Death

If lonliness is death, if hell is other people, than I call the former home and the latter, on my list of concerns, the least of these. I wander around in my own strange state, floating on water; reading in the shade; sitting in front of the TV with an old and loved Nintendo controller in my hand. That is the only control I desire to have. And here, I suppose I have my future to look into. I'm not dead, but I'm as close as peacefully possible.

So long, and good night.

Matt Taylor's initials: M.T. M.T. Empty. Like my summer. Don't get me wrong, it's been a hell of a lot better than school, that word we all hate and fear, but it goes by too quickly. I guess it'll slow down when I go on vacation. Boredom can only be avoided by having new experiences. If I were a wiser man I'd make these experiences for myself rather than waiting around for something to happen. However, I'm not. This is weird. The font is different or something, and everything is bigger. If I played in an orchestra I'd make weird faces while I played just so I would be noticed. I wouldn't be just a face in the crowd; I'd be a weird face in the crowd. I wouldn't go as far as to play differently though, or dress differently. Imagine an orchestra wearing all black bowties with one man wearing a red necktie. I think the destiny of the human race is that we all eventually become exactly the same as one another. But it doesn't matter what I think anyway.

"The dreams in which I'm dying..."

For the second time, I've dreamt of my own death. This dream brought no desire for understanding; it elicited no emotion; it was complacent in its fate.

I felt my body skid across the surface of a reservoir pool too fast and out of control. The strangest part of the dream was that I remember shutting my eyes and almost reliving my experience of falling down a double black diamond- the feeling of being trapped within a ragdoll ripping across a malleable surface too fast to do anything... and too fast to care. And then I remember sinking down, down, deeper into the darkness, not caring to open my eyes, not caring to let anyone know to help me. Not caring about air or death.

A kind of dark peace.

And if that's not the symbolism spelled out there, damn. What a cleanly perforated, punched out, and prepared stream of consciousness.

Geography: Reloaded

Starter Arm (1:46:50 AM): you know what's really cool
nodachi E D G E (1:46:58 AM): not at all
Starter Arm (1:46:59 AM): you could reverse eurasia and africa
Starter Arm (1:47:06 AM): with north and south america on the map
Starter Arm (1:47:10 AM): and it wouldn't make a difference
Starter Arm (1:47:19 AM): because n/s america is always on the left
Starter Arm (1:47:23 AM): we could change that, make it on the right
Starter Arm (1:47:26 AM): and i think that's awesome
nodachi E D G E (1:47:38 AM): i... don't know what to say
 
Sorry, I left out Australia. That's just because Australia sucks.

Today I went to the beach. It was fun. I really like going to the beach, and today was extra good because it was my first time there this summer. In fact it was my first time doing swimming of any sort this summer. It was a pain in the ass because I was unaware that I would have to wake up at 8:30, and I ended up getting to sleep at around four the night... befour. Teehee. Other than that though, this week has been completely and utterly boring. Everybody's either gone on vacation or got a job. However, this week's seemingly endless amount of free time resulted in some good. I managed to get work done on my summer assignments. Wait. Hang on. This just in, that's not that cool. We have breaking news: no one gives a shit about this. More of this story at four in the morning.

Ocean Beach Goulash

So I killed God the other day. I stepped out the door, and wham, next thing I know, God's dead. Blood is oozing down the trees, statues of Christ are crying, the world just seems to be going to shit faster than usual. So I get in my car, the '95 Ninety-Eight, car of confused time, and race back down to 2000 Street and ask the man in charge why the world didn't go thermonuclear then. He just gave one of those smiles that tells me maybe he knows, or maybe he just wants to die smiling. Or maybe, being of no help, perhaps he'd just like to smile in the face of death.

So I'm racing back up to Zero Four, the year of the whore, and get nailed doing 669,600,000 MPH in a 25 MPH Zone, instantly earning me more points on my license than you'd need in an arcade to buy a home theater system with 9.2 surround sound and a 41' plasma screen. Interrupted by a 711 call, the writing of my summons was cut short and reduced to a mere week's worth of driving mentally handicapped children around Orlando. Unintimidated by the giant wank that is Florida, yet in no rush to arrive (or earn another ticket), I flew down on a nice Learjet piloted by a French man with a Norwegian accent. The in flight movie was "The Matrix: Reloaded", an inadequate sequel trapped and lost between beginning and conclusion, lost somewhere in the same liminality as the airplane - which is the perfect metaphor for the situation.

And as I fly overhead, over my town, over my house, over my car, I see myself walking out the door, and see the confusion in my face as no blood oozes down from above. And God, hurtling around the Earth, more confused than ever, contemplates how he had not quite yet, died, because it was the past, and the certainty of his own death, that had brought him there to live.

Not much to be said. The end was a deus ex machina. This is liminality. I've taken up video games again, and when I consider the fact, I'm trapped somewhere between the Sigh/Depressed and Childhood/Playfullness continuums, respectively. I guess when I come back from my next week's worth of adventures, I should do something creative (and/or begin my summer assignment, instead of just reading for pleasure [shockthatihavetime]) or at least something.

I was planning on posting about the german trip, but decided against it. To lay out the adventure in its entirety is impossible- like trying to explain the third to last chapter in a book without the questioner having read anything. There's too many little things to tie in together, "too many pieces of the puzzle for you to solve." We spent a week on Gilligan's Island with C3P0 and the most badass french bus driver the world has ever seen.

And I nearly reduced the contents of the bus to a pile of bodies on the side of the road.

However, the ultimate outcome was our mass arrival to the fact that I am, in fact, the best germany of all time.

Ask anyone who was there.

1 PM. Time to go get lunch, then prepare for my next adventure, and perhaps find some vegetables.

[I've also been contemplating doing a blog or something just for the adventures I have with my car... I'll have to flirt with the idea a bit more... let's see.]

New York - James Joyce on your ass

My aunt and uncle from California arrived today. He's never seen New York. It's only 20 minutes away. I decide to go. We take the Sienna that we just leased today. New car smell. Olfactory - of or relating to one's sense of smell. We park in a lot. Tickets are cheap. Money can't buy love. We pass an apartment building. I live here. Dreams of cockroaches and going to heaven; sharing a bunkbed with my brother. I'm wearing flip flops. Jay-Z tells me when I'm in the mood I rock the S-Dot Tennis Shoes, at the interlude I rock the Gucci Flip Flops... It should be okay. We walk for a long while, and ride the bus for a long while. TARGET NASDAQ BMW. I close my eyes on the bus.

We get off in Greenwich Village. I am the most poorly dressed man in New York. No dad is. I need a haircut. It doesn't look good long. It's too straight. This shirt is crappy. At least my flip flops look okay. We enter Chinatown. Nothing on the street is real. The underground economy is not included in the Gross Domestic Product. Drug deals and sales of used goods don't help our economy, at least on paper. It's a lot cleaner in Munich. No Chinatown in Munich. Too many people smoke there. New York is filthy. Cobblestone streets are a bitch to walk on. We go down steps into Hop Kee. This is the best Chinese restaurant I've ever eaten at.

I can barely walk. We go to the South Street Seaport. My uncle takes pictures. Smile. Cobblestone streets are a bitch to walk on. Water is so strange. Liminality, the space between. Water fills the gaps. We walk to Ground Zero. A scar is often worn proudly, a sign that you were hurt but survived. I got my first scar here when I was a kid, in a train station. New York has character. Terrorists would never attack Munich. The sun sets on a ruin. The scanner at the train station won't take our card. I got my first scar after my foot got caught under one of those rotating doors. A good Samaritan stops and helps a dying man on the side of the road. My mother thanks the man, probably a doctor.

I sit next to a black man blind in his left eye. My family sits further up so I get up to join them. His left eye is dull. How long did it take to grow his hair that long? Mr. Adams assigns us a homework assignment. The results of my implicit association test: You display a strong preference for white over black. The man sees me staring. He waves to me when he gets off the train. I'm going to write about you later. Times Square. ABC NBC BROADWAY. An invisible man passes gas on an unsuspecting crowd. No one will ever know him; no one will ever see him again. It's me. Quiet bus ride back to the parking lot. We play Zeppelin as we drive away. Hudson river to the left, a twinkling city and eventually riverside park to the right. My dad jogs in the past. Sparkling George Washington Bridge. Adopt a highway. Upper Level. Goodbye.