bending the rules

hey guys. I know I skipped yesterday and that's not ok.... hopefully today's post can make up for it. I don't understand when the fixation switched abruptly from language to hooking up with girls. If this is the case, I don't have much to show for my first semester. Scott is knocking at the door, but I'm ignoring him now. It was brief, and I don't think he truly wanted to dance with anyone at the table. Rather, he wanted to get some physical action.

myth and man

This gets easier as I go. It's better to keep track of my ideas with sleep as an opportunity cost, I've decided. I already wrote a good amount today, but why quit now?

The first time I watched Citizen Kane I was quite underwhelmed by it. Sure, I recognized the technical mastery- some of the camera work and editing is staggering, even by today's standards. On the whole though, the reason that the rise and fall of newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane should be so resonant was completely lost on me.

Rewatching it now for class I feel like the veil has been pulled back. I can see now what Orson Welles was trying to show his audience, and I know that Citizen Kane is bound to become one of my favorite films of all time as I get older.

Kane has everything material a man could hope for on this earth- he spends and tightens his grip around his world, controlling his reality and lining up his opportunities. As he gets older, he realizes that his world is slipping away from him regardless of the things he was given- the irony is that Welles lets us see this earlier than Kane realizes it. When he leaves Mrs. Kane's boarding house, Charles Kane has already reached the spiritual peak of his life, and the rest is the hurtling downward motion of the rollercoaster.

Kane is put on a pedestal because of his wealth, but the movie shows that wealth affects personality and not much more. At the end of the day, Kane loses as much as anyone else- maybe even more.

Welles was asking all the right questions here- how can we measure a man? What makes a life valuable? As Kane says himself in the movie as to whether he can see the greatness within himself, "I think I made the best of my circumstances."

Maybe that's what it is to be human. All we really know is uncertainty. When we look through the dusty photographs in our mind and examine all the dirty faces of fellow classmates, were we filled with curiosity and wonder about the future? The little boy who pushed the cutest girl in class over for attention could grow up to be a rapist or a politician, the girl could grow up to be a submissive housewife or a radical feminist.

Potential is always there for good or worse, and every second is pregnant with near-misses and half-grasped opportunities. What should we seize and what should we let drift away? Kane did all he could to change his life, but at some point his life began to steer itself independent of his control. So what role does fate play in our lives?

Every man's goal is to carve his icon into the blank slate of life. When a man dies, he hopes to careen out and leave a bleeding scar in the fabric of his reality, a wound that will stretch for generations and years. If we succeed in doing so, what then? When we make decisions, we step up to within an inch of Fate, interlock fingers and try not to get pushed over backwards. In the end, who wins?

We measure meaning by ourselves and by our consciousness by and large. If we are too afraid to sit alone with our decisions, then we live for or against the abstract idea of God that we don't understand- we retreat to our guilt and fear and await judgment or salvation. A God may very well exist, but few people have ever unfolded all the trappings that come with the notion of an omniscient God.

Without mincing too many more words, the ultimate question about life is whether or not the mythic quality in men's lives is man made or God made? Are we guiding our myths or is someone else pulling the strings? I don't know the answer, but I think there's compelling evidence for both sides.

tall orders

Today was uneventful except it marked another safe passage to Foster Gresham to get the much coveted chicken and potato burrito from Taco Johns with Chris. In other news, we are soon placing an order of a ridiculous amount of alcohol to be delivered into our dorm room. It's probably around 3 gallons of various liquors all combined.

While I was walking out to class today I was thinking about writing a lot, but now most of those thoughts are gone from my mind. There's something about the cracked asphalt in the parking lot behind the crosstown shopping center that gets my marbles rolling. I'm always staring down at the sidewalk which has been perpetually covered with snowmelt lately and I usually come up with ideas. Hard to write on the go so my best thoughts usually float past me.

The transfer process is almost done but I keep putting off the final steps. I have to send a letter to Michigan explaining my dropping German and I have to pay the credit card payment for State. Can't ask mom because she's broke and I can't ask dad because he'll drag me around for a week before he'll give it to me. I guess that's not entirely true; if I asked, he'd give me his number but I'd have to listen to him talk more about New World Order fantasies and about applying to schools in Colorado. Plus then there would be the misplaced guilt I'd feel at asking him for money.

In short I filed an application for my own credit card today with frequent flyer miles on it so maybe that will get here fast enough that I can pay for it on my own. I remember something from earlier now though.

It was about writing, life, and the name of this blog. When I was naming this I had the image of a guy dressed like I've been dressed in the dorm lately: dark, baggy sweats, a white undershirt that's been worn several times too many, unkempt hair, and red eyes from not being a morning person. This person would go into your typical American diner somewhere- maybe from being up all night- and would sit down and order a coffee.

He would go sit down in a booth by the window where the blinds are down, and hold a cup of black coffee in a chipped white mug in between his cold hands. The sun would slowly rise bleeding pink and orange through the blinds, and this nondescript midwestern diner would look like something out of old California- an outpost marking the farthest discovered point in the West, the beyond being unknown.

The man has come to write, and his coffee is the jet fuel he needs to do it. He's not a morning person and he's burdened by lack of ambition, past demons, whatever else. As people file in, the diner looks more and more like a sanctuary. There is only the present for this man, and the future looks bright regardless of how bleak the outside is.

To me, the empty shell of a man writing in the diner early in the morning is a universal symbol. Some of the best artists of our generation have risen through the ranks this way, by filing into coffeeshops in the morning and cranking words out, even when they didn't want to.

I always wondered about universal symbols. There are certain things in western culture that have immutable meanings. If a guy comes up to a fork in the road, it means he's at a pivotal moment in his life: it represents decision, fate, time, whatever. Does a fork in the road mean the same thing in Mongolia? I don't know the answer to that but I would imagine it probably does. Who knows.

Besides the point. Robert Frost has already milked the forked road for all it's available meaning, but I still love the themes he had his fingers tangled in there. So, my warm little coffeeshop with a hungover bum writing in it will fill in for this old image. It could have been more original, or more fresh, but nevermind- I think Starbucks might be the face of our generation.

firsts

This will be the first blog entry I've ever seriously written. We all had a Xanga back in middle school, but I never took mine too seriously. I hope to take this seriously- I'd like this to be a noble experiment of sorts, to see if I can stay disciplined enough to keep going.

All the best writers write everyday, right?
I think they do, so I'm going to try to follow hesitantly in their footsteps.

Here I am reading a chapter on form in film and right now I'm trying to use my title here to dictate my content to me. "Firsts."

There's the obvious one. Recently was the first time I made any kind of sexual progress with a girl at Indiana. She's Indian, typical features but sharper than average. Still got the button nose and the soft complexion. Looks innocent enough but after enough alcohol I guess any girl will jump a complete stranger. Sadly the night ended with some pretty heavy alcoholic distortion and some trademark self-pitying philosophy.

This is going to be a good log of my memory too, I can already tell.

We went to a party off campus in a neighborhood designed for student housing. Basically, we invited ourselves to some kid's surprise birthday party who wasn't even there when we got there. So I walk in the door with a full bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 inside me and artificial fruit on my breath, with a couple girls from the floor above us. One was Danielle, a girl I went to high school with and was in my youth group- we weren't great friends in high school but great acquaintances I'd say. We shared some decent conversation in classes we had in common, couldn't ask for much more than that in high school.

The other girl was Kristina, Danielle's friend and briefly my friend during welcome week. She was now just another acquaintance. She'd been drinking pretty mildly, as had Danielle, much to my disappointment. We were all standing in the corner by the bar, away from the action of the party and I tried to strike up some conversation with Danielle while waiting for my roommate and his girlfriend to arrive. Danielle was always a good sport, a quality that I always admired in the meek-mannered. Some people hold their convictions like cold shiny diamonds, reflective and unbreakable. Danielle's diamonds were more like cooling carbon; they had a certain form, but you could still make some light impressions on them.

After some banter he showed up and upon walking in the door I noticed his distaste while he was sipping from the red plastic party cups. Anxious to get him on my level I asked him about getting drunk tonight. He said that he wished he could find some hard liquor so I was on the task. I bounced past people all warm and fuzzy and found the owner of the apartment. He showed me the freezer and pulled out the opal blue Skyy Vodka bottle. It was cold and heavy in my hands, bold with white typeface. Perfect- quite an improvement from Khamchatka or other plastic-bottled liquors. My roommate and his girlfriend all partook while I poured generously into their plastic cups, raising the bottle to my lips for what my intoxicated brain could guess was about an ounce of alcohol. This is where the blur begins.

I sink into the couch and start talking to the girl next to me. This I gathered after the fact, the next morning, since I don't remember any conversation taking place. What I do remember is her laughing and stretching her head out, planting a filthy kiss on my face. There was a kind of mild surprise in me before I quickly focused all my remaining attention on this girl.

The rest of the night plays out like a distorted silent movie in my head. The girl puts her arms around my neck, kisses me some more, asks me if I want to smoke hookah to which I reply that I would be thrilled to. I briefly affirm my decisions for the night with my roommate, who looks almost as excited for me as I feel. He says that she's cute with a boyish excitement in his eyes. There is some talk of me going home with her. Some hookah is smoked. The girl then tries to tell me something remorseful but with as much tenderness as she can. Then there is me leaving with my roommate and hopping in a car, not in a great mood.

I get on my soapbox in the car and project my anger onto my roommate. I tell him about realities and social boundaries, and I say that his choice affects the reality, my reality. Why not choose the better reality for me and let me go home with this girl? He obviously doesn't let me get through to him or choose correctly, so I open the door and start walking back. After a few minutes they talk me down and back into the car. Back in the dorm, I wander the hallways in frustration and I punch the concrete wall as hard as I can with my left hand. Even through the booze I can tell that it hurts, a lot.

In the morning I'll wonder how it's not broken, but for now I go across the hall where my floormates are throwing a small party. I sit in a cheap desk chair by one of their beds and talk to a girl named Shannon for a while about my problems. She thinks I'm drunk and oblivious so she doesn't pretend to care about my problems very much at all. I end up in my RA's room talking to him about the same problems, problems he really cares about but similarly can't decipher. Eventually I head back to the room in defeat.

The next day my friend fills in the pieces. Of course he wasn't holding me back from hooking up with a cute girl but protecting me from getting my ass kicked at a party, probably by another guy in a mental state similar to mine. Another night gone, I scratch my head at him and feel a vague wave of shame and jealousy.

So I diverted from the form here but I think it grew together with the content and did it's own thing. This is about me getting to know myself and whoever else finds this getting to know the real me so we'll see how it goes. I'll get better at this as we go along here.