Ladies and gentlemen, ALMO

The debut single from my new band, ALMO is now available for your listening pleasure!

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Almo/138116076204659?ref=ts

"Too Hot for Facebook"

This was going to be a status update that turned into a note that turned into something that would freak out half my friends on facebook. I used to write a lot of angry or cynical blogs and status updates but I'm trying to keep my facebook statuses (stati?) from getting too pessimistic.

I just read an article that talked about how one conservative religious organization vastly outspent another conservative religious organization that was, until this story broke, thought to have been the biggest spender in their Prop 8 campaigns against gay rights. Neither organization was based in California, where Prop 8 was on the ballot. Resulting from the massive spending, one organization had to eliminate their staff by approximately 20%. Total spending for Prop 8 was approximately $40 million.

On an unrelated note, this weekend I learned that every month 86,000 children in Oregon eat from emergency food boxes. The suggested donation for one admission to the blues festival in Portland this weekend was enough to purchase approximately 50 pounds of food for the Oregon Food Bank.

So, if these numbers are correct, the amount spent against gay rights in the State of California in 2008 would have purchased 200,000,000 pounds of food for people who are going hungry. Of course, things are usually less expensive when purchased in larger quantities.

These are just facts. I haven't really been able to form an opinion based on this information because every time I try to reconcile those two different pieces of information, my mind sputters, stalls and for a second I forget what day it is or who I am.

Now You Semen, Now You Don't.

The already small room seemed to shrink even more after the receptionist opened her damned mouth.

The words bounced crisply off the walls of the waiting room, nearly the size of a bathroom stall, and into the hallway where the sound waves careened about like a pinball.

The blonde seated in the waiting area behind me and whose halter top struggled to retain her ridiculous breasts was now aware, as were any passersby, that I "have the option of taking the plastic cup home or using one of our bathrooms here. If you go home, you have to be back in thirty minutes or the specimen won't be any good."

I had a sudden rememberance of me driving through town when I hit a curb and spilled my soda pop down my shirt.

"Here. Fine. Is fine." I said quietly though with the grace and confidence of a neandrothal who had just touched the big black monolith and subsequently and mystically was granted the gift of speech.

"Okay, just take a seat in the lobby for now."

To my horror there were only two seats. Boobs was in one seat, and the other was adjacent to hers but close enough that our knees would have touched.

"Wow, they really pack us in, don't they?" I laughed nervously while I slid my chair a few feet away from hers. I sat and instinctively crossed my legs, not realizing until moments later that I had done so. I pulled out my phone and began to pretend to text.

"Mr. Moore?" I expected her to say, "you can go jack off now," but instead she said, "You're going to have to go downstairs and take this sheet to Admissions." I held the form in my hand and thought, "don't you have a fax machine?"

I withheld my protest, however, upon realizing that this bureaucratic nuisance at least spared me from enduring another second staring at the wall and not breathing. Above the reception counter was a sign that said, “Voted Best Hospital Laboratory – 2004” by such-and-such health magazine. These sorts of awards should have an expiration date. If they cannot follow this victory with a 2005 trophy, it is like saying, “Salem Hospital Laboratory… slowly declining since 2004.”

Hospitals are sick places. The corridors are narrow, the air is stale, and the patients are crazy. Like a casino there are no windows or clocks. For some reason I kept expecting the place to burst into flames.

I made it down to admissions (is that even what it was called?) and stood behind a sign far from the registration desk that read, "For privacy purposes, please wait here until you are called." Where the hell was this five minutes ago?, I wondered.

I was the only one in line and after thirty seconds had not yet been acknowledged by the receptionist who simply stared blankly at the computer screen. She lacked the courtesy to even move her hands about in order to look busy-- a trick I employ in the drive-up teller window at work when I don't want customers to know that I need at least a few moments to recover from the last dumbass who came through before I deal with their shit.

I began to slowly sway back and forth, hoping that she might then notice me; you know, sort of like how certain reptiles can't see you if you don't move. It worked, and she called me forward. I handed her the paper and she said I will have to take a seat and wait for a number.

Suddenly playing the part of Bill Murray's or Steve Martin's character in some 1980's comedy I sat in the waiting room and watched the receptionist do absolutely nothing. "Make my number happen!" I wanted to yell. "You aren't making anybody else's number happen! Make my number!"

I was again in a waiting room with but one other person. This time it was a stout, old woman in a sundress with what appeared to be male pattern baldness not unlike Terry Bradshaw's. She was reading a paperback novel entitled, "The Demonic Pigs."

"Ohhhh," she would mutter. "Ewwww... Ohhh Gawd."

Then she looked up at me: "It's a really good book."

I mouthed, "Oh."

She nodded and returned to her book, but immediately after her head tilted toward the pages it bounced back up at me and said, "It's sort of a sorcery and magic sort of thing."

"Really." I glanced around the room in fear that anyone nearby might have actually supposed that I had inquired about "The Demonic Pigs."

"Yes, there's this sorceror and he has a fairy. He has this fairy with him. Flies around and such. And there's this warrior. Well he was a warrior in the previous book but he died and in this book he came back as a weasel." She chuckled, "He wasn't very happy about that."

I shook my head in sympathy with the warrior.

A voice cut in: "Marge? Marge Witherby?"

Sun dress stood up, but before walking away turned over her shoulder and said, "It was nice talking to you." I told her likewise and I do not know why I am such a liar sometimes.

My number was never called but my name was called by a hospital employee who walked in from the back somewhere wiping mayonaisse off her face and brushing crumbs off her shirt, so I then assumed that "wait for your number" thing means "sit there while Glenda puts down her hamburger and gets off her fat ass."

I sat at a desk while Mayo typed into her screen information that she was reading off the paper. I looked around the office and no fax machine was in sight, and so I understood my role of courier.

Then the questions started.

Who do you work for? Wells Fargo.

Do you have your insurance card? Here.

This doesn't look like a card. It's what they gave me.

They didn't give you something else? No.

Hmm. (click click click click) Is this insurance company new to Wells Fargo? I'm new to Wells Fargo, so...

Hmm. I'm going to have to check on something. (click click click click click click) Ohh, it works now. Apparently something wasn't updated in the whatnot, and so therefore things weren't compatible with the so on and so forth, but it's fine. Good.

"And you're here for..." her eyes scanned my piece of paper. "Oh. OH. Okay."

Got weird suddenly: "And do you have any religious preferences?"

What? Will a chaplain come out and talk with me? Is there a ceremony that follows? Am I sinning if I say, "I'm Christian, now can I go masturbate into a cup please?"

"That's a weird one," I said. She chuckled, but waited for an answer.

"Do I have options?" I asked.

"Let's see," she said. "Muslim, Mormon, Christian, Baptist..." Apparently the Salem Hospital does not consider Baptists Christians. Ha.

"How does my answer affect the procedures that follow?" I asked.

"It doesn't. It's just for demographics." (Salem Hospital Issues New Study, Finds Catholics More Likely To Jack Off In Hospitals Than Buddhists)

"Hmm, that's a toughie." Part of me felt I was taking this too seriously and that I should just pick one, but at the same time this didn't seem like the sort of question that one handles lightly.

"We can just put atheist," she said.

"I'm not really one of those," I said.

"Agnostic?"

"No... can you do sort of a Progressive Agnostic slash Liberal Christian Traditionalist?"

"We'll just put down other." She said.

I was dissatisfied but I accepted it.

"Now, sir, I am required to notify you of our Anonymous Research Disclosure. In the state of Oregon, any specimens that are not destroyed can legally be retained for research purposes," she said.

"If I break any records will I be notified?"

"No sir, that's why it's called an Anonymous Research Disclosure."

"Because that would look really good on a resume."

-----

I returned to the laboratory upstairs with my marching orders and was relieved to see that Boobs had moved elsewhere and the lobby was empty. But by the time that my sigh had formed in my lungs in came a large, smelly lady with five children, two of whom were twins approximately two years old.

The twins began running around smashing into plants and my shins. The daughter, approximately twelve years old, sat down in a doorway and the mother, standing in another doorway, yelled, "Yer blockin' tha doorway!" The rest of the children started spinning around with their arms out helicopter-style and slobbering.

I began to feel the pressure. In a few moments I had a job to do, but I was not sure if I was up to task, so to speak, given the surroundings. Not exactly putting me "in the mood."

"Mr. Moore?" The receptionist called over the warbling sounds of toddlers.

"Okay, for your semen analysis here is this cup for the semen to go in for the analysis. Here is a piece of paper with a semen analysis questionnaire. On the back of the semen analysis questionnaire are the directions for you to follow for the semen analysis. There is a bathroom around the corner for you to conduct your part of the semen analysis. Semen semen semen. Semen."

"Now, keep in mind," she continued, "that if you've had any, um, activity in the last five days this test won't do any good."

"Heh?"

"Yeah. They didn't tell you that?"

"No."

"Well they should've told you that."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"So, now what?" I said.

"Well, the test won't be accurate."

"Can't you calculate proportions?" I asked. "Do you have, like, a slide rule or something? Is there an equation where you can plug in the variables and..."

"I'm sorry sir, you're going to have to come back in later."

"When I come back can we expedite the process?"

"No sir, you will have to go through the same procedures."

"There's no streamlining process? My address will still be the same. I'm not switching religions or anything."

"Unfortunately the registration papers only last 24 hours."

Then what happens to them? What sort of paper do you write it on? Does it evaporate? Does it go sour?

"So I'm screwed then," I said, not catching the irony in time.

I went home and jacked off anyways.

Shakespeare called it a Seven Day Wonder.

I was parked outside a convenience store around 11:30pm texting when a tattooed body with a shaved head appeared out of nowhere, and asked if there was any amount of money that would get me to drive him across town. 

I told him to hop in, and he was reluctant at first, unsure why I would be willing to do it for free.  I introduced myself first with a handshake and he then told me his name is Michael, a gang banger from East L.A.  Judging by the conversation we had and our respective reactions to the occurrence, we will likely spend the next seven days, if not the rest of our lives, wondering if the other one was an angel.

Life Won't Wait

I will sleep well tonight comforted by the realization that the Big Picture is relatively big and I am relatively small.  From these two relatives comes absolute peace and absolute joy.  This is greater than any minor stresses I have about money, career, relationships, etc.  

I am a flash in the pan, a random genetic occurrence, a sputter and flicker of a wavelength, a speck on a mote of dust.  Everything under the sun is meaningless.

Chances are, 100 years after I die, it will not matter that I lived.  What a relief.  However, if Einstein was right, there is no was, there is no will be; there only is is.  Everything in history happens at the same time.  Every rise, every fall, every heartbreak, every triumph.  All the sin and joy and love and pain.  

Based on this premise, the only thing I should do is the only thing I can do, and that is to be.  I need not worry about the mistakes I have made, and I need not fabricate an action plan to retrieve myself from any so-called rut.  The only way to fully be is to be fully.

It is time to die to the stale notion that a certain set of criteria must be met before I can live.  Ex: "Before I can live, I must_______"  (Insert:  pay off debt, earn my degree, move to L.A., lose some weight, do my laundry, etc. etc. etc.)  

Suppose it took x years to get into said rut, and y years to get out of the rut.  We've already wasted so much time-- why waste any more trying to climb out of the bottomless pit.  In a life rich with irony, imagine paying off that last pesky credit card of bondage only to get hit by a bus the next day while walking across the street to buy a pita sandwich-- right when your new life was supposed to begin.

George Carlin observed that life will never begin any time soon; it began millions of years ago.  The wheel is already in motion; the best we can hope to do is to learn to roll with it.  

Maybe this is what scripture means when it says we must first die to ourselves. 

"Life Won't Wait," boasts the title track from an album by the punk bank Rancid, released in 1998.  If life won't wait, why should we?  

Let's do some living after we die.

- The Rolling Stones, "Wild Horses," 1971.

Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson walk into a bar...

Abandon taste, all ye who enter. My perspective doesn't seem to be welcomed on facebook, so this is going to be my own little pressure release valve.

"You know how he really died?" Cory, one of my customers today, asked. "Food poisoning. He ate an 8-year old weiner."

Think of all those prosthetic parts. What's going to become of all those spare parts when his body decomposes? The inside of his casket is going to look like a Mr. Potato Head kit, sans potato.

Hey, maybe we can go for a triple-play and something will happen to Carrot Top.

I've been strangely unaffected by this whole thing. I think it's because I said my goodbyes when I was 8 years old, around the time Michael Jackson quit making good music and started raping people.

I'm dumbfounded by the outpour of sympathy. Sure, let's celebrate his music. I've got no problem with that. What irks me, though, are some people I know who are acting like they lost a member of their family. I guarantee you, though, that if Jacko was your uncle you would be able name more than three of his songs. And you'd also be in therapy indefinitely.

This is what happens when Americans lose a mainstay. We've never known life without Michael Jackson. We elevate our celebrities (especially the trainwrecks) only to watch them crash. And then we mourn them like Mother Teresa. I guarantee you-- guarantee you-- that when Britney Spears keels over here in the next few months there will be those who push to nominate her for sainthood.

And so when I write the line on facebook, "Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson walk into a bar," I'm jumped on by a former high school classmate who condescends from her lofty perch upon her ivory tower to remind me that these people are "real people too."

There's no such thing as just a joke. At least not with me. It's all commentary. Now, Gina Trapp, do you really think I'm so jaded, disillusioned and shallow that I get a kick out of making fun of dead humans? Or, maybe I'm subversively trying to indict a culture just as perverse as the biproducts we manufacture and worship-- our celebrity class.

Gina, it's true, they probably are real people. But not in the way the majority of us perceive them. For 99% of us, it's pure soap opera schlock. I think if there were an appropriate time to play the "humanity" card here, it should've been twenty years ago when the tabloid infotainment media began to feed us stories about the drawn-out, pending decline of a once-was pop icon for the sake of ratings.

Maybe the focus shouldn't be on a joke I made (hardly a joke-- doesn't even contain a punchline) but rather on the way our society has disgraced these individuals with the inhumane treatment our media has served them, and the eagerness in which we scarfed it down.

Circling Swallow

During the life span of a cigarette this morning I watched a swallow nesting above the patio inside a small gap in the corner of the roof. He caught my eye as he had been repeatedly flying in circles, each time hesitating at the entrance of the hole but not entering.

Swallows are excellent fliers and use this ability to feed and attract a mate. But at this particular instance, his greatest strength was mocking his own efforts as he seemed unable to fly into his nest, perhaps due to some perceived misjudgment-- he came in too fast, too low, a hair too far to the right or left. And so he would circle around and try again.

After numerous passes, I saw him grow tired. His circles became smaller, his movements more drastic. He was exhausted, and this only impeded his confidence as he tried to enter the nest. It was as if he knew he was going to miss before he even got there, and so his mind was already ahead of him, planning another circle.

Then other swallows, who misunderstood the severity of the situation, began swooping at him as he made his repeat passes, throwing him further off course and accentuating the already dire predicament.

It was then that I noticed what possibly was even more inhibiting than some sort of passerine inferiority complex. The piece of straw he carried in his mouth was simply too large to fit in the hole. He knew this long before I did, but tragically it was a lesson he learned again and again with every passing swoop.

A popular definition of insanity is repeating the same actions expecting a different result. By that standard, this swallow was insane. It seems cruel to diagnose a creature whose existence is jeopardized by his own ignorance, but it's a lot easier for me to critique someone else's situation than to try and rationalize my own.

When the train left the station, it had two lights on behind

When I was a child I would often spin around in circles, arms outstretched, and it would take me to another planet. Sometimes lying in bed I would close my eyes and press against them with my thumbs, causing me to see strange shapes and colors.

I do not believe I was doing this to run away from anything; to escape reality. I think I was doing it solely to experience something that I otherwise could not, in ordinary circumstances. As I've grown older I have found other ways to achieve this state.

Tonight I found myself witness to the apparently pending divorce of my heart and my mind. They separated for a while, likely due to poor communication. But after too long a time passing since they last communicated, they grew distant and now wish to formerly divorce due to irreconcilable differences. But they both (as well as myself) know that's bullshit.

With their permission, I acted as mediator to one of their counseling sessions. I aimed to merely facilitate a dialogue between the two, and despite my best efforts at assisting both parties in speaking a language the other one might understand, I fear the operation was a total failure.

The sad thing is that my heart and mind, at this point, actually plan to stay together. During the discussion, they began to act empathetically toward each other and are under the impression that their relationship is salvageable. However I know them both too well, and believe that they have successfully tricked themselves into thinking they are back in love with each other. The truth is they're merely in love with being in love.

All their love's in vain.

The situation took a horrible turn for the worst during the exchange near the end of the session. At this point, the heart had begun confessing to the mind that he was right all along. Meanwhile the mind similarly yielded to the heart, vowing to never again second-guess her.

The tragedy is not that they want two different things (though in many ways they do). What really kills me is that they want the same thing: what each other wants.

I fear it is only a matter of time before one of them realizes that it is impossible for both wishes to coexist-- they likely are mutually exclusive. But despite what they think, it is impossible for them to divorce. They're stuck with each other. The decision isn't even theirs. Unbeknownst to them, my gut is the supreme regulator of all things organ.

Let It Bleed

Occasionally I will find a song that I feel summarizes my life at that particular time. Only in the rarest occasions, however, do I come across an entire album that speaks to my present existence. Tonight, in what may be only the second or third time in my life, I've found that strange phenomenon in the album, "Let it Bleed," the 1969 release by The Rolling Stones.

The album weaves complexities like delicate threads, but a loose summary of the album, not unlike a traditional narrative, can be summarized in three acts. Act 1 warns of impending danger followed by mourning of love lost and the red flags of a potential downward spiral. Act 2 moves into loathsome, self-destructive behavior aimed at masking the pain by way of aimless, hollow pursuits, all of which lead nowhere. Act 2 concludes with the title track, "Let it Bleed," in which the narrator finally begins to heal when he turns his focus from his own pain and onto that of another person in need. Act 3 charts the path of healing and from there, to self-discovery and rebirth.

The album comes to a close with a moment of lucidity and, for the first time since the opening track, complete honesty and objectivity as Mick Jagger sings, "You can't always get what you want." It was during this moment that I flipped the last light switch to my old house, and as I locked the door behind me and walked to my car, he concluded with the line, "But if you try sometimes you just might find you get what you need."

How I know

Were it not for fleeting moments of sustained peace, childlike carefreeness, and a mystical awareness that a smile is on my face, though I'm not sure how long it's been there-- were it not for these things, I would have no standard by which to compare the less desirable moments in which I have effectively silenced my gut, ignored intuition, and wandered into a dark place of confusion and insecurity.

Read this one. Don't read the last few. They're crap. This one's alright.

The first thing I thought of when I woke up this morning (five minutes ago) was that it's time to atone for all this Dr. Phil Dawson's Creek introspective bullshit and write something more substantial than lines and lines of "why didn't my mom hug me more as a child."

By the way, I am humbly paying the price for channeling Nicholas Sparks and taking an over-romanticized 5 mile trek in the dark the other night when I should've been doing nothing more than sitting on my floor (that's right, I've got a floor) in my bathrobe eating popcorn and watching Youtube videos as I've got the left ankle of an over-inflated sex doll (and by that I only mean that it's big and swollen... just incase there are any strange ankle fetishes out there that I'm unaware of). Apparently Jesus must've done his stretches beforehand or something; that or he refused to settle for $3 Old Navy sandals. Regardless, the next time I do something completely moronic I will at least try to remember to lace up a pair of high-tops first.

I fear that if I were to continue down the blogging path I had embarked on a few days ago, I would have to change the title of my blog from the Latin translation of "I talk too much" to something like "The Spilled Milk Chronicles." The only reason I haven't deleted some of those dreadful posts is I hope to be able to look back some day when somebody calls me a whiny, insecure head-case and point to those blogs and say, "No, sir. Today I'm just cranky because I don't like the way these pants fit. THAT THERE is the manifestation of this whiny, insecure head-case business you speak of. Good day, sir."

Because everything happens for a reason... right? At least that's what everybody's been telling me. Even yesterday-- two people, one was a customer. And I didn't even fish for it, they just offered it. "Here's your receipt, sir." "Thanks, Alex. Everything happens for a reason."

I can't help but argue with that. Last week I walked into a natural foods store and bought a bottle of hibiscus tea and an apple. I went to check out and instead ended up walking around the store looking at rice cakes for the next ten minutes because my landlady was in line in front of me and I'd rather stall pretending I'm interested in yogurt made from raccoon milk than risk a potentially awkward exchange.

So anyways I got out to my car, took a bite out of the apple and tried to wash it down with some hibiscus tea. Let me first tell you about the hibiscus tea so those of you who have not had this wretched concoction can at least try to sympathize with what was going through my mind. It's a bright pretty red color, comes in a tiny plastic bottle, and the ingredients contain honey and lemon juice. Red+tiny+honey+lemon juice=me, happy. Usually. Well the thing ends up tasting like a mixture of salty tomatoes and sinus, and so that which did not reappear as a mist on my steering wheel and windshield drizzled downhill on Commercial St.

Now, back to my main point. Everything happens for a reason. Everything? Even that stupid little illustration? The fact that it happened a week ago and I still remember it is not evidence that the event were of any great significance, because at the same time I can't remember names or faces or when my Earth Science midterm was (last Tuesday, turns out). See, if I could remember things that actually mattered, then I could accept the whole "everything happens for a reason thing." The reason Jonny happened to remember when the utilities were due is because Jonny's giveadamn still works, unlike Alex, who bought his giveadamn on eBay because he's a cheap skate trying to save a buck or two, and when the goddamn giveadamn arrived it turned out to be nothing more than a toaster with some paper machet and glitter glued on the sides.

This blog has blown so far off course that I wish to cut my losses immediately and just end the bitch, but I feel that I first must disclose what I originally sat down to writhe about (yes I meant "writhe," not "write") was my first listening of the new Green Day album and my subsequent disappointments. Perhaps due to a few misfirings of the synapsis and an impish desire to rebel against even my own paper-thin insiginificant early-morning blogging agenda, I ended up going down this goofy-balls rabbit hole where I simultaneously say everything and nothing.

But it's all cool because it all happened for a reason. At least I think I'm starting to get my writing balls back.

I remember what it felt like

Recently my whining/sniveling/anxieties/fears have been called out and exposed. At Mayra's graduation ceremony the other day, the guest speaker said success lies hidden underneath the spot where our fears lie. And a week ago, Saul Williams wrote the following:

"Can you clearly articulate the vision of the self you wish to become, the dream you wish accomplish, the community or relationship you wish to belong? To be present & in the moment is essential, but if the future is now, then mind is a time machine and your vision can project you into a brighter now. If your vision/dream hasn't come true yet, maybe you haven't come true yet. How do your actions or beliefs lead to or contradict your journey?"

I've finally become broken and pulled back to Earth. You would think that by the time I bought the plane tickets, the aforementioned events would have already taken place. But still I cannot specifically articulate anything right now. I've just got these impulses and notions, leadings and nudgings. But that's as far as I can take them.

The other night I tried praying again. At first I thought it would be selfish to pray for something specific. And I suppose that by human standards it would be impolite to ignore a relative for so long and then show up asking for money or food. But of course we are then reminded of the story of the prodigal son. And then we realize what a great act of humility is required before one can lean toward the ear of God and ask for something specific.

And I couldn't do it. And I still can't. I can tell you where I want to go, or the company I wish to keep. I can give you vague generalities that would seem to hint toward something, one way or another. But I cannot step out vocally and enumerate just what it is I want.

When I was twelve my dad wanted to help me become a better basketball player. I wanted to be better too, but he wanted to make sure it was what I wanted, rather than merely imposing his will on me. So he told me that he would help me train when I wrote down exactly what I wanted to achieve. I couldn't do it. And I never could. And at some point I quit playing basketball.

I don't know what it is. I don't know if I feel I don't deserve it. I don't know if it is that I question my competence. I don't know if it's fear of failure. But I am absolutely paralyzed. This has plagued me all my life, and resurfaces at every possible opportunity. And it's even harder now that my first dream to come true is destroyed.

This is typically when the hero gets it together, does a gut-check, and pulls out a renewed, realized man. And now that the honeymoon phase of newfound freedom is over and everything runs together and begins to resemble a small, flatlining vibration, I find that my only immediate desire is to insulate myself from everything. Every feeling, every breathe of air, the sting of misplaced trust.

The funny thing is tomorrow I could wake up on top of the world, ready to go. This has been me seventy-five percent of the time lately. But a month ago it was me ninety percent of the time, and before that, a hundred. And so I must decide whether my dwindling enthusiasm is fear, doubt, and deception sinking in, or whether its reality slowing but steadily making itself known.

But then I remember this: "Remember the heights from which you have fallen. Repent and do the things that you did at first."

And then I think of my first instinct, my most pure impulse. The rhythm of my heartbeat that was set in motion in a sacred time and place. Captured by dangerous wonder I was the truest I had ever been. I remember what it felt like.

Tonight

This evening after I got home I took the garbage to the curb with earbuds in my ears. Leaving the trash on the curb I kept walking and did not return home until two hours and five miles later. The night was warm and mystical and at times I was joined by a Siamese kitten who would either run ahead or lag behind, except for the quarter mile I carried her.

I was sustained by endorphins but distracted by my emotions, which played through my mind like a film reel-- the entire spectrum: love and fear, loneliness and laughter, pain and passion, regret.

I came home and expected to collapse on my makeshift bed and drift into sleep, exhausted and fulfilled. Instead I am apprehended by an irrational anxiety over nothing in particular. It clings to my shoulders with talons and whispers, "everything in your life is a waste." It has lingered in my house for a while now, hanging low like smoke, and always appearing after periods of clarity and peace.

Today I heard someone say, "do that which frightens you most, and there you will find your victory." Earlier today this was inspiring and motivating, but now I realize the hidden guarantee that there will be pain along the way.

"I am weary, and I forlorn.
Lead thou me to the land
Of the angels, the angels.

"If only thou, O God of life,
Be at peace with me, my support,
Be to me as a star, be to me as a helm,
From my lying down in peace,
To my rising a new."

-Ralph M. Johnson (b. 1955)

That's right, I've got a floor

I know I've got a sweet tooth for nostalgia. That's already been established in blogs past. So hopefully we can move forward without the reader thinking, "Oh Alex, you're just being nostalgic." No I'm not. This is different. I swear.

Ever since I started college for the first time in '02 I would frequently remark, and still do to this day, that the last time I truly felt myself was Freshman year in high school. During this time I was heavily into the album "Punk in Drublic" by NoFX-- the album which begins, as with any NoFX live set, with the song "Linoleum."

The other day I caught myself reciting the lyrics in my head without even meaning to, and I realized that they actually do have some content, some merit. As a freshman I thought they were just silly middle-finger punk lyrics that only served the purpose of melding with the fury of the drums and guitars, but even at that time of limited scope there was something so appealing about the first verse:

Possessions never meant anything to me
I'm not crazy
Well that's not true I've got a bed and a guitar
And a dog named dog that pisses on my floor
that's right, I've got a floor
So what? So what? So waht?
And I've got pockets full of kleenex and lint and holes
Where everything important to me
Just seems to fall right down my leg
And onto the floor
My closest friend, linoleum.
Linoleum supports my head,
Gives me something to believe.

As a freshman, tagging along with Mike Burbank and his big brother Jon, a senior who was gracious enough to take us Freshmen under his wing and into the world of small club shows (Jon also taught me to play the guitar, and if that never happened, then neither would this trip I'm on), I thought that some day I would be living this punk rock life. Of course I ended up transferring schools, focussing on other things and eventually getting married-- settling quickly into the life of ordinary adulthood where the next steps were children and a mortgage.

I've been debating lately over whether or not I believe in fate or destiny. As a Freshman, if you told me that ten years later I would be crashing on my buddy's kitchen floor in Chinatown, sandwiched between Downtown Los Angeles and Hollywood, I wouldn't have batted an eye.

And miraculously, that is exactly where I am at this moment. I'm laying on linoleum with a bottle of vodka and my laptop. And I'm not surprised. And I'm not displeased. In fact I'm thrilled. I'm so fucking happy right now. I got here, wherever here may be. Probably more of a state of mind than anything.

But the path I took to get here is what's so damned weird. I'd written this new reality off as all but an impossibility. Ten years ago, of course I would end up here one day. Ten weeks ago, no way in hell. Everything was in place then. Everything was in line.

I don't know how I ended up here. I don't know if it's by accident. I don't know if it's fate. Maybe subconsciously I wanted it so badly that it all just sort of manifested itself as a product of my psyche. I still don't know if i believe in fate or destiny, and I may never make my mind up. But as cheesy as this sounds, especially at the end of a blog where it's cute to do a clever throwback to an earlier item, especially a song lyric, this linoleum that my head rests on gives me something to believe.

That's me on the street with a violin under my chin, playing with a grin, singing gibberish.

-"Linoleum," NoFX. 1994.

reflections on a conversation

It is a rare and delightful treat to begin a blog with the following line:

The sun was setting over West Hollywood while in an art gallery off Santa Monica Boulevard, I mingled and sipped a caipirinha.

Damn, that felt nice.

Anyways, yesterday/gallery/West Hollywood/caipirinha. I was talking to an intern at the gallery who was in his early- to mid-thirties and was at first taken aback by his openness and eagerness to bullshit with a complete stranger. I've been around the trendy artsy types before and typically don't get the time of day from them, at least not in Salem. But this guy was pouring out his life story to me just mere moments after he walked up and said, "How's it going, man?"

Dig this: He moved to Hollywood to be with his girlfriend who, at the time, was attending UCLA's school of design. He got into real estate and had a fair amount of success. But around the time he moved past the 30-year mark he started to feel that his life was unfulfilled and that he had this crushing urgency to validate his existence by immersing himself in the artistic community, even if it meant interning at an art gallery, helping sand and repaint the floor and walls in between ingoing and outgoing exhibits. And he was so happy. It was oozing from him.

I asked him what the hardest part of the transition was for him, in an attempt to try and relate with some of what I've been feeling lately. His answer was interesting. It had nothing to do with the material, practical things. He said, "Knowing who I am."

He went on to explain how a lot of people move here with overinflated egos and underdeveloped abilities, and are surprised when Opportunity simply neglects to fall out of the sky into their laps. Transversely, he explained how a lot of people move here with the intentions of following their dream but lack confidence to pursue their path and instead get caught up in a steady job, making the monthly payments, and just "getting by" and they end up in the same place they were in before they moved to LA, only in a more expensive and arguably intimidating environment.

I shared with him that one of my biggest difficulties in any aspect of my life, musically or otherwise, is that I am constantly battling between two inaccurate views of myself: the Alex who can do really well at anything he wants to, and the Alex who can't seem to do a damn thing right. On an intellectual level, I know that both of these are inaccurate. What's absolutely nuts about this is that a lot of the time I will find myself ping-ponging between these two poles at such a high frequency that it feels like they're happening simultaneously.

I think a lot of this has to do with the principle that says, "We become who we think everyone else thinks we are." I am constantly falling into and climbing out of this trap. One of the things that drives me crazy about myself is this chameleon-like persona that I assume in certain crowds. I can usually tell right away based on group dynamics if I need to be the funny-guy, the smart-guy, philosophical-guy, or the serious-guy.

When I'm with a group of people who I don't know that well, I will usually lock onto a persona and be stuck with it all night. Worst of all is when I simply don't know who I am within the context of a certain group, and I end up defaulting to nothing-guy. This persona retreats to the wall at a party or slumps into a recessed corner of a booth at a restaurant. My face becomes expressionless which unfortunately causes me to look like I'm upset or unhappy, and because I'm usually not upset or unhappy, this confusion only adds to the downward momentum of my mini-identity crisis.

This causes me to realize the value in the friendships I keep. I would rather be very close to a handful of friends than to be on casual terms with a couple dozen. I keep this handful close because I know who I am with them. I am not compelled to put on an act. I find peace and rest in the fact that neither my achievements nor my shortcomings will increase or decrease the respect or love that they have for me. In the same way, I find that there is nothing more fulfilling than being in a friendship where I can be that for someone else. To be a constant support, a safe refuge, where the other person knows that they do not have to earn my friendship nor do they have to fear losing it if/when they fuck up.

This has been one of the greatest realizations I've had over the last two months since everything came apart. I have been humbled and moved at the response of friends, some of whom I've known all my life, others only a short while, who were all kind enough to just be near me and let me near them. These friends are not overly concerned with talking about my failed marriage-- they don't want to know how it happened or what I need to do to fix it. They aren't preoccupied with getting me "back on the market" or hooking me up with a friend-of-a-friend if only for a one-night stand. The friends who have emerged lately are saints in that they are happy to just hang out. To just "be." Sometimes this is just sharing a meal, other times going to a concert. Currently I am enjoying the graciousness of Kent and Irene who opened the doors to their one-bedroom Los Angeles apartment by letting me sleep on their living room floor for a couple nights.

The hardest part of being down here on this exploratory trip is not worrying about where I will live or where I will work, whether I will have enough money or anything logistical. It's picturing me cut-and-pasted onto this strange, busy canvas, severed from the beautiful mosaic-- my support system, my community back home. If I were to leave everything and move down here tomorrow, it would be bearable; difficult but attainable. It would hurt when I tear the bandage off but at least the healing could begin. But the reality is it will take probably two years before I can make the transition, and by then I fear that my ties back home will be all the more inseparable.

Joo Mollre and the Mystery of the Missing Pants

It's been over a month and I still haven't got my pants back. Plus I think I might've given my credit card number to a complete stranger.

Here's the transcript of the conversation, originally published on my other blog in March.

---------

Operator: Thank you for calling the MGM Grand. Please select from the following options. For English--

Me: (typing) 1

Operator: For room reservations, press 1. For dining reservations, press 2. For show tickets, press 3. For business reservations, press 4. If you would like to hear these options again, press 9.

Me: (typing) 0

-silence-

Me: (typing) (cont'd) 0 0 0 0

Operator: For room reservations, pre-

Me: (typing) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Human: MGM Grand, how may I direct your call?

Me: Hi, I left my pants in Vegas and I need to get them back.

Human: Mmhmm. One moment.

..

L&F Aylah, loss in fow.

Me: Hi, I left my pants in my room. Nothing weird or anything, just folded them up and put them in the closet, then forgot they were there.

L&F Day you lee them in ah kah-see-no?

Me: Err, no. In my closet, in my room. 14-313.

L&F: I goin nee your roo namba.

Me: 14-313.

L&F: Juan Momayng.

Me: Who? No, I'm Alex Moore.

L&F: I say escuse me for juan momayng. Okay I hava one Old Navy blue jean an one lay-thar belt.

Me: (trying to make a joke) That's funny, I think I have the same exact pair!

-silence-

Me: (continued) Ooookay so can I arrange to have them mailed to me?

L&F: Jessir we can shit they to you.

Me: (stifling laughter): Oh, you can? Huh-huh-huh, okay, I would like to arrange, huhhuhhuh, to have them, uh, shit to my house.

L&F: Okay I need your full nay and ah-dray.

Me: Joel Moore. 1147 Pol-

L&F: Thas spell J-O-E M-O-L-L-R-E?

Me: No, two 'O's.

L&F: J-O-O M-O

Me: No no no no, J-O-E-L M-O-O-R-E.

L&F: Ohhh so sorry. Ha ha. An adray?

Me: 1147 Pollyanne Ave SE. Salem, OR 97306.

L&F: Okay I hava 147 Tollan Elen Oregon. An what was the zeet code agay?

Me: Well the zip code was 97306, but let me give you the whole thing again. 1147 P-O-L-L-Y-A-N-N-E Avenue Salem Oregon 97306.

L&F: Ohh ha ha Pollyanna.

Me: No, Pollyanne. An "E" at the end.

L&F: Ohh ha ha Pollyanneeee.

Me: No, just Pollyanne. Silent E.

L&F: Okay and is Elen Oregon spelled E-L-E-N?

Me: No, it's S-A-L-E-M. "S" as in Sarsaparilla. Actually, "S" as in Steven.

L&F Ohhh yah I know Salem. Ooookay so we send Juan Cheen and Juan Lay-thar belt to Joo Mollre 1147 Tollan Habanu Elen Orygaw Ny-Sayba-Tree-Zeero-Seez. Thanyu for cally N-CHI-N and haba nayng day.

Potpourri. Casserole. Party Mix.

Here are a list of thoughts that have been going through my head that are not each worth their own blog but need to be said anyway.

- At first I thought it was merely a park bench, but I must've unwittingly sat at a head game table, because I've just been overwhelmed with contestants lately and I didn't even know I was supposed to be playing along.

- The last two months have been a blur and I don't feel totally convinced that any of this is happening. The fact that I'm going to visit the Musicians Institute in Hollywood on Tuesday as a prospective student doesn't make any of this feel more real.

- I am doing okay, and I am not lonely. Some people cannot seem to accept that.

- Sometimes at night when I really get into an album I'm listening to, I get the delusion that it understands me.

- I am not lonely, but I am more alone than ever before.

- There are only two things in life that I want. This messes everything up because I only planned on one thing right now. Fortunately they are not mutually exclusive, but at the same time I have a feeling that it will be nearly impossible to make both happen. I've been here before. This time I think I will have to go with what's behind door number one instead.

- I have never been stronger, but I have never been more fragile either.

- I have gained a fluency through my instrument that I've never had before. Finally ideas are no longer destined solely to take the form of words.

- "There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come." -Saul Williams

- Sometimes I wonder: When I look back at this time in my life, will things seem as clear as they do right now? Am I delusional or just paranoid?

- I need a hug.

- I keep bouncing between two poles: Not believing in destiny, and being deathly afraid of it.

- At some point I hope to break the cycle and climb high without the inevitable fall.

- All the Sunday School sermons about valleys and mountain tops could have never prepared me for this.

- I do not know how, but I feel that all my life has prepared me for this.

- Does the definition of substance abuse vary person to person?

- I simultaneously want to feel everything but also become numbed to everything.

- I would choose freedom over money any day. But I am rarely faced with the choice. It's usually freedom vs. nothing, and when I slip into old habits I end up picking nothing. So maybe there's a reason why I haven't been allowed to graduate to the freedom vs. money test yet.

- I still remember my best friend's phone number from grade school. I have not even begun to try to forgive myself for how I treated him Freshman year of high school. He seems to be doing really well now. I don't know if he would be doing so good if we had remained friends.

- Confession is good for the soul.

Bought a ticket

"It's all a matter of how bad you want it," my dad always said. I can name every place I was when he told me this: Standing under the basketball hoop on an August afternoon; riding home in the truck after a game; learning how to prune cherry trees in the orchard; sitting on my bed with my guitar across my lap.

When I was seven we were driving North on Highway 221 heading toward our house near Dayton, Oregon, when my dad said he would buy me any guitar in the world if I could learn to play the solo on "Sultans of Swing" by Dire Straits. He had already bought me my first guitar two years earlier at a garage sale when I was 5, but I wouldn't know it until I found the old Yamaha acoustic a coat closet when I was thirteen. Who knows if I would've bothered to pick it up if it had been given directly to me as a gift.

In May of 1999, at the end of my freshman year at Dayton, my guidance counselor asked me what I wanted to do for a career, and when I told her, she replied, "...Is there, um, anything more practical that you want to do?" "No," I answered.

Today I bought a plane ticket to Hollywood on the 10-year anniversary of my conversation with the guidance counselor. Immediately doubt and fear began to set in. Were I standing alone, the pressure might be enough for me to collapse.

Sometimes I feel that doing it for me is not a good enough reason, no matter how bad I want it. But if "myself" isn't enough of a reason to go, I can do it for my mom, dad, and sister who never told me to turn it down. These are the people who pulled me out of the pit two months ago when everything came undone.

"And they worked to give faith hands and feet
And somehow gave it wings"

-Rich Mullins

Still bleeding: The second half of something I wrote a year ago.

I take issue with the phrase, "live life with no regrets." My life is full of regrets and I cling tightly to them refusing to give them up, because I know that they are what keeps me from becoming content; a predicament I fear more than anything. This is the tree from a seed planted by Mrs. Remy in pre-Algebra, 1997, who warned a class full of seventh graders from ever becoming content-- something that contradicted every sermon of self-actualization preached to us by the Hug-Yourself cult.

It's 8:30am on a Saturday morning and I'm peering at my laptop out of one bloodshot eye. I'm laying on the floor (I don't have a bed yet) and I've got to leave for work soon and process financial transactions after three hours of sleep. I'm going through the delicate, painful demise of a seven year relationship, five of which were married years. And while I cannot quite explain it, I find myself in three places: (1) Happier than ever before, (2) More joyful than ever before (joy and happiness are not the same) and (3) less content than ever before.

Please understand I am not a sadist, nor am I glad that my marriage failed. If it were my choice, none of this would be happening. I would not be watching movies sitting in a lawn chair in my empty bedroom while framed photos documenting the last 7 years lean against the wall in the corner like folded-up chairs after a party. So when I say that I'm happy, do not be so simple to draw relation between this and my wife leaving on Friday the 13th of March.

Finally I have learned the difference between what we can regret and what we can't. I've got a long list of shortcomings, misgivings and screw-ups that I carry with me as a way of challenging myself to do better next time. But there's this other category of things. Things that just happened, things that are out of my hands, things that I cannot fix. These are the things that I do not, and cannot regret.

Anyone who refuses to regret certain things is robbing themselves of an opportunity for improvement. But for the other things-- the things out of our hands-- lies a rare liberating freedom to those who are willing to embrace the present bleeding pain and call it what it is: It Is.

This is: I'm sleeping on the floor, but I am getting a bed soon. I'm hung over but I am recovering. I'm broken but I am healing. I cannot block myself from the reality of the pain I'm enduring because the pain is reality, and I value reality more than I value temporary pseudo-peace. If pain is what is real at the moment, I want what is real more than I want to be shielded from suffering.

And this is why I'm happy.

Last year, March 25, 2008, I wrote, "...I felt everything. With every passing second reality exhaled, and I could feel its breath on the back of my neck. I realized that this morning I woke up not on the wrong side of the bed but in the raw consciousness of reality. It throbbed like a fresh wound, and I could not get enough of it. "