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8.13.2004
"This is my proof. She did love me. We were together."
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8.11.2004
Today would've been my father's 83rd birthday.
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8.6.2004
Even the wicked get worse than they deserve.
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8.4.2004
Our art is a way of being dazzled by truth: the light on the grotesquely grimacing retreating face is true, and nothing else.
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8.3.2004
How many times are we left to fall, cursing?
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7.29.2004
The impossibility of crows.
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7.23.2004
The eyes have it.
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7.20.2004
The complaint: If I will exist eternally, how will I exist tomorrow?
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7.19.2004
Two tasks at the beginning of your life: to narrow your orbit more and more, and ever and again to check whether you are not in hiding somewhere outside your orbit.
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7.6.2004
I am myself, and if I have to hit my head against a brick wall to remain true to myself, I will do it. -Marlon Brando
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7.1.2004
Life is bound to do something to your view of nature.
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6.30.2004
A man was amazed at how easily he went along the road to eternity; the fact was he was rushing along it downhill.
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6.29.2004
Troubles overcome are good to tell. -Yiddish proverb
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6.28.2004
Palimpsest: A manuscript that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible.
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6.24.2004
Lost in the Wire: The full story of Dr. LaVar Withers [a Rexburg, Idaho, physician who groped, fondled and molested an estimated 133 women over a period of 30 years] would have shown the nature and operations of the problem and how the silence of victims is maintained. The reason for that probably lies with the Los Angeles Times syndicated wire service, which edited the story significantly before offering it to distributors. "The Times has a bigger news hole than clients. We have to get it down to size," said Michael J. Kaeser, managing editor of the paper's news service.
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6.18.2004
"These days I seem to occupy a wicked fugue state," she says, "my memory behaving like a photograph developing with the details showing up last."
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6.16.2004
Self-forgetfulness and self-canceling-out of art: what is an escape is pretended to be a stroll or even an attack.
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6.15.2004
The bad times, like the best, are always fading away ...
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6.10.2004
Without you, I'm dust.
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6.3.2004
Jell-O pudding contains: sugar, dextrose, modified starch, salt, disodium phosphate, diglycerides (to prevent foaming), artificial color and, of course, the proof.
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5.21.2004
So this guy gives you a junker car and you spend three years rebuilding it from the chassis up ... and then he takes it back and runs it into the ground. It just breaks your heart.
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5.17.2004
Has anyone ever noticed how the cover of the Band's "Rock of Ages" album looks eerily similar to that of Rock Flowers' debut? Mere coincidence? What do you think?
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5.14.2004
"Rosetta, her bag hanging from her shoulder, had her back to the sea as she leaned on the railing and smoked."
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5.13.2004
The point of view of art and that of life are different even in the artist himself.
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5.12.2004
At the end of all freedom is a court sentence; that's why freedom is too heavy to bear, especially when you're down with a fever or are distressed or love nobody.
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5.10.2004
She made a deep sigh that seemed wrenched from the very blue flame of her heart. "I feel like I'm entering a dark tunnel," Allegra whispered. "How can I know if this is the right thing?" "You're doing the right thing," I said. I had no idea what I was talking about. "You have no idea what you are talking about," Allegra said as she was led away.
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5.5.2004
The average man is destitute of independence of opinion. He is not interested in contriving an opinion of his own, by study and reflection, but is only anxious to find out what his neighbor's opinion is and slavishly adopt it.
-Mark Twain
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5.3.2004
I've got to, that's the whole thing. -Will Kane
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4.29.2004
"An overdose can be fatal, so notify your doctor immediately if you suspect you may have exceeded your dosage."
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4.28.2004
He wasn't motivated by anything other than the need to be in control. Which, in the end, is an impossible pursuit.
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4.27.2004
There's a scene at the end of "The Red Balloon," my favorite childhood film, in which the protagonist, rather than watch his prized toy get stoned to death by a gang of neighborhood ruffians, stamps the life out of it himself.
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4.16.2004
Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be taught and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever. -Aristophanes
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4.14.2004
"I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms / And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms / I call aloud; it hears not what I say; / I stretch my empty arms; it glides away." Alexander Pope
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4.7.2004
Your eyes are like cracked marbles.
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3.31.2004
Who can understand the nature of evil? Is it enough to know that it exists in the world? But what true purpose does it serve? To remind us that there's a distinction between what is good and what is not?
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3.30.2004
I can be inspired to grow, but more often I grow because I have been broken by certain unyielding realities. When I have once again been made aware of my fallibility, I am predisposed to learn.
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3.29.2004
When you are young, you always expect that the world is going to end. And then you get older and the world still chugs along and you are forced to re-evaluate your stance on the apocalypse as well as your own relationship to time and death. You realize that the world will indeed continue, with or without you, and the pictures you see in your head. So you try to understand the pictures instead. -Douglas Coupland
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3.26.2004
Certain types of people are known to make presumptions about you without bothering to find out who you really are and how you really think. You know these types: busybodies who, for some peculiar reason, go out of their way to make your business theirs. Generally, what they believe is your business isn't anyone's business at all. That said, if you are interested in someone you don't know well, it's not all that difficult to ask that someone simple questions like, Who are you? or, How are you? Hence, if you are going to call someone on their stuff, you can at least get it right.
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3.18.2004
Continuum just gave me the green light to write a book on DJ Shadow's "Endtroducing" ... so I guess you could say I'm pretty frickin' jazzed.
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3.16.2004
Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything it is because we are dangerously near to wanting nothing. There are two opposite poles of wanting nothing: When one is so full and rich and has so many inner worlds that the outer world is not necessary for joy, because joy emanates from the inner core of one's being. When one is dead and rotten inside and there is nothing in the world.
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3.15.2004
The Earth is one of nine planets that revolve around the sun. Although the sun is central to our survival here on Earth, it's really a minor star. Our sun is one of 100 billion stars in our galaxy, and an average distance of 30 trillion miles separates each of these stars. Our galaxy is so huge that if you were to travel at the speed of light it would take you 100,000 years to get from one end of it to another. When you think about the actual space we human beings occupy in the universe measured against our anxiety, our self-consciousness, our anguish, our love, our suffering, our selfishness, our stupidity, our passion, our needs, our moments of failure and triumph, it gives you pause.
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3.12.2004
He thinks he's clever, brilliant possibly, but like the thousands of American Idol wannabes, he's simply not, not even close. Worse, he's mediocre, and he brings down to his level anyone in his orbit. He refuses to see who he is for what he is. He's the immovable object.
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3.11.2004
One has to completely humiliate oneself to be what the Beatles were, and that's what I resent. I did it, but I didn't know, I didn't foresee that, it just happened bit by bit till this complete craziness is surrounding you. And you're doing exactly what you don't want to do with people you can't stand - the people you hated when you were 10. And that's what I'm saying in this album [Plastic Ono Band], I'm saying, "I remember what it's all about now, you fuckers, fuck you all." That's what I'm saying, "Fuck you all. You don't get me twice!" -John Lennon
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3.10.2004
Homer: So I said, "So if this is the House of Pancakes, why can't I eat the walls?"
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3.8.2004
We should not let ourselves be burnt for our opinions: we are not that sure of them. But perhaps for this: that we may have and change our opinions.
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3.2.2004
There are terrible people who, instead of solving a problem, bungle it and make it more difficult for all who come after. Whoever can't hit the nail on the head should, please, not hit it at all.
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2.26.2004
People will always be tempted to wipe their feet on anything with the word "welcome" written on it.
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2.25.2004
The creative artistic personality is the first work of the productive individual, and it remains fundamentally his chief work, since all his other works are partly the repeated expression of this primal creation, partly a justification by dynamism.
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2.24.2004
I have a good self that loves skies, ideas, tasty meals, bright colors. My demon would murder this self by demanding that it be a paragon, and saying it should run away if it is anything less.
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2.19.2004
Gurdjieff's says: "Personality has its own interests and its own tastes which have nothing in common with the interests and the tastes of essence. Personality in our case is the result of the wrong work of centers. For this reason personality can dislike precisely what essence likes - and like what essence does not like."
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2.18.2004
He always begins his lies with the expression, "To be honest ..." This is what con artists call a "tell," and I find it impossible to believe that after all this time he doesn't know that I see right through him. "The things we think, the things we want," observes Joe Mantegna's character in Mamet's House of Games, "we can do them or not do them but we can't hide them."
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2.13.2004
If we fictionalize ourselves, and conciously, we are freed into a new kind of communication.
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2.11.2004
I can feel things, perhaps memories, of the man who was here first. Perhaps the physical body has a soul. There's a phrase of Freud's that might apply here: the bodily ego he calls it, I think.
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2.10.2004
Hegel said that genuine tragedy is not a case of right against wrong but right against right - two equally justified principles embodied in people of unchangeable will.
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2.9.2004
Love, ever unsatisfied, lives always in the moment that is about to come. -Proust
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2.6.2004
"The play's the thing," says Hamlet, "wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king." "Catch" is indeed the word. For conscience moves swiftly or withdraws within itself. It has to be caught on the wing, at that barely perceptible moment when it glances fleetingly at itself.
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2.4.2004
Everything seems just out of reach. I move forward and so does the carrot on the end of the stick.
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2.3.2004
There are no answers, only choices.
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2.2.2004
Somehow, the Amplifier cover photo I took of Ryan Adams has been spreading throughout the Web like a virus. Here's one message board with a rather long thread whose participants valiantly attempt to determine the color of his eyes. My guess is they're blue.
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1.28.2004
The best proof for the wretchedness of existence is the one drawn from the consideration of its magnificence.
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1.22.2004
In order for the wheel to turn, for life to be lived, impurities are needed, and the impurities of impurities in the soil, too, as it is known, if it is to be fertile. Dissension, diversity, the grain of salt and mustard are needed: Fascism does not want them, forbids them; it wants everybody to be the same.
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1.21.2004
It's not the slight sting I feel when my blood's being drawn that causes discomfort, it's the idea of my body being invaded and the blood itself being slowly extracted that makes me nauseated.
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1.14.2004
It was years ago. The newspaper I was working for at the time had opened up an editor position that, should I had gotten it, would've meant a definite step up. However, it was a position I'd applied for several times and had not gotten, and because one was looked down upon if one was passed over several times for the same spot, I decided to take a pass. But my boss, let's call him R, encouraged me to go for it, saying that my chances were very good this time out. I told him the only way I'd apply was if I could be assured I would get it, and R told me not to worry. So, with some trepidation, I tossed my name into the hat - a hat that looked to be empty. A short time later, a woman, let's call her B, appeared out of nowhere, and she spent a week trying out for the job. Turns out, she had come from a paper thousands of miles away - and I had to wonder, if my chances were very good this time out, why she had been flown in and put up in hotel in order to try out for a job that R had assured me would be mine. As it happened, B got the position. Shortly thereafter I resigned, but before I left one of the senior editors, let's call him D, in a fit of conscience, let me in on a little secret: no one from the paper had applied for the job and a "credible pool of candidates" was needed from within in order to make an outside hire. I supplied the necessary drop in the credible pool, so it would seem. The promotion I would never get - the future I would never have - went to an unwitting outsider, a "two-fer," as D called her. "A two-fer?" I asked, not knowing the reference. "She's both a woman and a minority." In the end of this story, there was no high drama. In the end of this story, I chose to quit, to walk away, to liberate myself. In the end of this story, I'm glad that that's what I did. Otherwise, for better or for worse, I'd have never changed my life.
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1.6.2004
Freud thought that you fell in love in order to avoid becoming ill, but Proust saw such falling as a descent into the hell of jealousy. One's own sexual jealousy, comic to others, is tragic to oneself, but can be transmuted in retrospect, into something rich and strange.
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1.5.2004
I remember you. When we were kids you were the guy on my street who had the skateboard, the minibike, the cool stereo system, the swimming pool. And you held all this stuff over the rest of us with the promise that we could partake if we'd pretend to be your friend. You didn't realize that if you'd not been a spoiled, stupid, wretched little boy we would've been your friend anyway.
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12.31.2003
The year in review: I kept going.
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12.30.2003
This is my experience: people leave.
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12.22.2003
From this the poem springs: that we live in a place / That is not our own and, much more, not ourselves / And hard it is in spite of blazoned days. -Wallace Stevens
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