aqueous transmission

For all you Incubus fans out there, here's a poem you'll appreciate.

falling in circles
giving myself away
floating myself down the river
a warning, an echo
i wish you were here
or maybe it's just a phase
maybe it'll be tomorrow
maybe it already is
have you ever known yourself?
are you in, under my umbrella?
i wish you were here
i wish we were in mexico
where there's no blood on the ground
i wish i knew myself
but i'm falling in circles
giving myself away
floating it downriver
an echo and a warning
"nice to know you"

[5.21.02]

An Intense Poem I Wish I Hadn't Written, But Oh Well, Up It Goes

The Three S's

Selfishness and self-righteousness go hand in hand,
Surface-level people running their mouth,
Thinking they know me, thinking they know something.
Do you know me? Do you know me? Do you know me?
No. Pretend like you do, though. Pretend like
You know everything. Make me laugh.
Don't make me laugh. It's so dumb. Asinine.
Inane. Insane. Your life is insipid. Your life
Means nothing. You mean nothing to me.
How dare you? How dare you? How dare you?
You are Superficial. You are Selfish. You are Self-righteous.
You make me laugh. Please don't make me laugh.
To Hell with you and your friends. To Hell with you.
I'll sit back and watch the world die. I'll be here
Behind the fire. I'll sit back and watch you die
Like ants. You make me laugh. Fuck.

[3.31.03]

driving down a texas road

my world was gray and blue
and getting only blacker
but then one day a flash
a yellow white flash of light
and a deep, resonating
reverberating sound filled my ears
the flash has faded
but i can still hear that sound
my eyes don't burn any more
but i can't forget your voice
and i can't escape the silence
the most godawful sound of all

i don't see lightning like before
but lightning only lasts an instant
i will always hear the thunder roll
roll and roll and fade and fade
nothing to see for miles around
not a trace of a yellow ghost
or a white phantom past
but gray and blue and black and black
but i can't escape that sound
and i can't escape the silence
the most godawful sound of all

[5.8.02]

Whew

When a much needed vacation such as the one that has just passed comes to a close, its a bittersweet feeling. So Bob Dylan ended up morphing into Rivers Cuomo, Thom Yorke, the Strokes, Belle & Sebastian, Mrs. Robinson, a 50's diner, a real life scene from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Elastigirl, a trip to "Fairyland," my new green-eyed loveflame Annie Galvin, and various other memories, but it's all good. Here are some gay pictures of me and Eric more or less being weird or driving. Or both. Click "Penn Year 2" and then click "Thanksgiving Break."

A Bob Dylan Weekend

Thanksgiving weekend begins officially for Eric and I tonight at 11 pm, and will last until Monday morning. It will be on the magnitude of some of the greatest moments in the history of pop culture. Paul and John on a Magical Mystery Tour. Elwood and Jake on a mission to Chicago. Mike and Trent swinging it to Vegas. Sal and Dean on the road to San Francisco. Harold and Kumar going to White Castle. Wyatt and Billy easy-riding it to Mardi Gras...

And now, Eric and Dave off to D.C. with good ol' Bobby Dylan providing the soundtrack.

It's a 106 miles to Chicago. We've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. HIT IT.
--Elwood Blues

teenage love online

saw you idle
read your profile again
for the thousandth time
each time seeing a new word
as if for the first time
each time seeing you
as if for the first time

i don't want to be stuck here
i want to run away
run away with you
run away with me
why do we have to be stuck here
when there's grass beyond
maybe a rainbow
one of those permanent ones
that have been painted on the sky
to last forever

days are long
but life is short
run away
but don't leave
at least not today

[5.6.02]

A Moment Of Clarity

In a moment of clarity tonight, I have arrived at an incredible epiphany. The meaning of life, the purpose, the goal, the thing I am going to live every moment striving for, is to be able to laugh when the moment of death is upon me. That is the sign of the ultimate state of conscious enlightenment, to be able to lie down, smile, laugh, and then leave this life forever. If I can live my life in that way so that I may die in that way, I will regret nothing. I will regret nothing.

a lovesong

you kissed my heart
and burned a hole right through
you looked at me and laughed
but i swear it's all true

every little thing
everything i've said
every spoken word
and everything you've read

maybe when we first met
no--i didn't think it likely
that i should come to be this way
to think of you so highly

i see your face everywhere i go
the sun, the moon, the stars, the air
they all scream your name at me
every day, every night, every where

but all i ever wanted
all i'll ever need
wasn't what you wanted
isn't what you need

you kissed my heart
and burned a hole right through
you made me whole
i lovesong you

[7.8.02]

Kristal Elliston, Will You Marry Me?

I just saw The Inspiration's a capella show tonight. It was absolutely phenomenal. I want to marry you, Miss Kristal Elliston. Please be my wife.

"nost-fucking-algia": a crappy unrhymed sonnet

on a bench of somewhere
in the forgotten past
the wind whispered lightly
and a brown, crisp dead leaf
danced and scraped its hunched corpse
across an expanse of cold gray cement
and the trees brushed against each other
like familiar lifelong friends
who are glad to be familiar lifelong friends
and the day was getting ready to give way to night
as the sun ducked below the clouds
my world was well again, because

i saw her beauty illuminated
in a heavenly golden hue

[1.27.02]

winter comes

cold days
days when i could fly
fly in the cold wind
fly in frozen knee caps
in days
in memory

cold days
cold mist in the air
cold voice of crows
cold voices in my head
cold skin, warm look
warm car, warm heart

cold days
cool water
cold stars
cool air
refridge

[10.9.02]

The Dark Side Of The Wall

From a far off distance, a band of travelers slowly materialized in the shimmering desert air. I couldn't tell who they were, but the sight tapped something deep within my brain, taking me back to my childhood. I was feeling like I was five years old again, and things were very confusing and complicated. It was like I was floating in this little five year old bubble that had yet been penetrated by the sharp realities of the real world. I was floating in a little plastic bubble of air in the deep black sea, just flowing in the current of the ocean, little pieces of plankton and the occasional fish just swimming by. So much was outside of my bubble, the rest of the deep, blue, mysterious sea; all the way down were the darkest depths of the earth, all of God's secrets, all of the spare parts from the construction of the Universe hidden there. When I was five, all that there were was rabbits and running around in circles. Childhood was a beautiful, wonderful thing. When I finally came to, I found myself strapped down onto a cold grey marble slab of a table, somewhere in a deep underground chamber, surrounded by many high-tech sophisticated machinery. I knew it was underground because it was dark, and this was the only way such dimness could be achieved this far out into the desert. I was on a surgeon's table in some makeshift hospital in the cool dirt-packed bowels of the earth. I tried to make my escape but realized that my wrists and ankles had been strapped down by leather belts on the marble slab. The machinery was hooked up to my brain, I suddenly realized. The moment I noticed this however, a deep, searing pain went bursting through my head, splitting my mind open and allowing thoughts and memories to just drift up out of the chasm like an ethereal ghost, echoing away with evil, maniacal laughter. I was lost on an empty, lonely highway in a thunderstorm, with no cars in sight. My shoes echoed dully on the asphalt of the road. I was dripping, sopping wet. And then a bell rang from far away and I suddenly awoke, in my bed. It had all been a crazy dream. I could hear my watch ticking now. Everything was back to normal. But I still felt a bit creeped out, like everything that had happened had been just a little bit too real for comfort. But time appeared to be continuing to go forward, so I went with it. I wasn't in the desert anymore, not in an underground chamber, not anywhere less normal than my very own bed in my very own house in San Bernardino, California. I got up and stumbled slowly into the bathroom to pee. It felt good; it felt like I had been holding that one for a while. I washed my hands carefully with soap, and then made my way into the kitchen to cook something absolutely plain and boring and mundane, like eggs and toast and a glass of orange juice, which I had just woken up craving rather badly. Time continued to pass as usual. The eggs were sizzling on the pan. I turned on the television. This was such a normal morning. It was... too normal. After the eggs popped and crackled for a while, I scooped them onto a plate with my toast, and poured myself a glass of orange juice. I took a seat on the couch in the front of the TV. I liked sandwiching the eggs inside the pieces of toast, like an egg sandwich, but this morning I thought I'd go with fork. Honestly, how normal could this morning have been? I wasn't even reading the newspaper, that would have been a little too 1950's. No, I was watching TV, so normal, in such a normal kitchen, such a normal breakfast. I was the epitome of the American Dream. What was I doing dreaming of the desert like that, with assassins on camels? And then I felt it. It was ever so slight, but I felt it jerk at me just a little. Time had slown down just a tiny bit. They couldn't hide that one from me. I was way too sensitive to not have felt that. I felt that sudden change in acceleration. I felt time slow down for that instant. I felt the jerk. It was impossible to prove now, of course, since all of time had slown down, all of our abilities and instruments to measure time would have slowed down too. So I could never prove it. But I knew it happened. I knew they were there, behind the green curtain, controlling everything. I knew and I had to find a way to get out, to fight them to the death, to release us from this brain-warping time trap. I resolved quietly to myself in the kitchen that I would become the hero. I would save the world if it meant the tragic loss of my own life. I would be that kind of hero if I had to be. Of course, I'd prefer to be the kind that survives and has a charming smile and gets to go on the Rosie O'Donnell show, before it got cancelled because she's a lesbian. I could see my glory now, shining up from magazine cover to magazine cover. Time, Newsweek, People: they were all in the fold, trying to make money off of my brilliant domination of life. I would be an inspiration for the way I just took life and made it my own, just dominated it in every aspect. They knew this idea would appeal well to the American psyche, and they knew they could make a lot of money off of this brilliant idea. Everybody would be all about the money. That was the drawback to being a hero today in this kitchen, I decided. I didn't want to get all entangled in that world of big deals, negotiations, spying, espionage, black mail, black market, secret gifts, secret enemies, Swiss bank accounts, and other bullshit. That was so Hollywood, man. That was so the people that actually decided to make a Blade III movie. Somebody actually got paid to write that piece of horseshit? That's really hard to believe, and even harder to accept. This was a world full of glitz and glamor, but with nothing else underneath to show for it. I couldn't deal with a materialistic, money-driven world like that. John Lennon is an inspiration. W.W.J.L.D.? He would not let corporations take over the world, destroying nations, destroying people. I resolved now in that kitchen, instead, to fight the big evil corporations. I'd be Ralph Nader with an attitude. I would be the famouse whistle-blower who improved the state of our society was a whole. I'd find the moral blind spots in our generation and point them out. Money is such a crime. American society is so incredibly selfish. I can't take it. So I sat there in my kitchen vowing to destroy capitalism and the evil corporations, to abolish money and property and power. It was time for a better time. I would be the champion. I'd be Marx, Lenin, LBJ. The world would be glorious, and there wouldn't be dumb voices insisting on talking anymore. I got into my car and decided to stop by church that morning. I hadn't been in a while. The cathedral was beautiful. It felt a little eerie to back here after not having been back for so long. I felt out of place in my own home. I relaxed as much as I could. It wasn't so much about us and them inside the beautiful shelter and quiet sanctity of the church. We were all just ordinary men. Ordinary men. I couldn't get over the fact that an hour ago I had been determined to become a hero, even if it made me a martyr. The power of it all hit me like a crashing wave, loud in my ears and intense in my face. We were all ordinary men with our own little busy lives, scurrying around like so many clueless ants under the great big star-studded black sky, under all of outer space, under the entire Universe, up and down, everywhere. People don't realize there isn't a start and a finish, no beginning and end, there is only round and round and round and round. That's all there is to the life of an ordinary man. But in it itself is also a certain glory, the glory of the ant, the glory of steadfast purpose in a confusing, sometimes meaningful, sometimes ludicrous world. We could handle it. We knew what we had to do. We had our tasks and we lived peacefully and simply, as much as Thoreau would have wanted. To be an ordinary man is to be blessed. I could feel how thirsty I was all of a sudden. I got up from my desk at the cubicle and walked over to the water cooler. There was nobody there to have a water cooler conversation with. I liked talking with people at the water cooler. It was fun. All the rebellious workers all hung out there together, silently complaining about how boring the job was. The water cooler was truly a refreshing experience in more ways thatn one everytime I walked over to it. This time, however, nobody was at the water cooler. I was all alone in my purposeful shirking of responsibility. It seemed like everyone else was keeping busy. That was when time suddenly jerked again. I felt it again, the same as before. Things were definitely slowing down. Who was behind this? Was this aliens? The people behind the Matrix? God? What exactly was I facing here? And how was it so omnipotent that it could even control time for me and all the rest of humanity? Was time really just an invention? Was there really no such thing as 3-dimensional space moving linearly through time? Was it all just all there at once, all of time, from beginning of existence to the end of all ends, all wrapped around itself in a closed bubble, was that all there was to it, everything, everywhere, that ever happend and ever will, and us just stuck in the constantly rolling and changing middle? Time was an invention indeed. It was a conveyor belt, a spinning hamster wheel we kept running over and over in, thinking we were making new ground when in fact we weren't moving anywhere. Because it was all already there and will always already be there all at once all the time, forever. I began to slowly accept this theory. I stopped worrying about time. Time was an invention of our feeble minds, which were unable to grasp the implications of a fourth dimension physically expanding outward into the past and future forever and ever, curling and rolling into and unto itself like a Mobius strip. Such was the nature of infinity, of eternity. I closed my eyes and stopped within time to simply enjoy this realization. I raised my arms up into an embrace, and enveloped time into my arms, like a giant puffy cloud. I could hear good-natured laughter echoing in the background. I had taken a plot of time like it was so much cotton candy, and eaten it, asking for more from the unceasing cotton candy machine. I could do it now. I could explore all of time everywhere. I was master of it. I was master of this invention. I was master of my own mind. I could see through everything. The reason they kept jerking around with time was because they wanted to. And they could. As easy as moving an ashtray across a coffee table. Maybe they were just trying to conserve some time somewhere else for something else. There was nothing else to say at this point. I had solved all of life's mysteries. What else was left for more? I had solved time, my heroism, my martyrdom. I had solved all that I had ever encountered ever, by marginalizing it into the context of the flatness and immutability of time as a plane, not a line. Things were great. I finally went back to sleep and had the dream about the travelers on the desert horizon. They were bandits. They were coming for me. They were getting closer, and closer, and closer. I could see their dark faces descend over mine, casting my figure in shadow. They edged closer and closer, enveloping me in their black cloaks. I disappeared into the air with them, without even a flutter. And so lay a patch of empty desert ground.

What's YOUR Writing Style?

You are a freeform writer. Individualistic with a
sense for the different and challenging, Walt
Whitman and his poetry lacking meter and rhyme
is just what the doctor ordered. You're quick
to write something that the rest of the world
doesn't accept as poetry, quick to separate
yourself from the average joe. An author with a
true sense of self, you have confidence in your
abilities and aren't afraid to show it. :) GO
YOU!


What's YOUR Writing Style?
brought to you by Quizilla

Jazz

Jazz is an amorphous, shape-shifting brown fog that seeps into the air of a room. In its purest form, it isn't even music--but it is a sound, a sound that floats in the air and sits heavy on your chest, a sound like rain, or a child's laughter, or something else equally basic and simple in this existence. Jazz isn't a genre, it's an idea, a concept. It's about freedom from the structure of life. Jazz exists in direct contradiction to nature, to the universe, to humanity. It's about purposefully existing without purpose. Jazz exists within the absence of God, it fills the little holes of life that make the difference between an infinitely-sided polygon and a perfect circle, the holes where God lives. Jazz doesn't really exist except in our own minds. It is like raindrops falling on a window, streaking like comets to make a picture in our eyes that isn't really there. Jazz is rain and the music is the picture, a thing both elemental and mental, a beautiful thing only man could have invented. Jazz is about turning something into nothing without losing anything. One digs jazz like one digs through soppy, wet dirt. It's heavy and just sits there, and won't move unless you take out a shovel. That is why jazz as an idea will always be eternal, even if the genre is marginalized into obscurity, left to wither in empty subway stations and dark back alleys.

More Old Poems

Llama Spit

With a pocket full of shells
There's some things I know to be true
There's no room

But I got to think twice
I'm not going to get too sentimental
Don't leave me high

I beat the crucifix
We don't even care
I wish you'd grow up

There's a light when the window shades are gone
I know what to show and what to conceal

Banish me and mine to outer space
I'm the epitome of public enemy
This masquerade is getting older
Leave a trail of dust and disappear into the sunset
Then one foggy Christmas Eve

I wonder what it's like to be a clone
This revolution has just begun
My two cents is free

[6.14.03]

wishing to speak

wishing to speak
i am empty
dry constipated well
like a desert
there is no blood in this rock
the pulley screeches
the bucket is empty
where are the words of yesteryear?
the wind blows sand in my eyes in my mouth
wishing to speak

[5.5.03]

The Ace Of Spades

The Queen of Hearts and the Jack of Spades,
the Ten of Clubs and all four Eights,
the Diamond Four and the Diamond Queen,
the big Spade Two and the gross Club Three:
Flying, Flying, Flying. Lost, Lost, Lost.
Flying through the air goes my deck of cards,
thrown out onto the ivy vines: curling,
stretching, entangling, twisted, and sinister.
The cards fall one by one on the dark green mass
of jealous, evil tentacles. My deck of cards;
they are strewn everywhere -- except for one:
the Ace of Spades still dances on the wind,
twitting in the air, back and forth along a whim.
The Ace of Spades still dances in the light;
your vines, your ivy will never poison me.
My one card left shall not be lost in your depths.

[3.19.03]

Further

Darkness descends upon my street,
In the color purple is an orange glow;
Lazy on the wind, turning, rolling over,
Slowly - the corpse-child of a tree - cries
The slow cry of death, the low call of a swan,
A song full of emptiness - a song full of nothing,
A music that burns my ears and face, salts my tongue,
A flurry of death, a zephyr in fury, at a point further than me.

Further than you.

Further than the farthest reaches of space - the last corner of the universe.

Further.

[7.30.03]

Life Is...

... putting the puck in the net.
... about what you love, not what loves you.
... something for the taking.
... a series of events that don't end until death.
... fun.
... whatever you want it to be.
... as much as you are willing to make it.
... for living.
... just a game.
... the people you know.
... love.
... art.
... sport.
... all of your bodily systems functioning properly.
... beautiful.

yeahdude

yeahdudealotsgoingonmanidunnohowtodealwiththisitsprettycrazyinmy
headrightnowtheresabsolutelynospacegetitnospacehahahawowthisisre
allytrippythisislikewritingondrugsorsomethingmandrugsarecrazyesp
eciallycaffeineforcertainpeoplewhoshallremainunwoooooedhahahawoo
oooowhoawhoawhoahahahahahacantcatchmybreathholycrapthisissuchacr
azyconceptforablogentrygoddamnimsocreativerightnowthisisallameta
phorlikeabouthowtheresnospaceinmybrainforanythingbutthemostbasic
twentysixlettersofthealphabetandthatisallwehavereallyultimatelya
ndsothatiswhywemuststicktogether

Compulsive Lying

My grandmother is the person who designs the little patterns on all those Dixie cups you see. She sits in the office they give her at the headquarters everyday doodling little floral designs in colored pencil. My brother is an archaeologist in Peru right now, looking for traces of Antarctic remnants back when all the land mass on earth was in one big continent, Pangea. His girlfriend, incidentally, is working in Antarctica now. She's a botanist. I don't understand what they would need a botanist for in Antarctica. There aren't any plants there. My sister and my parents had a big fight today. She left home, and she hasn't come back yet. She's a really artsy, intellectual person, so she doesn't like things like authority. Our parents can get pretty authoritative sometimes; my dad retired from the CIA and now runs the local Quizno's restaurant. He's all about structure. My mom is a bit better; she is a Jazzercise dance instructor, so she knows something about self-expression. But she loves my dad way too much to tell him anything he doesn't want to hear, and the last thing he wanted to hear today was that his daughter was moving away to Hollywood to spite them. But she is. She called me secretly a couple of hours ago. She's on her way, she caught a Greyhound. I know she'll survive out there, because she's cool like that. She might even make it big, who knows? I want to tell mom that she called and that she's OK, but I haven't gotten the chance yet. As for me? I'm normal. I don't travel around the world looking for historical Antarctic artifacts, or yell at my parents and run away from home to pursue a career in Hollywood, I'm no botanist in Antarctica, no ex-CIA agent, I don't do Jazzercise. I'm probably the most normal person in my family... except for my one and only quirk, my one true character flaw. I'm a compulsive liar. Everytime I meet somebody new, I have to lie. I even lie to my closest friends all the time because I can get away with it. In fact, this entire paragraph is all lies. I made all of it up. I don't have a brother. Everything you've read so far has been a lie. Isn't that scary? But I'm completely normal otherwise... I promise.

An Interesting Article

An interesting article about The Skateboard, courtesy of Eric.

Awesome Classes I Hope To Take

- FILM 116: Screenwriting
- FILM 204: Hollywood Classics
- FILM 246: Masterpieces of French Cinema
- FILM 102: Film Analysis & Methods
- PHIL 242: Freedom of the Will
- FILM 300: Cinema & the Institute of Contemporary Art
- PHIL 004: History of Modern Philosophy

And last, but certainly not least... [drumroll please!]

- BIOL 130: Biology of DINOSAURS!!!!!!!

Yes! Just--yes!

Me vs. Blog, Round 3

A brief recap of the rivalry between me and my blog up to this point:

Round 1 - Blog getting too personal, I wanted to be a better writer, decided to never write about myself ever again

Round 2 - Read other people's blogs and felt like writing about myself again, finally decided I could sometimes write about myself and other times write random stories or poems

Which brings us to today, Round 3. I feel unappreciated as a writer when I post something I'm proud of and get no response, as if I had posted it in a vaccuum. So now the battle is this: what is the point of posting online? I know in some measure, it is to be read. It is the quickest and easiest way to be read by other people. But if nobody is reading, or if people are reading but don't really care, is my desire to be published and read being fulfilled? Only marginally. And that is sucky. Would anyone have honestly noticed if I just stopped updating completely? I believe people would just stop coming. So what is the point of being published if I go unnoticed? Get ready, blog, I'm strapping my big red boxing gloves on as we speak...

Blank Check

I have so little to say right now, I could say anything. Tell me what you want me to say, and I'll say it. I have so little to say right now. Consider this a blank check. I'll say anything.

Indie Rock Hipster Checklist

- Long, shaggy hair (Guys only) [Free]
- Dark-rimmed "emo" glasses [$50-100]
- Thrift-store t-shirt with amusing print, or Urban Outfitters equivalent [$2-20]
- Stripey long-sleeve shirt [$5-20]
- Track jacket with arm-stripes [$30-40]
- Thrift-store blazer over hoodie, or Urban Outfitters equivalent [$30-60]
- Necktie (Girls only) [$10-15]
- Silver-studded belt, or necktie-for-belt [$10-20]
- Blue jeans [$20-50]
- Two-colored Converse, Puma, or equivalent shoes [$30-80]
- A haughty, superior, elitist attitude [Free]

Remember, kids, if you're missing anything from this checklist, you're not really indie!!! And then you won't be cool anymore!!! This is what it really takes to be indie!!! If you can't keep up, then you're not cool enough!!! Put down your acoustic guitar and stop listening to that Pavement CD, and go get YOUR UNIFORM!!!

The Power Of Music

Music has the power to either greatly uplift or thorougly depress one's spirits. One must therefore choose very carefully what music one decides to listen to at certain points in one's life. People who decide to listen to something like "Gloomy Sunday" while in the throes of suicidal thoughts and dark depression just aren't being very smart with their Play button. Shoulda put in a Smash Mouth record or something instead.

A Materialistic World

We live in a very materialistic world. Sometimes, I become very frustrated that I go to school in the very center of materialism, the Wharton School of Business. Here, young children everywhere are brainwashed and programmed into materialistc bitches and sons of bitches. What exactly does success mean in this world, in this life? I hope it's not them.

Bold Sports Prediction

The Los Angeles Lakers will make the playoffs this year, and win a game or two. Kobe Bryant will lead the league in scoring.

Cliffnotes

In case you missed it, there are now Cliffnotes for "When the Quartet Left." They are the third comment for the entry.

When The Quartet Left

This is an epic poem I have been writing for a couple of days. Tell me what you think it's about. If you figure it all out, rest assured that you are totally awesome.

When the Quartet caught a train for the West,
The Captain, the Maverick, the Muscle, and the Specialist,
They were heroes twisting and shouting into the night,
Down a winding and treacherous road,
So that nothing was left to come undone--
And the Villagers gently wept,
As sympathy for the Devil gained.
When they set out to sea,
Towards the Eternal Fruit Fields of Ethereality,
The dark omen, the Black Bird, flew overhead,
And the Village agreed that it was dark days ahead,
With no hope of help;
The Village wanted to spend the rest of their days there,
On the beach, waiting for something to happen--
Waiting for the Quartet to return (wouldn't it be nice?),
But instead--bad vibrations all around, a bad sound.

Only three Elders of the Council remained:
The Father, the Son & King, and the Holy Ghost,
Protected by all the King's Men,
But they had long lost their voices to the Wind.
It was up to new voices, like the young Jester to come in;
Needing eleven dollar bills, and only having ten,
He came with new ideas of a new life and a new beginning,
To embrace uncertainty, frivolity--to forget structure,
Forget the Elders and the Village and the Council.
Another new voice arose, the voice of the Mercenary,
A dark, mysterious traveling man,
Wearing odd, dirty patchwork clothing,
Demonstrating strange powers over purple haze and fire,
And summoning a Castle for himself,
The Castle of Sand that stood in flaunting contradiction,
To the Village's traditional Red House;
The Jester and the Mercenary happily exclaimed
That the Quartet was dead, and it was the dawn of a new day.

Voices cried out against the Jester and in fear of the Mercenary;
The Green Society said that the Village had to be preserved,
And so the Green Society protested all day and all night,
Until one sunny afternoon,
A roving band of Barbarians swooped in from over the hills.
From far away they had traveled, coming from a land of ice and snow,
Screaming blood curdling screams,
Brandishing lethal, deadly weapons that the Village had never seen.
It was a rainy night when the invasion began,
As they pillaged and burned
The Village's Houses of the Holy,
Breaking in through the back door,
As fools in the rain were cut down mercilessly.
They left graffiti everywhere, their symbol: the Black Dog,
To always remind the Countryside of their power, their presence,
Burning the Mountain Side completely black.
It was in the Great Battle of Evermore that the entire Village fell,
As the Barbarians sang a wanton song of destruction,
Trampling everything underfoot, killing the country women.
Some Villagers, brave like Achilles, made their last stand,
Some made night-time flights away from their land,
Some just laid down to rest in their time of dying;
And down by the seaside, where the Quartet had left them all,
The Barbarians built a Stairway to Heaven to honor their gods.

It would be ten years gone before the rest of the Countryside
Heard of the barbaric destruction,
When finally two humble Folksmen
From a neighboring town cried their outrage,
A sound of silence that was louder than words;
But it would take the Man from the South With a Heart of Gold
To mend the wounds of the Village,
Sewing them together with his needle, after the damage had been done.
Peace could never be guaranteed, however, after so much loss--
With the departure of the Quartet,
The anarchy of the Jester,
The mysticism of the Mercenary,
The impotence of the Elders,
And the rage of the Barbarians,
How could the Countryside ever expect normalcy again?

It was of little shock, then,
When a flying saucer full of Secrets
Rounded the Dark Side of the Moon and approached Earth,
To meddle with the affairs of the poor Villagers;
And in a momentary lapse of reason, the Villagers let them,
Their minds' eye having been obscured by the clouds of war,
So that the Secrets, who were dressed in pink, convinced them
That they would all be happiest if they all just became animals:
Pigs, dogs, sheep, they lived in quiet tranquility, comfortably numb,
Not realizing that the Secrets were simply using this as a ruse
To eventually take over the Countryside for themselves--
To build the Machine that would destroy the blue skies,
And take over the damaged brains of the Countryside,
To build the Wall of Bricks
That would allow them to control and contain all.

The Machine and the Wall of Bricks neared completion,
And as the sun rose over the entrance to the Machine,
Hidden under the eclipsing shadow of the Wall,
A convocation of Eagles flew past the sunrise,
And the Villagers that had been turned into animals
Suddenly realized their folly, that what they had was not freedom,
But oppression of the cruelest kind.
They could not take it easy like this anymore,
Complacently throwing away wasted time,
For a simple, peaceful, easy feeling.
They had to regain the spirit of the days
When the Quartet still lived,
Before it was already gone.
They had to take it to the limit,
Live life in the fast lane,
Because in the long run, they could not be animals forever.
Inspired thus by the Eagles but powerless to do anything,
The Villagers waited patiently for the right moment,
And when a pack of Wolves wandered into the Village,
Born and bred in the wild to be wild,
The Villagers seized the opportunity;
As animals, the Villagers and the Wolves combined forces
To defeat the alien, pink-clad Secrets,
Driving them out with the aid of a Magic Carpet,
Which carried the Secrets all away and shoved them into the Doors,
The secret storage spaces hidden all around the Village;
And so the Doors spelled the end of the Secrets.

Becoming humans again, the Villagers realized all the Elders had died;
It had been many years since the Quartet had left,
So the Villagers, in a new spirit of freedom, elected themselves a Queen,
Feeling like champions of the world after surviving so many trials.
The Queen called a Festival into session,
With bicycle races and re-enactments of their recent battles,
And when the last enemy finally bit the dust on stage,
The Village came together to sing in a Bohemian Rhapsody,
Led by the Woman Who Sings The Blues;
She cried baby cried, because the Mercenary had left,
And taken away a piece of her heart
So that she would follow him to the ends of the Earth,
Like a ball to a chain--and she did.

Despite the celebrations, however,
All was not well with the Village;
Social unrest was beginning to stir,
For the Queen was ruling much too arbitrarily
With her Right-Hand Man who had the power of immortality,
And losing loyal supporters every day,
Until people in the Village began to cry out again
Against the Queen's tyranny, and her injustices.
The Villagers demanded an era of equality,
Especially a new family that had just moved in,
The four Brothers, who were humble and fun-loving,
But also stubborn and gritty in the face of the Queen
And her excesses and indulgences.
They refused to pay her taxes and play her games;
The Brothers simply stuck together,
And when the Queen threatened to banish them from the Countryside,
To force them to leave their home,
They armed themselves with pistols and stormed her Castle;
On a road to ruin they marched, with pleasant dreams in their head,
Too tough to die, the four lowly, simple Brothers
Unleashed a blitzkrieg of fury on the Queen's army,
Staging what became known as the Revolution,
Which lasted the entirety of that one battle,
Forever remembered as the Clash, the Only Battle That Mattered,
All in the name of social justice.
Unfortunately, this new state of affairs could not last,
Because the Brothers failed to cultivate the Village's culture;
Their upbringing had been too coarse and unrefined,
And they led a society that was more like living in the jungle,
Typified by the power of a gun-toting new gang called the Roses,
Who felt like they could turn the Village into their Paradise City,
In which they could satiate their appetite for destruction and debauchery.

It would be many years before an intelligent sense of aesthetics
Would return to the Village, but when it did,
It was actually brought about by a single Boy and his piano--
This Boy having waited for the longest time,
Simply keeping the faith that his vision of a River of Dreams,
A steady stream of ideas and intellect,
Would one day run through the Village again,
And squelch what he termed the Fire,
Which was the state of backward barbarianism
Established by the Roses;
He spread his message far and wide across the Countryside,
Spreading his gospel of the River of Dreams
And the squelching of the Fire,
And telling people that the only thing holding the Village back now
Was just a matter of trust,
Because he knew that they didn't start the Fire,
But they certainly could put it out.
And so people listened to the message of this Boy,
Echoed by respected Villagers like the Boss,
Who advocated a return to the glory days of the Quartet,
And finally awoke from their savage and base ways--
Traded their spears away for clothing, war face-paint for make-up.
It was hailed as the Cure,
The in-between days where art and literature flourished;
These days were just like Heaven to the artists of the Village,
The boys who cried and the girls who died;
Fascination for life was everywhere on the streets,
And so the Boy and his Cure brought on the disintegration
Of the barbaric rule of the Roses.
In the name of art and culture,
The Village flourished as the Athens of the Countryside.

However, it was not long before Athens had her Sparta;
They were a very small but aggressive and bellicose people,
Magical flying people known as the Pix,
Who did little but break bodies, dig for fires, and redden bricks with blood.
But the Pix were simply too small in physical stature
To wage a war on the Village,
So they enlisted the help of the Spirit,
A mysterious and unearthly force of nature,
Powerful and visceral, with a very distinct Smell
That could cast a spell and drain the Village of its intellectual desires.
So the Pix and the Smell of the Spirit were able to swarm the Village
And knock its pillars down,
And make its buildings crumble into rubble,
So that many parts of the Village were eventually abandoned.

As time passed, green moss grew on these ruins,
And so the Villagers would always remember those days
Of the Pix and the Spirit as the Green Days,
When the traditional color of fertility
Actually symbolized impotence and decay,
And where people from the Countryside would pass and say,
"Welcome to Paradise,"
As a joke and nothing more,
And no matter how hard the Villagers tried,
None of the moss would come clean.
And so the warm, intellectual, Athenian air was forever stung
By the blow brought on by the Pix and the Spirit,
So that all the Villagers lived their lives during the Green Days
By the motto: "Nice guys finish last."

Opposition to this mentality, however, did come,
In the form of the Blue-Pink-Green Droits,
A group of men formed in response
To the general mood of the Green Days;
The Droits tried to emphasize the other colors
That were visible in the Village,
To get the Villagers to see more than the green moss--
To see the blue sky and the pink health surrounding them as well;
The Droits urged the Villagers to recognize
That they were all still living the good life,
That they should just take control of their fates,
To not let the world just turn and leave them,
Even if it meant that they had to travel across the sea
To live on the mythological Island in the Sun,
A place known to the Villagers only in their dreams
As a world full of perfect beauty and happiness,
Where, legend has it, the Quartet sailed off to retire,
And are still there now, to this day--
The Maverick and the Specialist playing pool,
As the Captain surfs and the Muscle sleeps in the shade.

Time in the Village passed away
In this more or less mediocre age,
When the Villagers began to realize
Just how much they had been affected
By the Quartets' leaving;
The Village had never been the same since,
And had gone through incredible strife and turmoil,
So that people had now forgotten what peace, love, and happiness were.
They only knew of struggle, war, and hard times now,
Strange chance occurrences,
And the fight for power among the powerful;
These were such deep-rooted problems
That no Villager dared to even think they could be solved,
For they knew the Quartet would never return
From the Island in the Sun to save them;
So when hope did arrive on the back of the long-haired Donkey,
Not a single Villager took notice.

The Donkey strolled into the Village at midnite,
And saw it for what it was: a loser and a lost cause,
A sorry tale of a people that tossed out their Golden Age,
Left it on the side of the road
To be eaten by the Vultures;
But his robotic rider, the Android, saw things differently.
The Android and the Donkey had been traveling all day,
And they decided to spend the night in the Village.
The Android normally was quite paranoid about new places,
But tonight he was optimistic,
As he noticed that everything was in its right place:
Lying on the ground,
Where all things ultimately came from and went back to.
The Android liked this practical solution
To the problems of urban planning.
He rode the Donkey to a bar and went inside,
And sat down next to the Creep in the far corner,
An old, old man from the Village
Whom all the children were afraid of,
Who had survived everything that had ever happened
Since the fateful day of the Quartet's departure,
Everything from the screaming Barbarians
To the Roses' reign of terror;
And the Creep, slightly drunk, felt a kinship with the Android,
And related the entire story of the Village to him,
From the let downs to the lucky breaks to the surprises,
But the Android was not surprised by anything in the story;
He had lived his entire childhood in a glass house,
And had traveled all around the Universe as an adult,
And had seen all that there was to see,
From Telex planets to talking vegetables to fake plastic trees,
So that there were no more surprises for the Android in life.
The Creep couldn't believe it;
This extraordinary history,
This legendary tale of heroes and villains,
This story of fortunes gained and lost,
These heart-warming and heart-wrenching,
Exciting and infuriating events,
Was it not a compelling and dynamic epic,
Of the highs and lows and fate of the once great,
But now fallen and broken Village?
To which the Android responded simply,
"No. Whether you were fitter, happier, and more productive,
Or whether you were pigs in a cage on antibiotics,
It's all the same. Your story is not dynamic.
You have always been the Village,
The Village of the Countryside--
Even when the Quartet left--
And so you shall always be the Village,
Regardless of what happens in your history,
Good or bad.

And it is OK and will always be OK
If the Quartet caught a train for the West,
Because the Village they built, I know now for sure,
Will always remain, always survive."

And to this the Creep wept tears of honey.

Hungry For Nirvana

Buddha did not reach a state of enlightenment. The starvation he was going through lowered his blood sugar levels so much that his entire body began to feel numb, at which point he couldn't even feel his own nerves. This was his "state of detachment." This was his supposed "peace." Hungry and alone.

Or perhaps that is indeed the way?