Joseph

2/28

Love is more than an emotion.

Love is more than a lifestyle choice.

Love is experiencing the petit morir with someone else in the room.

Love is saying sorry, damnit!

Love is feeling angry at someone despite yourself.

Love is “evolve” with an extra v and e.

Love is painful, and not the good kind of hurt.

Love is hurtful, and trying very hard to be hurtful only to yourself.

Love is Venus and Aphrodite and Ares and Helen of Troy.

Love is a roll of the dice.

Love is more than a win/loss ratio.

If you get over the first time you were in love, you weren’t.

Joseph

2/27

It’s hard to think of death without thinking also of time. Death to me is proof that time is not an abstract or relative concept, as some physicists, mathematicians, and Einstein would have us believe. We travel towards death step by step, one second at a time, in one direction, whether you are a king, peasant, or acid head who is used to time acting funny. I wonder if our perception of death is any different than the deads’ perception of it. I personally think there’s more than one right answer, and what you feel when you’re dead (not dying) depends on what you truly believe death is like. Time is the great river, in which we all must drown.

Sam - Impermanance

There are place I remember, all my life.
But some have changed,
Some forever, not for better.
Some have gone, and some remain.

I’m sitting alone in a stretch limo on my way back to Santa Cruz from the airport. It’s bigger than I could ever possibly need, but, that’s the way these things work out. It dawned on me half an hour ago that I left the necklace I’ve worn for as long as I can remember sitting on my headboard at home. I wont be back until spring break. Maybe it’s silly, but, that’s the longest I’ve ever been without it. Once I even lost it on a beach in Hawaii and managed to find it again. Talk about impermanent.

Joseph

2/26

People drink until they black out, in my opinion, to feel death. To experience death; utter, black, formless, sensation-less oblivion. Death, I feel, is just like not being born yet. You don’t remember it, but it still happened. It’s not like the 1970’s never happened, but all I experience of it are echoes. To me, the seventies were one ten year long drinking binge, and I sprung from and am still living through the hangover laden aftermath.

I’ve only blacked out drunk three times. The first time was fun: the first time I ever drank anything alcoholic, let alone hard alcohol. We had the remains of a bottle of 151 rum and a bottle of Everclear to the three of us. I remember knowing something was up when I almost fell over trying to tie my shoe. Later, I hit my head hard on a rock because I was rocking back and forth on the ground in order to follow the wild tilting of the earth. Then, death. I woke up in my sleeping bag, my wet shirt on the sand next to me. Drag marks led to my sleeping back. Apparently I spent the rest of the night making “walrus noises”. That was fun.

The other two times weren’t fun, because I can’t be sure what I did and how I acted. I don’t know what kind of drunk I am, so I don’t trust “blackout me”. I don’t trust “dead me”. The last time I came to with sticky green stuff on my arm. I don’t like being dead. One difference between death and getting blackout drunk: your experience varies based on whether your friends were with you. Death is the absence of memory.

Sam - Impermanance

They say that all good things come to some kind of ending. Some roads you walk down, and you cant turn back. Life is change, it’s flux. Nothing can stay the same. We have things, and then we don’t. If we don’t lose them, if everything was permanent, we’d lose that drive that makes us human. It our struggle that gives life our meaning.

Sam - Impermanance

Flames to dust, lovers to friends
Why must all good things come to an end?

I’m in my last year, almost my last quarter, at UCSC. It’s a scary thing, and so I find I’m listening to a lot of music about endings. A lot of it is really bad, but still somehow moving. I dunno. We’re talking about impermanence, and nothing feels less permanent than my life these days. Twelve weeks and I’m out in the world.

Also, it's my birthday. And that was cool too.

Sam - Impermanance

Sometimes I get nervous, when I see an open door.
Wave goodbye, wish me well, you’ve gotta cut the cord.

Once upon a time nothing was permanent. We did things, and they faded, in a few weeks, or months if they were especially memorable. Now, things come faster and fade faster. With the 24 hour news cycle we see things so fast and they’re gone before we’ve even really realized what happened.

At the same time, on a personal level, nothing ever leaves. Thanks to the internet, life is written in stone. Take this blog, for instance. If we delete it after this class, it wont really be gone. It’ll be hard to find, sure, but it’ll still be saved in a thousand different caches. You’ll never escape your past.

Feb. 20, 2011

Reference: The Book of Disquiet, page 19 “The Banality of Life”

You can say that life is a lot of things: horrific, lovely, complicated, wondrous, agonizing. But how. the. fuck. can you say that life is “banal”? That’s just a blatant rebellion against reality… Oh. Right. I’m dealing with Pessoa. But still! Life is everything wrapped into a perfect burrito handed to you for lunch. Sure you might get violently ill later, but it tasted good and nourished you for the time being, right? There is nothing else besides life. Why do people renounce it? Put so much pressure onto it? Are you that much of a control freak that life needs to be this towering accomplishment of awesomeness? Just fucking live! Life will be epic no matter what. Just the fact that you existed is fucking epic! What kind of experience is P.a.S. (Pessoa as Soares) hoping for that life, to him, is banal? It’s like he’s too good to accept the existence that was bestowed on him by the universe. Oh. Right. He’s hoping for “heaven.” For immortality. But why isn’t life good enough?

Sam - Love

Our blog is titled Absence Makes the Heart. At the time I was just looking for an interesting title, but given that it’s Love Week, it seems like a good time to talk about the deeper meaning (not that there really is one). They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I think that’s true. When someone is absent we’re able to romanticize them. We forget the bad (or the good), and accentuate the positive (or the negative). It’s worth remembering that it’s really not only good things. I can recall plenty of people from my past who I have to be making worse than they were, unless my school was full of sociopaths. (Funny story; it was, but they’re not the people I’m talking about.)

At the same time there are friends and closer that are ‘absent’ now, who I remember with nothing but love, but I know in some more objective part of me were walking disasters. Our relationships were never remotely stable, and every time we’d drift apart we’d end up back together because of how well we’d remember things going, only for them to melt down again. Funny how that works.

Sam - Love

And that was the day that I promised
I’d never sing of love if it does not exist.

Love is a funny thing. I guess you can say it’s absent from me. Obviously in most of the ways that matter, I’m loved. I have friends, and family, and I like to at least think they care about me. But I’m single, and this week is valentines day. Sometimes I feel it, it hurts to be single. At other times I’m glad I’m alone. Friends are enough, and I don’t know what I do if I actually had a real relationship anymore.

Feb. 15, 2011

“I finally found what makes me happy in life, and it’s not friends; it’s things.” –Fry from Futurama

There are only a few aspects of life that bring pure joy without all of those other complicated emotions. Music? No. Love? Hell fucking no. Things? Yes. Baseball? Yes.

Sam - Love

I’ve always lived like this. Keeping a comfortable distance. And up until now I had sworn to myself that I’m content with loneliness because none of it was ever worth the risk.


Today is Valentines day. I have a term paper due. What is love? (Baby don’t hurt me). No seriously, what is it? And why does it matter. All my past relationships have gone down in epic flames, but some how I always seem to be the one to get burned. Which sucks. But on the other hand I get stuff done (theoretically) this way. And I can live with that too. I’ve got a tight grip on reality, and I don’t have time to date even when I want to.

Sam 5(?)

I know Food Week has passed, but I feel as though this past friday deserves a special mention. I had the unparalleled treat of having lunch with my family at The Gallery at Pebble Beach.

I've eaten at Pebble Beach before, and each time the food has been incredible, but I have a feeling this most recent time will be the most memorable. The Food at The Gallery is what you would expect from a country club restaurant. It is not particularly fancy nor uniquely good. Except, the Milk Shake.

I had what had to have been the best Milk Shake I have ever tasted. I can, a day later, still practically taste it on my tongue. From the frosted artisian glasses just out of the freezer to the incredible ice cream and chocolate sauce, everything about the Milkshake at the Gallery is unspeakable. Even though it is absent from me now, the taste remains.

Feb. 10, 2011

Impermanence

There are so few things that are permanent in relation to our brief little lives, even if you believe at one point during your life that something is. I would like to believe that unconditional love is permanent, but it’s not, really. One thing that could sever, and has severed, family relationships for me is addiction.

Does pain always accompany impermanence?

Things I have believed would be permanent, but haven’t been:

-My first boyfriend

-My first band

-My desire to be a writer (one of the reasons I got a sleeve of tattoos—permanent, by the way—was so I wouldn’t be roped into working a mundane office job for the rest of my life.)

-My anxiety/panic attacks

-My love for my first favorite band

I would list the things that I think are permanent at this point in my life, but it’s too depressing to think about the possibility that they might be impermanent, so I’m just going to avoid that thought.

Feb. 10, 2011

Mickey is staring glumly out of the window, wearing a faded red robe with two big brass buttons. He inhales a long, crackling drag on his cigarette and blows the smoke toward the snow-capped mountains of the Disney ski resort in the Sequoia National Forest. “I brought him here two weeks ago to see the progress we had made on the place. Christmas was his favorite holiday. He loved getting the Park all decorated like a winter wonderland. This was his dream getaway.” Mickey’s eyes are watery and red, and they haven’t met mine since I entered the room two hours ago. “Do you know what it feels like to be born a grown mouse, into the bestfriendship of your life,” Mickey turns his steam and smoke from the window and talks to my shoes, “and then have to live on forever after your best friend leaves you?” I admit that I do not. I only knew the death of my grandfather, who raised me, but who was not my best friend by any stretch of the imagination. “He gave me life but forgot to give me the death as well. I don’t want to die right now, but it would be nice, at some point, to know…” Here Mickey trails off and ashes his cigarette into his empty scotch glass. His voice is no longer the cheerful, musical falsetto we have all grown so accustomed to hearing; now it is strained and reedy, smoky and slurred with fatigue. Walt Disney died three days ago at St. Joseph’s Hospital. Mickey isn’t handling it well. “Donald called me to tell me. Fucking Donald. Well, he’s got bigger balls than Roy, I’ll tell you that much.”

Mickey and Donald have a notoriously bitter relationship, each one living out the character the other wishes he could have been. Mickey, early in his career, had to back off the dirty jokes and sneaky tricks he became famous for so that people would see him as more of a family-friendly icon. Meanwhile, Donald overshadowed Mickey as the new unpredictable prankster; he was Disney’s scapegoat and everyone loved him for it. Mickey had to step back from the spotlight and act as more of a presenter, or “MC,” of Disney, rather than participate in the fun of Disney cartoons. “And now everyone expects me to step up and ease their grief, be the shoulder they can cry on, take control of the company. But what about my grief? I wasn’t fucking expecting this! It was supposed to be a goddamned checkup, for Christ’s sake!” I ask him what the plans are for Disney now that Walt is gone. “I don’t know,” he moans. “Last I heard, they were working on some jungle movie. But who wants to see a movie about that? Walt loved the magical stuff. Princesses and fairies to grant your every wish… Not some monkey kid with animals for parents. Where’s the royalty?” We talk a bit longer about the rocky future of the company, but Mickey doesn’t look very interested or hopeful. Someone knocks on the hotel room door. I answer it. It’s Minnie in a fur coat and net veil. She’s carrying a large, messy notebook and she looks as if she’s been crying too. “I just wanted to drop this off for Mickey. He should have it, ya know. Not that two-timing slimeball Donald. Mickey?” Mickey doesn’t turn his head. Quietly, so we can barely hear him from across the room, he says, “Get that tramp outta here.” Minnie looks sad but not alarmed. She raises her long black eyelashes to my face and says, “Tell him he needs to call Roy. He could never live with himself if he let Walt’s dream die with Walt. That’s not what the big boss would have wanted.” She hands me the notebook, turns, and sashays back down the long hallway. I shut the door behind her and walk back across the enormous room to hand Mickey the notebook. He looks at the cover for a long while, on the front of which is scrawled in big, boxy letters: “Walt and Mickey’s Magical World.” He leafs through it for a couple of minutes, sketches and scraps of writing falling around his frail body onto the floor. I begin to repeat what Minnie said, in case Mickey hadn’t heard, but he cuts me off. “For once in her silly life, the girl’s right. Hand me the phone. We’ve got a movie to make.”

Joseph 1

what remains


Breakfast:

a thin moat of milk. soggy, disintegrating oat donut. yellow peel, opened from the bottom and bruised. buttery crumbs (formerly nooks and crannies). sugary muck on the edge of a dull knife. pulpy dregs of oj.


Lunch:

mound of ice, large to small slick spheres, melting into pink of lemonade, touch of diet sob. brown stain inside coffee mug. leaves of lettuce, partial ring of raw onion, clearish balsamic dressing. alfredo mixed with red sauce, and tangled noodles. hunk of bread, olive and melted cheese hardened into rind. bean mix, flecks of enchilada fixings. orange film on bottom of bowl, tomato basil on spoon. rice wrapped in seaweed, half of a whole roll. shards and butt of a think cone, liquid dregs of cream.


Dinner:

small pile of romaine hearts, coated in rice vinegar and lemon juice. some pulp, a seed. seeds in the brown teriyaki, sugar cooled into something thicker than syrup. scrape marks on the plate. beyond scraps of dead bird too small to count as anything; the absence of something else.

Sam 2-3/??

I guess you could say that the most absent thing I’ve had is death itself. It’s terrible to say that, and please, Death, if you’re listening doesn’t take this as an invitation, but I haven’t really lost anyone. Not to death, anyway. I’ve lost friends and loved ones for almost every other reason, but not through death.
I wonder, can you be absent an absence?

Feb. 3, 2011

Professor Foster is trying so hard not to use the verb "fuck" when responding to comments about Maggie Nelson's use of the word. His euphemism? "Sexual Diction." I find this hilarious.

He's like a nervous dad having "the talk" with his kids.

Laura 9

2/1/11
Felicia asked me if we are going to tour this summer. I said I didn’t want to do a van tour. Not after what happened to Makh. I already woke up every five minutes (during a fifteen-hour overnight drive to the next venue) thinking that my life was going to end because the driver put a bit of pressure on the brakes. I’ve already spun around two different times on an icy freeway in a van and trailer, seeing cars whiz by, praying that no one would crash into us while we free-spun at God-knows-how-many miles per hour. And I never wore my seatbelt; no one did. I don’t want to spill out of the windows, my friends giving my toothless, blood-soaked face and lifeless body CPR in vain on the side of the freeway. I don’t want to go like that.
Felicia said that she had to go talk to her friend. I didn’t see her for the rest of the night.