By Nous

                                    October 31, 2006

Shit.
I am trying to be super quiet. Don'l is asleep. I was listening to "You Can't Hurry Love" (reference
to three years ago!) and I took my headphones off and placed them carefully next to my mouse. But they
happened to touch my belt (what the hell is it doing there anyway?) causing it to fall over and make a
loud cling sound. Don'l was unfazed.
But when I began to type she started stirring in her sleep a lot.
WEIRDO.
It's bothering me seeing her still wearing her shoes. THAT WOULD MAKE ME UNCOMFORTABLE. If I knew how
long she was going to be asleep I would have made her take them off. And use the blanket. I don't give
a fuck about my futon, but for Christ's sake, be comfortable!
It's 1:30 in the morning. I lost about an hour somewhere along the line. I fell asleep reading a book.
As I was reading I started remembering the dream I had last night and how creepy it was. I've been
remembering bits and pieces all day. God, it's one of the most frightening dreams I've ever had. Then
I remembered how Collin told me that SUPPOSEDLY Jaime had taken shrooms last night, and I wondered if
that had anything to do with it. Some type of connection there perhaps.
In that dream I was travelling with some people. Some I knew, others I didn't. We were being followed,
chased, pursued, by whatever. And also we were looking for something. God, I can't convey the horror
at this point in time.
I'm supposed to go to the anime convention HERE IN HOUSTON tomorrow morning. Ben said he'd pay for me.
Hopefully it will be da bomb.
I said "da bomb." So damn what?
Don'l's shoes say "binge" and "purge."
That was all poim.
I'm going to do a tarot reading for tomorrow.

CELTIC CROSS

Page of Pentacles. The Fool. Three of Swords, reversed.
That's as far as I got when Don'l's phone rang. I picked it up, opened it up to make it quiet and
handed it to a newly awakened, droopy-eyed Don'l. After telling her mom where she was and that she'd
be home, she told me about her dream. It was hard to understand her quiet, scratchy voice. Something
about me and her driving around watching Lifetime movies and Collin kept saying funny things.
Now I'm off to have a nightmare wrapped in blankets warmed by a long-sleeping Don'l.

IT'S DAY

I may be going to the Renaissance Festival with Collin, Chris, and (maybe) Johnny this Sunday, which
would be awesome. But I'd have to pay to get in and to get my astrological chart done.
I really want it done, and I don't know if going there and not having the money to get it would be
worth it. Chris told me that one guy charges like forty dollars for a tarot reading, and another guy
charges twenty for a tarot and palm reading and an astrological chart. And that's a sweel deal.
His explanation of what the guy was telling him about his sign and his purpose in life was really
cool. And that guy had a parrot too which would just randomly pick at this jar or something of runes.
And he was doing that while the guy was trying to give Chris a reading, so he just let his parrot pick
out a rune for Chris. He didn't get to keep it or anything, but that's still cool.
I forgot my intent for writing. I had a whole lot in my head and now I can't channel it.

Jason and I were talking yesterday about food, and I thought, "I could probably live off of rice and
pico de gallo."
I just remembered that because I was eating a piece of this awesome cheese my mom got from Mexico with
some aguacate (avocado ;;;). I cut my damn finger with this stupid little serrated knife too.
Anyway, I love meat. It's so fucking good. I love fried chicken and fajitas and wings and hotdogs and
hamburgers, etc. But I think I may enjoy avocado and rice and cheese and pico a lot more.
I remember eating a raw green pepper, like a bell pepper, you know? And it was pretty good. Just like
an apple but not as sweet. So I wonder if I'll give up meat, thinking about this. I don't really
believe it's wrong to kill animals and eat them though.
I don't know. I'm like an old-fashioned person in a lot of ways. I spent a lot of time at my
grandparents where you aren't really flooded with meat the way you are everywhere else. It's like rice
or soup, with some green plant that tasted really bitter but which I could not get enough of. Or
tortillas and corn. Or dyed, sweet tamales filled with corn paste.
Sometimes, to me, it's just good to have some chicken. I've seen them killed and plucked and all of
that. And to me it's just sort of cool in that way. I haven't always thought about that.
I don't know. I wonder sometimes how disconnected people are from that, how they don't see where food
comes from. Like processed shit is gross to me. I hate knowing that food isn't real. And I feel that
same way about Hot Pockets and those Bostom Market things where you lift back the plastic and let it
"cook."
There's something "right" about eating a chicken in comparison to that. Especially in that kind of
environment when you can see it. It makes it almost sacred or something.
But then when I think about that, I can imagine how people think eating meat is gross (or eating at
all). It almost makes you not want to eat thinking about sacred food.
That animal is part of you.

PILLARS

Beliefs and thoughts are foundations. From there you can shoot up your walls to block out the parts
of the world that are too much for you. To experience all of the world in every state at any time with
nothing to take shelter in is perhaps a bit insane. And so we build our houses out of random thoughts.
To love and to laugh and to cry, and to take shelter. To scream and to take shelter. To wonder and to
take shelter. Fragmented experiences, not comprehensive.
Perhaps we're not trying to block out the world. Perhaps the walls we build are the ultimate example
of that wonderfully strange human spirit. We keep things out but most importantly we keep things in.
We're trying to preserve something we think is beautiful. 
But nothing is beautiful or ugly. Not with Change as our guardian. I can't afford to think that way.

OR MAYBE

I can't afford to think that nothing is beautiful or ugly. Because in my case, that's the way that's
most likely to stop change and growth. When I am afraid of losing something, I think, "But nothing is
this or that," and while I believe it, and I know that it's true, I don't really know that it's true.
There are things I think and my life experiences later confirm those thoughts. And they're just things
that relate to me. I've always thought relationships were kind of dumb. And sex was stupid. And
drinking was a waste of time.
I know what's true for me, but I just often have no life experiences to back that up, which isn't any
more real than knowing it intuitively. It's just you can relate a story to someone. And so what?
People have hundreds of stories about everything and it all depends on how you look at it, and that
part can't be helped. Or maybe it just makes it seem more real and you can remind yourself, "Don't do
this; it's a waste of time."
I'm forgetting what I'm trying to say.
Saying things don't really matter and have no value is an effective way, for me, to stop growth.
Saying that is a giveaway that I don't know what's going to come next. That I've become comfortable.
So I say that nothing is one way or another. That everything is just everything. And that feels true
to me, and it will be confirmed by future experiences, I know that. But right now, that thought is
holding me back from really knowing that, from growth. I'm jumping ahead in my mind without really
being able to see what it's all about. And going through something will definitely help you round that
shit out.
And maybe that doesn't matter either.
So you take things in faith.

THOUSAND BOOKS

I bought a casette tape of Garrison Keillor reading some of his stories. Funny is the word. And I
can't stop buying books. Anything that looks good I will buy. And it will wind up on the floor of my
room forever.
John Updike's Rabbit Redux. Edwin A. Abbot's Flatland. 
The Phatom Tollbooth. Sun Sign Personality Guide.
Yesterday when I bought that last book I saw a girl I had in photography class a few years ago. I was
staring at the ceiling fan and when I looked ahead of me, she was going into one of the aisles and she
was looking at me very intensely. I didn't know what to do so I laughed and told her I liked her
costume.
She was wearing a Superman shirt that came with a cape already sewn on. It was really cool actually.
The garment looked a little itchy but she didn't seem to mind.
She smiled and said, "Thanks." I looked up at the ceiling fan again and when I looked back at her, she
was looking at me again, and she said, "Yes? No?"
"What?" I asked.
"I had you in a class, didn't I?"
I told her that she had indeed. Photography. She was currently attending San Jac, I informed her. I'd
seen her there.
Yes, she said.
And that reminds me of entering Curtis' apartment and seeing a room full of strangers all staring at
me, thinking, of course, "Who's the guy with the thing on his face?"
The other night, simple story, I was so drunk, I fell out of a moving car. It wasn't moving that fast.
It had come to a stop before the driver, my friend Ben, decided to turn sharply to the left and
accelerate, as he is prone to do. My seatbelt was off and at that point the door was ajar. We had
planned to stop so that I could urinate.
And so I fell.
Gash on my chin. Rash on on my right cheek.
No big deal.

RAPOLIAN CONCLEC

I woke up with a hangover. That usually doesn't happen. How much did I have to drink last night?
Maybe it was the jello shots. But there have been nights where I drink mostly whiskey and I wake up
fine.
What a shitty feeling. Is it enough to make me stop drinking? Perhaps. Who knows? We'll see.
I feel completely alone. It's very strange.
It's almost midnight on a Sunday. Venture Brothers is about to come on. But I started watching Friends
to relieve my sense of isolation. To feel comfortable. To know that there was someone out there that I
knew. Someone that wouldn't change no matter how much I have. But it only made it worse.
It's a knot in my stomach and a weight on my shoulders. Like this night will last forever. Maybe I
need to feel that way.
What will tomorrow bring?
Nothing.
Is that the scary part?
We horsne means, "He has become part horse," I said to Chris, Ben, and Sloth in the IHOP parking lot.
I said a lot of weird things.
I don't know what to do. The feeling is me staring at my own reflection in a stream. This is the
culmination of the past year. Now that it's happened, I look upon it and it's a lonely feeling. I have
come this far. And no one is with me. Not now. More to come. Surely. This is not the end. This is
nothing.
And how fitting this episode of Friends is. Looks like they don't want to be alone either. Ha.
"All by myself. Don't want to live all by myself."
It's a strange place where I now stand. It's an all-too-familiar place that will never be familiar.

***

I tried reading a book. But my mind felt so distracted. By nothing in particular. It just wanted to be
left alone.
I put the book on the floor, changed into some shorts, and turned the light off. I lay there feeling
almost overwhelmed. The darkness began playing tricks on me. I was sure I saw a figure hovering over
me. I had a thought, and I said it aloud.
"I don't feel like I'm going to sleep. I feel like this is the dream and I'm waking up."
I closed my eyes and I felt like I was underwater. My body fell asleep but my mind sat there. After
about an hour, my heart started beating like crazy, and my hands felt very strange. They felt like
they were in two places at once. I heard things. Voices, things moving.
I opened my eyes to pull myself out of it and couldn't remember what I had been thinking.
I tried to sleep again, and it was a bit more successful.


10-31-2006: AND AGAIN

Our Halloween is upon us again, and at last. I remember writing about Halloween two years ago (or was
it three? No, couldn't have been that long ago), and I remember the feeling I had. It was such an
exciting feeling.
But today as I left school, I had a thought that would not go away.
"I wish I was someplace I've never been before."
Just something different was what a wanted, I suppose. A change of pace, scenery, anything. Anything
at all.
For a moment I pondered whether or not I should turn around and turn into Sinclair street, which I had
just seen and passed up. I'd never been down there before. Then that street before the car wash, after
the beltway, headed towards my house.
But maybe a different street was not what I wanted at all. I began to think about how the streets are
connected. Had I taken this street or that, I would have ended up on Fairmont. Suddenly, the world
seemed too connected. I yearned for isolation. I was confused.
Isolation was one of the topics Mrs. Zaborowski, my psychology teacher, had talked at length about in
today's class. I felt it and it felt comfortable, and I hated it.
But now I wanted it.
I decided to pull into Sand Dollar and look around. I felt awesome in that enclosed area, like an
outdoor hallway. The thrift store wall on one side and wild, leaning trees on the other. I left
without purchasing anything and moseyed over to that other thrift store I can never remember the name
of. On the way over there, a van was pulling out of My China One.
SaveCassie.com was painted on one of the side windows.
I parked in the handicap spot of the Harbor Resale Shop. Is that the name? Something like that?
I bought A Rat's Tale (which is not nearly as good as The Wainscott Weasel), Selected Poems By William
Butler Yeats, Aesop's Fables, and a Bob Wills casette.
I wanted to ignore every phone call that I got, but I didn't. I came home to rice and chicken and a
vampire documentary. I thought about the outdoor hallway/enclosed area in Sand Dollar's parking lot. I
laughed at the vampire shit and nodded and was intrigued.
A woman who reminded me of Ms. Anoot in appearance and tone of voice was on TV, a "psychic vampire" or
psy-vamp for short. Vampire folklore will always be, she said, what we secretly want. Something more
than our ordinary lives. Something more than our ordinary love.
More? Or just different?
I thought about how "ordinary" life is so complicated that maybe it really just random events. It
cannot be organized. It cannot be viewed properly, ever. Which is what I meant about the foundations
of belief, and our perspectives being a home we can safely view the world and Life from, in a
fragmented way.
And so even if the vampire "love" is different, maybe it is more, if everything is chaos. It is what
it is, and can be nothing else. There can be little or no question why a vampire feeds on blood, or
psychic energy. In being different from us, in life and love, it is easily explained. It is simple.
It is a vampire. It eats blood. It never dies.
Ideals are something like that, no? Something that perhaps is somehow based on reality, but which is
not reality (assuming vampires, the REAL kind, don't exist the way they do in novels). And once that
is reached, it is as complicated as our ordinary humdrum lives, and as good, and as bad.
So to improve, or adapt? And the point?
Mrs. Zaborowski was using the Erikson model (theory) for growth today, which extended from birth to
about middle age, at least where we stopped. And I could see where I fell in some of those categories.
And as she continued through the stages of growth, more and more I began to disagree. I began to see
what she was saying and think, "Yes, but who cares? So what? Why do it?"
Is there really a reason to lift one's child in generative mode, so that they may help their own kids?
A better world, I'm sure, with less fucked up kids. And for what? Why not just stop here? And then I
realized that's what I WOULD say considering my development.
The only way things made sense to me.
What a phrase that is, eh?
And everyone has that. A window. Looking at your hands or your brother or the walls.
And that's how I feel everyday.
Like every thought was a waste of time. Because what do I do with that stuff? What can I do?