Bukowski

it is a clear Thursday

I woke up, took a shower, got out and found one of our cleaning ladies standing outside. I went back into the bathroom to collect my clothes off the floor so she could clean.

Whenever the cleaning ladies are here, I always feel bad. Why should they have to clean up our messes? They have kids and messes of their own. Our family should be able to keep our house clean. Then again, I'm guiltier than than the rest of my family. I really can't pick up after myself. I must have a scattered mind. Cleanliness seems to always be an afterthought (except in the presence of certain friends or girls).

It's just another injustice of the world. It wouldn't have bothered me like it did had I not been caught up in christmas guilt. I found myself thinking about all of the stuff I own. Thousand-dollar bikes, a camera, a laptop, nice clothes, a drawing tablet, a brand new wetsuit, a snowboard and college paid for...the list isn't excessively long by some standards, but I feel like I don't have time to use half of it. Guilt is the worst feeling a person can have.

Anyways, took the bike out for a spin today. First time in a long time. Rode down to coffee nine, and picked up a coffee, went down to the empty park, sat on the mossy cement retaining wall and stared at the river. It was breezy, and the trees were rustling. I put on some music and just sat thinking.

I thought about my life, my future, and the frustration I have with both.

Maybe life can't be won. Maybe it's a cat's game.

Yes, today was a day to feel guilty. It all reminds me of an article (I'm Worried about my Anxiety) I read in Vice Magazine that talks about how Nietsche (yes I'm talking about Nietsche, haha) argued that:

that our human need to be something other than what we are—that feeling, so familiar to all of us, that we are inadequate, that we must somehow justify ourselves, that we have an unfulfilled purpose that will relieve us upon its fulfillment—is merely an expression of our frustrated drive to be cruel. Very briefly, here’s how it works: Before we were joined together in large societies, we could satisfy our drive to be cruel—which is just like the drive to have sex or to eat or to have friends or any other number of natural drives—by expressing that drive upon the members of other human groups. There were battles, “festivals of cruelty” as he calls them, even increasingly ritual and stylized expressions of cruelty (think of the public-torture carnival days and auto-da-fé of the Middle Ages and the Spanish Inquisition, for example). But as it becomes more and more difficult to express our drive to cruelty upon others, the drive does not go away; rather, it turns back upon itself, it inflicts pain on the mind of the individual experiencing the drive. That pain—which comes to be called bad conscience and eventually guilt and is formalized in the myth, so Nietzsche thought, of original sin—is your mind attacking itself, expressing the drive to cruelty inward because it cannot find an outward expression.

fucking genius.

Bad meets Evil

"...till the evilness flows through his blood like poisonous lead."

a line from Slim and Royce da 5'9''

been caught in my head.

Sunset Philosophy

JuLia LaytOn December 28 at 11:31pm Report

hahahahaha you would like my sunset picture

Nik Payne December 28 at 11:34pm

hopeless artfag that I am, yes

Nik Payne December 28 at 11:34pm

it realy is a nice photograph though

JuLia LaytOn December 28 at 11:36pm Report

its not the photo. its the sunset. hahahahaha.

Nik Payne December 28 at 11:44pm

well it's kind of the "if a tree falls in the forest" paradox-

Is a sunset really beautiful if nobody is there to see it?

Without the photograph, there would be no beautiful sunset--I could not have witnessed this sunset without the photograph.

The sunset is therefore, of less importance than the photograph.

Is this a beautiful photograph, or a beautiful sunset?

The photograph is beautiful, because it makes the sunset tangible--it gives the sunset an audience, and without an audience, an object can never be beautiful, since only people are arbiters of beauty.

Is a pipe really not a pipe, as Magritte said?

Rondenion

I first happened upon his music a fews years back when I was still suffering from severe depression. It was a sort of very real salvation. Sad, simple and overwhelmingly beautiful, his music spoke to me in divine moments that brought me to tears, sent shivers down my spine, and once again showed me the very real beauty of the world around me. In those rare moments where music released me from my very personal hell, the experience was absolutely overwhelming, it was an excruciating ecstasy.

In his music, I could feel this man suffering in obscurity, drowning in smoky atmospheric nightclubs in the glitter-neon depths of lonely Tokyo streets, on sad rainy nights. I could feel his sadness, his struggle, and I could relate.

Music and art gave such meaning to my life back then, It's hard to look back on those days, painful as they were, without feeling torn. Proust said that the most important years in his life where those he struggled. I can certainly relate.

When you've lived a life that touches hell and heaven, it's hard to welcome stability. It feels like the excitement of life has had the volume turned down. In a way, you could say that I sometimes struggle with my lack of a struggle; that I--rather paradoxically--hurt from a lack of pain. Life is still full of the same questions, but without the accompanying anxiety telling me I'm alive. I still find myself asking: What do I want to do with my life? Where do I want to go, who do I want to be, and do I have the energy to care? It's the same thing over again, but now an unimposing cloud of listless complacency hangs over me, and so too does feeling that I have lost a part of myself.

And so, on nights like these, of late-night reflection, I once again long for wintry Stockholm nights, summers in Sur and visions of Davenport.

A1.Rondenion_-_Beginning_Of_The_Ring.mp3 by Bosconi Records

and to think

This was the stuff I was making only months ago.

i have a problem

with people

writing

love poems.

if you are happy

there is no reason

to write poetry or

to write anything,

for that matter.

your love is

your own

subjective

obsession.

to me, it is

just words

on pages

and in

sharing it

you

ask me

politely,

to

wallow

in unshared

sentimentality.

to

watch you

masturbate

in a

public mess

of words

and feelings.

to

feel the

profundity

of poorly

conjured

hearts, kisses,

sunsets, spirits,

memories,

shootings stars,

and "days

long gone"--

but it never works,

so don't try.

--or at least

have the

good sense

to keep it private.

___

Leave it to

your sweetheart

instead.

I'm sure she'll

happily

swallow

every measure

of your

impotent, literary

cum-shot.

bacon for dinner

caught up

There I was,

caught up in it all--

there was something

surreal

about

driving at night

in the rain.

I saw

glittering

on the pavement.

I saw

it quivering,

white-yellow.

I saw

lonely

streetlights

and quiet

ghosts on

the highway.

alive,

with the

slow, deep pulse

of the universe.

----

yes, the world sleeps

in the supreme beauty

of a familiar darkness.

words fail me

on these nights

when I simply get

caught up in it all.

ghost christmas

last night

coffee-stain hitler made a special appearance in my sink

finding God

is easier

when

a golden cross

dangles

between her tits.

Philosophy

It's just a kind of mental paralysis.

Nothing all day

I haven't felt this unproductive since summertime, and even then I had a job. I'm caught in this cycle of making art, reading books, and wasting away on my goddamned computer. This is no way to live. I want to head back to college, force some useful knowledge into my brain or something, but not the stupidity I fill my mind with now. Philosophy. Kirkengaard, Sartre, Camus. Now philosophy is interesting, but it is also a fucking sham. A sham worse than religion, art school, or cash advance money-lending.

I had a mind to start my own philosophy, and it won't be a single clever aphorism that tries to singlehandedly replace and transcend the thousands of years of thought preceding it. Not only is that impossible, but also incredibly vain. It has been attempted too many times. It has never fully worked. Even the greatest revelations from the greatest minds are not infallible.

I'm sure they felt good, but for philosophers or any intellectual the answer matters half as much as the search. Searching, like artists and writers and the rest of us, for thrills. So whether or not existentialism is true tomorrow doesn't matter. It's getting me off today.

No, my philosophy will be deceptively simple. Painfully simple. And timeless. We'll bust out Occam's razor and shave every ounce of fluff off till what's left of the world stands naked. Pitiful, naked, but TRUE above all. It will be a list of truths--a list of things that have not necessarily been scientifically proven, but are beyond doubting. I'm not sure who will arbitrate or manage the list, but it will grow in time.

The first inalienable truth will be:

1. Nutella is delicious.

There! nothing mind-blowing. Nothing earth shattering. And yet, somehow, more certain in its truthfulness than even some of the greatest ideas known to man. I am sure there are even those in America (and worldwide) to whom Nutella has brought more pleasure than philosophy ever has. Not many, mind you--the piteously unintellectual types--but they definitely exist.

See, even I'm guilty of pissing away a perfectly good day! Oh well, I enjoy my word-toys.

beautiful absurdity

Why blog?

"I think that people who keep notebooks and jot down their thoughts are jerk-offs. I am only doing this because somebody suggested I do it, so you see, I am not even an original jerk-off. But this somehow makes it easier. I let it roll. Like a hot turd down a hill."

-Bukowski

although it is not the case

this is wonderful:

"People understand me so little that they do not even understand when I complain of being misunderstood."

—Søren Kierkegaard

Come to think of it, Kierkegaard may have not only been the father of existentialism, but an emo little bitch.

Emo is four years ago, but it would interesting, albeit ridiculously pretentious to search for existentialism in emo music. I'm sure there is some.

Also, as I'm learning about existentialism, I will share this quote. For being philosophical, it is remarkably practical. And less emo.

"What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die."

like bad poetry and hallmark cards

I always knew that everything

everyone said

about relationships

was just

a bunch of

platitudes.

but now that I am

embarking on one,

(barely ankle-deep)

it's funny.

I can already tell you

every ounce of that

schmaltzy crap

is true.

and even though

I am not in love,

and even though

I am not enjoying

succumbing

to those very-same

platitudes.

I will not lie:

I'm enjoying

every cliché

minute of this.

(forgive my hypocrisy-

I know I'm no love poet)

Caught in Suspension

The latest, the greatest

balcony

The yellow glow of streetlights

the white glow of headlights

the grey glow of cigarettes

and a perfect crescent moon

(oneminutepoetry)

poor men, fat stacks

they always

tell you from

the days you

are young.

always on

children's tv

sesame street

arthur

reading rainbow

"go to the

library"

"your local library"

had they actually

been to my

library, they might

have been more

cautious

it was

not such a place of

much enlightenment

filled with plenty

of regular people

but lacking

the ambiance, to match

the ideals.

not a true place

of higher learning

the entire compound

swarming

with bums

and piles of clothes

and trash

all around

the building,

bathed entirely

in

smoke, piss and

beer.

those people,

wrinkled tomes

of sadness; the most

depressing

biographies

nobody'll

ever read

I guess that building &

those occupants:

tired and missing teeth,

never really inspired me

much. The whole

transaction of

knowledge was

never a pleasant

one.

but now, finally,

a decade and a half

later

it makes sense.

a new, different library.

only a ten minute

walk from my room,

it's clean, modern, and

doesn't reek of piss

and death.

the only trace of

depravity is an

old man trembling

with the excitement

of looking at porn

who sits in the arts

basement.

The library probably

hired him for flavor.

and

while the other students

are busy studying

at desks and tables,

i sneak in (knowledge

thief that I am) and

pull off staggering

heists--

grabbing

stacks of

literature,

poetry

art.

and

only

now

can i understand

why those bums

clung

to the library--

free books for

the rich.

free knowledge for

the bums.

a microcosm

free from

distinctions.

a distraction,

a feast for all

to enjoy.

(tonight we read like kings)

and

to

think

the whole

time

a few stuffed

animals

had it all

figured out!

Pursue

excess in moderation.

4:49 AM

seriously