 11:37:09 GMT

"Understanding between two people can often best be achieved in silence."
— Elise Milliron

Things have been painfully silent, haven't they? I guess it wasn't all that surprising; we just burn ourselves out from the lack of oxygen. Apparently it's healthy to surface and draw in air.

I think my lungs are filling again, and I may soon submerge once more.

It's been 713 days since I started this blog. I think it's been close to two months since I last posted. I won't apologize: I needed the break. It's unfortunate how things got me to that point, but that's how things progressed. And now I must cope and repair, and in the process, write.

I've started a tumblelog, also called Paragon Adrift. It's going to be a place for quotes, links, ramblings, poetry, et al. I might link to the posts on here, so if you want to subscribe, it'll keep you up to date on both. (Maybe that's too much to promise this early. We'll see.)

Irregardless, I'm making my first steps back into this place, getting adjusted and finding my whereabouts. Bear with me while I recreate my mindspace.

Answers

As I'm sure you're going to have some questions, if in fact you still read this shithole, I figure perhaps I can at least give you some idea as to where I've been and what I've been through.

Yes, I'm still a postmodernist. Reality is layered and intrinsicly connected to experience and perception.

I'm dealing with an addiction right now, but I don't plan to stop, simply to abate it.

I still listen to awesome music.

I'm starting some things tabula rasa, but others I do plan to follow through with my commitments. If you need something from me, I've not quite forgotten you. You'll hear from me soon.

I'm not planning anything big; hell, I'm not planning anything. I don't think my hold could handle that right now.

I'll tr to at least write something that isn't me, be it poetry or whatnot, whenever I post (with the exception of this post).

Adieu. No, adieu pour maintenant.