Keen Manipulator

Hey

You gonna let me post something now?

Gonna be bloggin

Bout… things. But can’t now for math.

Things: {x/

The set of all real numbers greater than or equal to:

Skyrim

Final Fantasy VII

Silent Hill 2

more video games}

+

Epic Heroic Lit

The Middle East

The Avignon Papacy and The Dalai Lama

School

Drugs

Sex

Drugs…

-Clayton

Lamenter

In your face, there is a hole where your eye once was. If I move closer, I can see down to your ankles. In the soles of your feet are four worms lying, and in them gestates the infinite cognitive apparatus of complicated though. They are heavy, weighing you down. They are consuming, for which no one can blame. What of the hole in your head though? Have their dreams drifted and risen to make a home here? A home built of rationality and wild passions? What did those eyes see, having the world’s dreams filtered through them?

A girl, with beautiful hair. A dream? A reality? How many parts of both had let this shallow corpse believe it was a king? She is here within you. The others are simply evanescent. They slip by while you dance. A whirlwind of life, filtered through your eyes and held in your fragile skull. A skull now, with a hole. And where did that thought go to die malnourished? What dark corner of your shallow skull does she sleep in, as she lay hidden from me, no matter how hard I look. Does she rest between other dreams unperceived? Between the mother and the father. Him with his gentle smile and withered hands. Her, with her arms to embrace and her cheap fleece blankets? Does she creep, like a sister, in and out of time? One time strong, and the other time wracked with pain. Has your bride become a ghost, leaving you scared and shivering in ways a child could never understand? Does she speak to you when you sleep, and leave you when you wake?

And what of you in this head? Where are you? How old are you? Are you angry like a teen? Are you tired like a man? By stepping back I can see your body. Lean, attractive, growing hoar frost on your chin. Surely you cannot be the same in there as you are out here. Out here the small dogs nip at your fingers, and wind blows though your hair. Out here other eyes look on your shape. Inside the hole in your head though, your shape is one riddle with the pangs of time. Fettered with the chains of disappointment. Ever changing. Once holding a child, the next holding a pen. Once holding the fingertips of your bride, and another staring sullenly at the sky.

You have been changing too quickly for me to follow, as I peer into the hole in your skull. Like life you are evanescent and intangible. A body wracked with pain with embracing arms in one frame, and gentle smile of disappointment on another. Your body, though strong here in this world, will wither and die as well. I see now, that you are withering faster inside the you I see through the hole in your skull. Outside the leaves fall slowly in autumn, but inside they torrent and thunder. Inside a marsh, making your steps heavier and you breath reek of poison. Outside a paved street. Outside a smiling face, and a glimmer in the eye. Inside a gaunt sigh. In between a hole in your skull.

Which way can the two converge but through the hole? The warm autumn light emerging through cracks in the cranium you’ve made. The dogs happily nipping at your corpse. Where does the gaunt smile of a man wracked with pain go in this world though? Well he will vanish in the light that bleeds into your skull. As will the bride who haunts you, passing out of existence while the world smashes in. What of your body? Well it decays, which feeds the worms, your final offering and one more fitting to the new world you’ve inhabited. The others will claim that you’ve self destructed, as what sane man would work towards anything but self-preservation. They will miss the images you’ve given them from your world, which is simply theirs having passed through your lens and having been made manifest in your head, which I can only see with that hole in your skull. It was interesting to look at for a few minutes, and heaven knows it would be difficult to have to live in there for a lifetime. There are so many skulls though, and yours is not unique. It was fun to peer into yours, but others are out there beyond count. Take solace in your transformation from concept to form. And the others, they will forget about the hole in your skull, until they join you in the dust one day. For we will all be together when we lie broken in crisp air and the autumn sun.

another-stoic-face-deactivated2 asked: You're very well written, very nice voice, I'm assuming you're in or have graduated from college?

Yes, I do go to college. I like to write very much. Im hoping to do it for a living, within academia. Thank-you for noticing. It makes me feel very good!

America, is there anything worse than a Diane Keaton Movie?

On this fourth of July, I am sitting around for the first part of the day, with my mom. Lame enough I know, but the worst part of the day has to be these apple pie bullshit American success/yet still mid-life plight stories starting Diane Keaton. 

This is the perfect example of the bullshit white people problems that the upper classes define themselves by, while the rest of us struggle to pay our rent to some yuppie slum lord from Victorville. Diane Keaton is always amazingly successful, enjoying a career as either the most successful writer in New York, the most successful doctor in New York, or the most successful chef… in… New York. She either has a sweet and utterly beat and broken down love bug of a husband or more often than not, no husband at all… as why should she need a man… OH WAIT, she does, because that’s what the story is about anyway! She always has a hoard of daughters who are enjoying careers of their own as either, the most successful young doctor in New York, or the most successful young chef in New York… are you fucking tired of this bullshit yet? I know I am, but wait, there’s more!

Not to be done by smart ass little nihilists like me, Diane Keaton always offers up a spectacular verbal display, showing off her Ivy league vocabulary by completely over-doing it with unnecessarily large words. A mere douchebag is turned into an “Ambivalent amphibian with an indefatigable penchant for fettering himself with arrogant ignorant ambivalence”… or something like that. This whole process takes place in the high ceilings of some uptown manor or in the case of her daughters, in the radiant light that shines through the bay window of their million dollar New York city loft. The best part is all the crying! Why? Men. Why Men? Because it seems as if every man in the damn show is throwing themselves at the feet of these wenches… even the sun dried bone cage that is Diane Keaton. Yet, even so… its all about awkwardness… these little girls are just so lovable, and so chaste! As young and rich generally are right? They are so dramatic too… but thats okay, because their drama is absorbed by some magical prince charming who rides up in a moderately priced sports utility vehicle(to show his rugged underclass status) and sweeps her off to her 3 million dollar wedding.

So much crying in these movies too! Always finding yourself, starting over and learning to live, love laugh. Of course, as what else could there be? Real problems like rent, ignorance, prejudice, racism, crushing depression, indescribable loss, bittersweet accomplishments, sickness, despair, hunger, stubbing your toe and finding out your dog shit on the floor are completely unrepresented in this upper class fantasy bubble, yet still all the crying! Of course, these are less important than a mid afternoon garden party featuring THE Diane Keaton and her notoriously bisexual daughters du jour singing lame ass fifties doo wop songs to a host of young suitors, and then disintegrating into an whiney argument about finding a man and getting married. Do women want to see this stuff? I think I’d rather a centipede bite my dick.

America, stop encouraging this bitch. Annie Hall fucking sucked, its time to drop the knowledge on you. The only time we should ever be forced to see Diane Keaton is when I emerge on this fourth of July responsibly drunk and burning an effigy of this horrible horrible reminder of our country’s mediocrity.

True love

A dog is ravenously trying to hump our dog at the dog park. Is it rape or nature? I guess its all in where you’re standing.

Crushing

I have spent the last few days swallowing myself into a stupor, and feeling made out of stone when I come out on the other end. Tonight, my head is being crushed like a vise. It turns out it was a bad day to try and snap out of it.

You are dead. It doesn’t feel like anything else… not even other deaths. I have had grandmothers, uncles, and friends die before, but you have pierced me a little deeper than all that. You chose to die, and you never seemed like you would. It seemed as if the heart of our relationship took place during a time when I thought that decision made more sense to me. You seemed to always be the one enticing me to stick around, and telling me that I was talented,good looking and young. I didn’t seem to like much about myself, and had no ambition. Im happy you were there to help me stick it out. I did love you dearly for it… and I know that you knew. Im happy that we were those odd people who told one another that we loved each other when we felt like it.

What happened after that is a blur. Leaving the place where I grew up. Becoming the loser I always figured I would be for a long time, and oddly enough sticking it out. Accepting losses, straightening my personality out, and deciding to use my brain to learn, and change, and quit pretending that I could die quietly in some bedroom. The past few years for me have been full of light and knowledge, of dignity and shame. I have lost significant things, but I have gained far more. Its hard to know if I would have even done that without the help you provided me when I needed it the most. As sad as it is, my renaissance has been an active one. I have been busy. Loving people, pursuing academics, creating music, and sharpening my mind like a razor. I pierced the sorrow of my past, and it bled sunlight into my life. All that time though, we rarely talked, and now I realize that new sorrows were growing, and new painful machinations grew in the shadows of my burning potential. 

I thought you would be happy with your new girlfriend. I am sorry that had to end. I know how bad it hurts to spend so much time around someone, and imagine that things like that can go on forever. You were young though, and beautiful in more ways than one. Your strongest relationships were in front of you… I am sure of that. I know that you just seemed so sad when I talked to you the last time. I underestimated how sad.

Its hard to have to look back out there after you find a nice comfy place to rest your head on. Dating is a fucking game you grow weary of. what is there to greet you when you go out? Cold uninteresting ice queens. Drunk dogs in the street, howling to be recognized and dressed in their finest collars. Banal conversations. You were too sweet for all that. Like me, I think that you became ensnared with the one that you found. Some vestige of comfort in a dark cave of sex and ignorance. Love is strange though, as when we decide to stay close and bring it into the light, we reveal the things those dark caves hide. Love is the sweet clear taste of water after so much cheap beer and burning spirits. It reminds us that we are alive before it turns to mud in our veins. When people change, it becomes a poison that burns in your chest and makes your body and mind ache no matter which way you stretch or writhe. Seven years of water before you are thrown back into the piss smelling cave and the alcohol and pills flow so that you can try to forget, and deaden yourself to the point that anything new might hold a candle to what was lost. It does not. That light has burned out, and we must search in the dark for a new one, or an exit. I know you were searching, and I just wanted you to know I was there with you in the dark. You were more tired than me I guess. I didn’t know you were searching for a way out. I know you found it now. Now those who loved you all the while are left alone, with a deep hole in our chest where we used to keep you when we needed love for ourselves. I do not believe that you are burning in some pit of despair somewhere, but that the truth is what I have been feeling for the past week… nothing at all. There is just simply no you anymore, and that makes me so incredibly sad to think about.

When I was a kid I read The Brothers Karamazov, and I remember how much I loved the ending. Illuyasha’s speech was incredibly moving though somewhat vague… but I don’t think I quite understood it with the proper significance until you died. The idea that when we bury our friends, we are good… and that we may become bad at some point in our lives, which makes it all the more important to remember the good things that we have done. Its easy to see now how you have made me good, because its very likely that I never was before and may never be again. I loved you very much. It was what I was here to do. I didn’t love you because of anything in particular, but just because you were Michael. You didn’t ever really need to do anything at all, you just had to be there. That is where the true harmony exists. That is the only peace. Now that you are gone, I realize how significant a thing that was in my life. I dont want you back for anything in particular, I just want you here again. You made the peace real, and it dropped out of my heart when I had heard you died, and what was left was chaos. I would like you to know how great it was to have you here, and though I believe it is merely wishful thinking, maybe someday I will get to let you know what a wonderful thing you did by living. Meaning is too fickle a thing to attribute to you, but I am infinitely grateful for the experience we had together. I know that I will think of you often as the world grows dark, and bright again. 

Redundant

Dude… how many super hero movies are coming out? How many Real Housewives shows are there? Are all the real housewives starting a clothing line? How many girls need to wear red Toms? Why is Lady Gaga on everything? Why has Justin Beiber been mentioned thirty times on TV no matter what channel I change it to? Why did my mother need to stop and tell me about his Gomez girlfriend?Why do seven Coldplay song play at work? Why four U2 songs?

Why the fuck is everything so redundant sometimes?

Finals are making me cranky.

Eudamonia

I guess there comes a time in life that you have to understand and take seriously the idea that happiness is not always the goal of life. The goal is to grow, and that in some cases runs contrary to happiness. I’m more and more surprised by the fact that what actually seems like happiness in this case is a pale specter of what served to motivate a slower, dumber, and more sedentary past. The excitement of the new is enough to inspire awe and terror, and naturally I clung on to structures I built to understand an old, devastating need. The subject is less important than the feelings inspired. The desire to rise to the occasion is mutable and is the only true thing that I gained. This inspiration and desire isn’t able to hold water outside the confines of my own skull, and it’s better that I can understand that fact that they can and already have carried me past the one that inspired them.

In you I saw beauty and love, and then saw boredom and frailty. A life fed by opiates and hatred, and then fed by knowledge. The former made me want you, and the latter made me want life. This knowledge made your poor dying beauty new and unfettered. Without those fetters, I became a puzzle. The frozen person you found made fluid by the flame you instilled, dripping through your fingers. What grows on the soil you helped cultivate? What weeds rise up to choke you?