August 2002

Thursday, August 15

I’ve been staying here or mostly staying here or a little bit over 70% staying here since November. At Nana’s.

It’s kind of odd. …It is.

But so be it.

Swell.

I don’t feel the need to decorate this room – as if I ever were the type to decorate a room – but still the feeling that I’m only here temporarily has to a large degree hung or been hanging with me. I don’t live here. I’m just here at night and sometimes during the day. Now and then for a morning or an afternoon. Sure its not home. But I guess I’m coming and going and sleeping, ..living out of it. If you want to call it living.

And my real room at my real home, well, somebody else sleeps there because he finds it nicer, because he got bit by a scorpion. Yeah he got bit by a scorpion somewhere on the neck as he lay asleep, down there in the basement. So now he’s been sleeping there in my room, upstairs, well my other room, at home, because where I am right now isn’t home or is it. Nevermind.

And mom uses my room for a strategic ironing base of sorts. Piles of clothes and the ironing board, dress shirts and starch etc, …all propped up in and around my old desk and overtaking my rarely used 35 mm camera and my school notebooks and all my other books. Debates with myself I often have, as regard the books. Should I bring them here? No they are already in my room. Huh? What? Which room? And people deposit all kinds of things in there as well, in my room where I don’t live. As expected, my room is now a type of storage unit, minus the big overhead door.

“Kinda living” here at Nanna’s has put an interesting twist on the way I view my things – my possessions and knickknacks, shelved items and droored items and items taking up residence in the closet, things I have that I don’t need. Things that I keep around simply as they are mine and I don’t want to throw them out. Like old employees at a manufacturing plant who have a certain level of time-accrued seniority, most of these items are useless, serving purposes not clearly understood or esteemed, yet protected by the divine wishes of the room-master who says: “No I can’t throw that away, for it is a part of me.” People who live entirely out of one small bedroom with limited space understand such a predicament – the battle between practicality and “things”, the struggle between breathing room and all your old baseball cards stacked on top of a desk that you never used for study and the neat trinket you bought in that tourist-trap when you were fourteen. Stuff that you attempt to reorganize once a year instead of hauling outside and setting on fire, …so that you have room to keep folded clothes in drawers, as it should be. Instead your underwear lives in a drawer alongside those fake billybob teeth and the Wal-Mart mask and snorkel set.

“Kinda living” here at Nanna’s has sort of magically whisked me away from all that madness of clutter. For here, amid my hastily prepared living quarters some seven miles away from the old home-place of my scarred youth, I am getting by with just my clothes and my computer and my camera and a few books. Getting by, or have gotten by, for almost eight months. Wow its been eight months. Holy crap.

I really don’t have A LOT of things at back at home, but just enough to feel scattered and confused beyond rescue if ever the urge arises to find the lost shoe or the missing Compact Flash Card. That is specifically why it has been nice to get away and live for awhile with scant few things outside of clothes and an internet connection, and a vehicle outside.

I’ve decided, that I never want to be one of those people who has a garage-full or an empty room-full of stuff. Stuff sucks. So outside of manly tools and cool outdoor equipment, the way we’re headed is anit-junk. I find myself incredibly lucky that DeAnja is of even the more pro-active sort. A non-junk, trinket-hating, clutter-opposing individual of the anti-stuff pro-functional tribe.

So be it.

Swell.

Monday, August 12

...sure

Thursday, August 8

College philosophy offers up plenty of food for thought. Those possessing inordinate amounts of leisure time, coupled with high-minded notions of their own thoughts and a desire to impart such thoughts on those within range who enjoy mind ticklings, have left us with heaps upon loads upon masses upon piles upon, ..more than a lot – lets just say lots, of ideas;

..Conclusions about the nature of the universe and the nature of man. Mepersonalythinks most of it should be filed away in a dark room behind or around or near old rotten beer near the rear, ..of a drawer labeled empty drivel. A drawer being part of a run down desk; a leaning particle-board desk in bad need of repair. Its all covered in rat dung and dust, and the light from the ceiling above is never turned on. So when somebody does go down there to that dark room and turns on the light to look for the old beer and the bulb turns on above the run down desk full of drawers, …the light flickers and blinks for 10 seconds until it decides to turn on. File that philosophy stuff down there in that desk in the back of that forgotten drawer. Even misspell the label. Something like emtydrivle. And paste the label all lop side and crooked’ed.

But still, tonight I checked my hotmail account – and proceeded with the ritual of deleting all the unwanted spam. With hotmail you gotta click the box beside each individual message, ..to select it for the purpose of deletion. I can’t count the number of times I’ve whispered under my breath: “These spammers do not deserve the time I devote to methodically deleting their messages. This is ridiculous.”

So I just wonder.

I wonder what Machiavelli would say about it.

What Machiavelli would say about current western consumer-driven, drive-through, exercise-machine-buying, push-button-guided-missile-firing, time-saving-device-hording, super-sized, strip-mall-constructing, mini-van-with-42-cupholder, hair in a spray can, culture.

Personally I’d just get a kick out of seeing a well-revered ancient philosopher, even sombody as recent as O'Sullivan, perhaps somebody other than Mechiavelli who had high hopes for humanity, being transported to our time. He’d stand or sit or kneel and peer over my shoulder. I’d dialup and check my email; show him how far we’ve really come.

The old philosopher would put a bullet in his head. Either that or he would ask to go back to his own time and give up philosophosizing and idea-cooking, become a simple man who worked in his garden and didn’t offer up any far-reaching conclusions.

Kind of a stretch but its gotta be the weirdest thing I’ve ever posted.

Tuesday, August 6

What would it be like?
It would be like this.