I dreamed this dream and I still dream of it
and I will dream of it sometime again.
Everything repeats itself and everything will be reincarnated,
and my dreams will be your dreams.
- Tarkovsky

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

"I'm beginning to feel that no author has the right to tear his characters apart if he doesn't know how, or feel that he knows how (poor sucker) to put them together again. I'm tired - my God, so tired - of leaving them all broken on the page with just 'The End' written underneath."

JD Salinger, 1943

JD Salinger, author of works that have meant much, maybe the most to me, and is without a doubt my greatest prose-writing influence (that is to say, inspiration, whatever, as i don't mean to sound like i'm following his tradition or plan to be his successor or anything), died today at age 91. I've said a few times that I'm rather impatient for his passing as it may make available all of his manuscripts written after his withdraw and seclusion from real life, but I never meant it, and I still don't expect that possibility to come together. the truth is, apparently, i found it very comforting to think that hidden away somewhere was this very brilliant, very weird, probably perpetually Holden-esque character (who perhaps liked and likened himself to young people a bit too much), still alive, still at his typewriter, this last living connection to the Glass family, this last family member. There was the thought, however abstract, that, as Holden with Fitzgerald, I might just call him up one day and have a chat, ask after Zooey (and whether the boy is too old now to consider marrying me), and Franny, and if he ever figured out where the ducks go in winter. But I guess I can't really do that now.


What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.

How sad, we have lost the last "classic" writer, I may be mistaken but I can think of none other, who has had the effect on literary America that lives. And how sad, I have lost the writer of my favorite story ever put to paper. I feel like I have lost a family, the Glass family, they have moved away, and that though they've left behind their memoirs and photo albums I will miss their presence.

How terrible it is when you say I love you and the person on the other end shouts back 'What?'

To all the people watching, I can never thank you enough for your kindness to me and I'll think about it for the rest of my life. All I ask of you is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people: please don't be cynical. I hate cynicism, for the record, it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere.

Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you're kind, amazing things will happen.

-Conan O'Brien

i am bipolar,

when i'm up late at night and not super productive, i can't help but seep into a dark mood. i've been reading old emails and blogs from a rough time ago and its as though i'm back there again. what i wouldn't give to go back and to know to release my talons, that while it may seem worth it now for the support it may have been best for me to have simply walked away. i realize now that i was in a defining stage, a pretty impressionable stage where i was looking for people who could confirm or deny who i hoped that i was or might be. if i had only had enough awareness to stand by myself then perhaps i wouldn't have to've groveled. i have this mental image of me breaking my own heart, throwing it on the floor and then realizing i have to walk across said floor to get out. so i do, and the pieces of the glass heart get stuck in my skin. i don't say that to be dramatic. i just hate how i feel about myself, perhaps more than i hate my real self much of the time, and while i guess i've been working on that all my life there was a window of hope that was open for awhile. but it got slammed shut, and i've spent the last two or three years trying to get the fucking thing open again.

maybe i'm ayn rand's least favorite character, maybe i'm the person who thrives on other people, maybe i'm a vampire and i drain them to keep myself alive, can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. oh why don't i fit? what a silly child my parents have.

in a monty python interview, john cleese says of graham chapman that he was BROKEN, he was DEFECTIVE. he needed to be sent back and fixed. that's how i feel when i'm like this, and i just wonder if there was a chance that i could have been better if i had just made the choice to walk away.

And this is just the 50th letter I’ve written you, Stanley, from where I am. They condemn me to it, this bittersweet punishment of always speaking to someone just out of range. You will never get this letter, just as you will never receive the next 700 that I am to write, nor the ones after that or before this, but my mind will never stop aching for you to hear my story, all of my stories, the stories that I never told you. I’m sorry, Stanley, and the guilt will most likely consume me for the rest of my time on earth, until, finally, they take me as well. I hope, Stanley, that when they say eternal pain they don’t mean it, and that regret cannot outlast infinity.

but slowly, slowly!

That's the quote i keep hearing in my head as i try to build myself back up and pull it together. nothing is going to happen overnight, but change must occur. it must. i have been productive so far- not as much as i'd like to be, as i determine i must be late at night or when i wake up in the morning, but still. i'm making progress. i'm applying for jobs and internships and reading like mad, i'm writing somewhat, i'm spouting ideas, i'm not wallowing in loneliness. i'm not psyched to be back but i don't feel wretched and desperately lonely as i have at the start of semesters past. this is partially because i have decided that i don't care, that i have no expectations from the people of this school, and only, really, of myself. the other part is that i have lessened- well, maybe not lessened, perhaps more like brought into a realistic light- my own load, my own demands of myself. things will change, the snail will climb mount fiji, but slowly, slowly! these are decisions i made over break, and they are good ones for me. i came back to school with thoughts of "yes, it's time to do things. it's time to work. and that will feel good." also, i will be done, done with school by May 8th (O fateful day)... so perhaps that's the only reason. i like to think not, however.

here are things i am thinking for my future as of tonight:
this summer: work in ventura while job searching elsewhere; mainly LA and NYC
fall: move to NYC. work in NYC. if no job in NYC, then a trip to NYC is in order. continue to work.
spring: continue job in nyc or in la.
summer 2011: leave for europe. travel. work. whatever.
fall: grad school in europe.
while in europe, travel. see everything. run away. once done running, come back to ventura. get job in la. travel someplace ridiculous every year. write screenplays. write stories. write books. make movies. maybe fall in love, maybe not.
probably not.

By 26 or 27 I should be back in Ventura after gallavanting, unless I decide to stay someplace along the way. Yes.

In the meantime, work hard. Pay off debt. Lose weight. Write, write, write. Go to concerts, read, learn music, work on languages, grow hair out, take care of self, become better organized, take every trip that I may take in good conscience. I want to live and make up for the life that I've unwittingly wasted, either due to my father, my sister, my mom, my financial situation, my appearance, my silly unrequited heart, my own self-imposed boundaries. I realized recently that my father is a fearful man and has made me think that that sort of life is the norm. It is not. I will form myself into an adventurer, I will shake the dust from this town from me. Of course, I will revel in it again as well, I will set up shop and like it. But only after I've become this person I'm in love with. I think I see her in the mirror sometimes, but only for a fragment of a second.

another thing i've realized is that my problems have become so boring. i'm sick of them. i want them gone. easier said than done, but entirely possible.

A Man Said to the Universe

A man said to the universe:
"Sir I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation."

Stephen Crane