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Do you ever have the desire to spend the entire greater part of your existance hanging around in sparsely furnished apartments being beautiful and half-naked, drunk, listening to Morrissey in a room with no clocks? A self-contained universe where fishnets are used as barriers to flesh, where the world doesn’t appear to be crumbling, and nothing one speaks of seems trivial or banal – only a constant, seething breathing stream of self-referential banter-speak laced with trace amounts of heavy-handed symbolism. A place where all is warm and new and the universe surrounds and cradles you like a womb.

#15 Blue Ridge

As she sat in the familiar blue seat near the back, she couldn’t help but overhear the animated conversation that was going on up front between four people. One women, a yuppie-type, wearing a Chanel suit and clutching a pink-clad iPhone, was excitedly, with eyes wide, explaining to the older women across from her about what had happened earlier outside the Queen Anne Dicks restaurant.

“I’m telling you, this guy was just being beaten right outside and no one – no one! – came out to help him. I tell you, I saw it right before my eyes. Everyone just stared.”
She sat back in the seat and gripped the studded handles of her bag.
“I mean, I was on the bus, or I would have gone out there and helped him. What is wrong with people? All those people and no one helped.”
She shook her head for what it seemed like the hundred time to the girl. She had no trouble hearing what the women was saying from the back; the women had once of those voices that carries farther than anyone desired it too. The older women sitting across from her had blonde hair the color and consistency of straw. The two women were as different as they could possibly. The older woman looked tired. The younger one, distraught. The later raised an eyebrow at the women and sighed tiredly.

“Lady, no offense, but I can’t see you getting out there and helping that man. Fighting off that beggar? Uh-huh.”
She laughed.
“What were you planning on doing? Hitting him with your original Kate Spade?”

“Excuse me!” The women cried. She looked genuinely offended, maybe even sad. She nervously craned her neck to look back. The sirens were no longer visible from her vantage point on the bus, but she knew the paramedics where still there, trying to save the man who’d been stabbed outside the Dicks while everyone watched, unaffected, comfortably chewing on their cheeseburgers. She continued, hesitantly,
“I like to think I’m a good person,” she continued, “And would help a man in need out.”
The older women laughed again. A throaty, tired kind of laugh.
“Lady, believe me, no one ever helped me out when I was mugged back in ’98. No one to help you these days. You’re all alone, and people seem to like it that way it seems.”
Suddenly, a couple sitting near the younger woman on the right side of the bus burst into hysterical laughter. Both the women looked over, surprised.
“What’s so funny”? The younger woman asked hesitantly. I peered over my seat to get a better look at the two offenders. They were young, maybe my age, and appeared to be very drunk. The boy says,
“They’ll be washing that blood off the street for a while. There was gushes of it. Everything, everywhere.”
He smiled, like he was remembering something, then starting rummaging through his bag for something. The girl, not sure who she should be addressing but feeling the inclination to speak anyhow says loudly, as if excusing her friend,
“The world happens. There’s no stopping it. You have to let fate play out. There is no intervention. That disrupts the universe.” She slumps back in her chair.
I see the women move in her chair, closer to the two kids, and ask, looking highly upset,
“Wait, are you saying you were there? In there? That you saw that man get killed?” The girl shrugged. The boy was still looking through his bag, mumbling unintelligible sounds.
The girl shrugged.
“Yeah, I – “ she motions to the boy, “ – we were around. Yeah, we saw it play out.”
The younger women’s face changes into sympathy, the mothering instinct appeared to show it’s self suddenly, causing her to get up and move closer to the kids, seating herself in the aisle seat beside them. The older women laughed again, and said something about how fucked up kids were these days. Then, the boy says,
“What does it matter anyway? We’re all going to

Becky: Where did the last five years go? Arinna: We were drunk a lot.

I am consumed with an insatiable contempt for everyone. I have no idea how to control or alleviate it. It distracts me in everything I do. Everyone around me appears so much happier than I. Only when I am immersing myself in what I feel is the more interesting (and therefore fictional) lives of others can I be entertained. I seem to have lost the capacity to amuse myself in the usual ways. I am constantly either irrationally irritated or incredibly bored. Bright lights, big city, stars, intoxication, novels, Buffy; all I used to love no longer has the calming effect on me they once did. I feel lost, restless, lacking roots.

I have been experiencing awful, vivid dreams lately. Death and mayhem and every possible disgusting image imaginable. The images are seared in my mind long after I wake up. Today, I stood at the sink staring at my reflection for an hour, thinking about my most recent dream – yet it seemed like a few minutes. Time is going by so fast it terrifies me. What happened to the last five years of my life? What have I learned? What haven’t I learned?

I am terrified for our culture. For my generation. Mostly, for the next one. We seem to lack empathy and our only identifiable emotions appear to be a constant need to self-medicate and satiate our physical needs characterized by indirect, passive indifference towards everything and everyone around us. Our apathy inhibits us from functioning correctly, and we no longer fear anything. We lack basic common sense and appear to be lacking in the ability to put anything in context. Everything is killing us yet we can’t live without any of it.

Where is the connection? Why does everyone seem so far away?

Hmm.

What’s there to even say? Everything is meaningless, vague, trivial, non-changing. Everyday is like the last; an endless stream of polite conversation,waiting in lines, memorizing lines, fictional characters weaving in and out of your subconscious, holding your attention more intensely than any of the “real” people you know. If you try hard enough, can a fictional character come alive? Can it breathe, live, make decisions and revisions that a minute can revise? Damn. Am I unconsciously quoting poetry again?

The restlessness won’t, can’t stop. Everyday I wake up, everything appears and is translated as more bizarre than the last endless succession of minutes, hours. I’d like to say that I am becoming more aware of the world around me as a result of my recent habit of maniacal reflecting, but really, I think my current awareness is rather due to my  progressive detachment from reality.

Theoretically, I’m doing alright. Physically I’m healthy and alive. Everything I need to I have and can manage to contain and sustain. What I want is a different story. Yet, this constant intellectual, emotional, and physical restlessness is threatening to devour the last of my sanity. I have no idea how to sate it. My life has been created to follow a certain model. No large changes can be made at this time. I have an intensely strong desire to wreak havoc. Create chaos. Rebuild devestation. Reconstruct something that was never fully formed in the first place. Witness death, birth, renewal. Create magic. Pretend to be someone else and let myself believe it.

Do you ever wish you could rewind your life and start it over, editing and remitting the parts that didn’t suit you? The finished product would be immaculate, with strategically placed mistakes for good measure (which of course you would have “learned” from). Yet, the problem with videotapes is they always have to be returned. Then they’re watched by someone else, who inevitably forgets to Be Kind and Rewind, which throws the responsibility of rewinding the story to the next person, whom of which didn’t pay for, ask, or want that responsibility.

Patrick Bateman: “I have to return some videotapes.”
Me: “Take me with you to the video store. I want to choose another video to represent my life.”
Patrick: “There is nothing.”
Me: “There’s us. You’re wrong.”

Thought: I think I’d lost quite a bit of brain cells. I seem to no longer have the capacity to spell. This fact is very disturbing for me. How do I disable my spell check so I no longer have the option (hence, the temptation) to use it?

Well, shit.

Being unemployed is not amusing at all. Not in the slightest. If I have to fill out another “questionnaire” regarding theoretical decisions to morally ambiguous “situations” I’m going to blow my own head off. There’s only so much reading, watching television, and random biking around the block a girl can do before she starts to crave some more challenging stimuli. Doesn’t help that I just got dumped, too. My boyfriend moved out when I was out of town visiting my mother, and then broke up with me over the phone. Classy, eh? Awesome = not my life.

At least it’s sunny out. And I’m not dying of skin cancer. And at least I have my friends. Sigh. It’s days like this I wish I had a dog to love me without reserve.

As Faith would say, I feel like I did mushrooms and got eaten by a bear. And then run over by a truck.

Yesterday was delightful, really. After pulling myself out the denial of not believing I’m actually off school for the year, I bought a bottle of R&R and some sour mix and parked myself at the park and proceeded to drink all of it. Then, apparently, I convinced my friend Arinna that we should go to her house to have something called a “Please Don’t Let Patrick Swayze Die” Party. So, he drive to her apartment (which is really nice btw, and I’m jealous because her apartment is about five blocks from my school and located right downtown) and danced around to Depeche Mode while my friend Natalie and I got progressively drunker.

After a while, we thought it’d be a good idea to go meet some guy named “Party Boy Ryan” and some bar called Rendezvous. We hop in Arinna’s car, which has managed to develop a massively bad flat tire while we were inside. So, we get out and walk. The guy at the door barely glances at my uber-expired ID and let’s me in. I get a beer and prompty spill it all over myself. We sit down and I’m introduced to a guy who looks just like Willem Defoe, and tells me he goes to my school, and is in fact an english major as I am, but I don’t recognize him at all. He then explains to me that he has learned and is following this new philosophy where he “doesn’t care about anything but himself, just lets the shit hit the wall, you know?” and how freeing it is. Then him, “Party Boy” Ryan and I get into a heated argument over what the plural of apocalypse is.

It was like a Bret Easton Ellis novel. Only worse, because it’s real life. Mine, in fact. For some reason, I woke up this morning on the floor under my kitchen table.

Tomorrow, I head back to my old home, Port Townsend, to spend some quality time with my mother. I’m not looking forward to going back there. Too many bad memories. It will be nice to see Mom, though.

Ugh.

Bret Easton Ellis

Is. God. Period. More on this later.

“Good night, folks.”

I am so bummed out about the death of Andy Hallet. It disturbs me when talented, young people die. It doubly disturbs me when talented, young actors die. What a tragic loss. This reminds me of my own morality, and my denial with it. Why do young, nice, talented, productive people have to die? It seems counterproductive.

Andy played Lorne on the television show Angel, created by Joss Whedon. He was a fan favorite, and with good reason. Lorne was, in a way as I see it, an eternal child; he disliked violence (Didn’t “have the stomach for it”), uncomfortably joked around a lot, as was a natural at conflict resolution. He always seemed to know how the calm down the others when their lives seemed to be spiraling out of control. He was a brilliant character with a novel drinking problem (designed to mask, I imagine, his discontent with the world). Lorne was a true heart who managed to allow himself to become corrupted and as a result, was unhappy. He stands in as a perfect example of a theme the show eventually wanted to protray but seemed to lost sight of; how power corrupts, and how only the true-hearted can and should survive.

Lorne will always be remembered fondly as filling an integral role in the innnovative genius that was Angel.
Andy, you will be missed. Rest in peace.

My generation

If generations are defined not by formal process but rather by demographers, the press and media, popular culture, market researchers, and by members of the generation themselves..then what are we?

We’re not a generation of revolution, we’re a generation of nothing! We have no slogan to define us. We are mirror images of the past, of convention and novelty. We have no place, so identity other than what we create for ourselves. Deep down, we want a pre-established identity - then we would know where we belong.

All we want to do is sit on our asses and talk about the past, listen to music from the past, and obsess over times and people we can’t know anything about. We’re obsessed with novelty.

With so many opportunites facing us, we as a result can’t do anything. We’re frozen. We’re unable to move forward. All we want to do is talk about ideas and concepts that other people have already thought of.

 We drink vodka until we forget that we’re nothing. We sit in dark bars and play Pop Culture trivia. We are no longer defined by what we do or by how we treat others, but by what we buy and what we watch, read, and say. Chekov would be proud! We have no ambition, no hope, no drive to accomplish anything. We can spend hours online doing nothing.

We are lost.

We choose to live in the present not because it’s our philosophy, but because we have no capacity to see the future . We sit in dark corners of bars reading for hours, diligently watching people but getting angry when they speak to us. We put on headphones on the bus so people won’t approach us even if we aren’t listneing to anything.

As writers, we are sad because everything has already been said. As actors, we are sad because everything has already been acted. Everything has already been done. As a result of his feeling of inferiority, we obsess over saying things in “new ways” with “new perspectives”. But really, we know deep down it’s nothing new, we are nothing new.

We wear vintage, listen to dead rock, watch old 1940s Hollywood romances - so we can feel as if we are in the past, or feel at least that we are part of it’s magic somehow; - not a copy-cat of it’s optimisim we wish so deeply we truly felt. We take pictures of ourselves with water-proof digital cameras in the bathroom, naked and drunk.

We are vain.

We are obsessed with simplicity, yet we want it all, all the time. And of course, we know nothing yet we believe we know everything.

You gotta have Faith

Every once in a while, when I’m maybe getting just a but too bitter about the state of the world…something happens that restores my faith in humanity. That happened today

Yesterday, I got my wallet stolen right out of my pocket at a cafe near my school. I looked everywhere, asked everyone, and to no avail. I was very depressed, since the last of my money was in it, not to mention my library cards, my ID, my insurance card, my work sign-in card, credit card, etc. I’m like, how am I going to afford to replace all these things I use and need everyday? So, I went home and accepted that it was gone forever.

I mean, who would steal from me? I don’t look like I have money, I’m just a regular-looking college student.

Then, today, I get a message from a guy whom found my wallet in an alley not far from the cafe it went missing at. I guess the person that swiped it from me, after taking the money from it, just threw it into the alley.

Anyway, so this nice man is going to make sure I get it returned to me tomorrow. Turns out he works on the campus of the school I attend

I just wanted to share. I am very happy.