all the rules, washing up on the shore.

yes

I went swimming today with my cousin expensive underwater camera, but I installed the film wrong. Nothing came out, so tomorrow I will try again.

Those books that I threw in the lake are shriveling up and shreds of them are washing up on the beach. Rule this and rule that, and I swim by them.

I'm working at Financial Resources again because the newspaper internship is still taking forever to process everything. I'm going to call them again and again. Tomorrow I will try again.

I was going to write a short story on the Steadfast Tin Soldier. It would basically be random allusions to the story, which has always fascinated me. What a weird fairy tale. Disney ruined it of course. But someone else did the same thing as me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore%2C_or_The_Steadfast_Tin_Soldier_and_the_Vampire

I may do it anyway.

Day Thirty Six: Rx

MARcH 28

This is entering into the recesses of my mind.

The perfect hues.

The darkness.

If I clamp my eyelids tighter.


This is perfection and this is beauty.

This is everything I've ever wanted and more.

This is true love.

Day Thirty Five: Decay Island

As we drifted toward the island my cousin remarked, 'maybe that house is haunted'.

I hadn't noticed it. I was too busy rowing, trying not to get wet. The canoe rocked uneasy in the wake of passing motorboats. But we landed dry. Me and my three cousins trekked into the woods, trying to find the almost hidden house shrouded in age and encircled in fallen trees. The house was abandoned as we anticipated and we stepped inside.

It was a Thoreau-esque cabin, completely stripped of all but dusty light fixtures and the fireplace. The housing style was a 1950's nightmare, almost every window cracked or shattered, leaves and wasp nests in every corner. The oval refrigerator sunk into the darkness. A broken mirror, seven years of bad luck echoed in the reflections. Decay in the stale air.

Maybe the house was haunted, just not by the dead. Maybe dreams. Maybe memories.

We smashed a few windows, the pure ones that were untouched. We shattered the lightbulbs and beer bottles littering the living room. On the other end of the island was another cabin in even worse repair. We broke the windowframes and tossed the wood into the lake. Bent the doorknobs until they hung listless.

We're boys. Why not? It was fun, but maybe you had to be there to enjoy the destruction.

You know that saying, "leave only footprints, take only photographs"? Fuck that. I want to burn the whole island down.

Day Thirty Four: Short Comings

Part of seeing in grey is forgiving people.
No me me me me.
Part of seeing in grey is relaxing a bit.
Seeing the rain as cleansing, not drowning.
Part of seeing in grey is seeing the good, too.
Something else, another moral I forgot.

I saw Wall-E today, that stupid robot cartoon. I didn't pay and I had nothing better to do so I went. I was going to write a scathing review and maybe I still will, but what do you care?
Instead, I will show you pictures of me stabbing myself with needles.
It didn't hurt, but I like how it looks.

I like singing in the rain even if I can't sing.
I like talking in the rain even if I can't hear.
I like you.

Day Thrity Three: Dreampetal

Day Thirty Two/Three: Master of Ceremonies

I've been developing film at Rite Aid, my little oasis here. There's a nice girl at the counter named Kaitlyn, who has a tongue piercing and perfect plucked eyebrows. She's ringing up a guy who's wrapped in bandages. He tells me he got real drunk and instead of jumping over a fire, he fell in it. He lifts the bandages and shows me a sick white blister that covers his entire wrist, running up his thumb. He's buying more bandages, of course and some of that Neosporin stuff.

I'm beginning to think that these kids, these poor rebels are the real citizens of New Hampshire. The old people who are stuck in 1950-esque rituals and beliefs are not gonna be here much longer. Twenty years and 90% will be dead. They don't matter. The ones that count are the girls with pink hair and tattoos that are running the registers and answering phones. The guys with lip piercings like fish hooks in their mouths. One day they'll inherit this place, and maybe change it for better. Maybe for worse.

So I went to a party today and yeah, it sucked. I mean, it was a bunch of teenage girls. I was with the fat girl who thought everyone hated her because she was fat. She kept making negative comments about herself and I wanted to smack her and tell her to grow a pair. People will like anyone who likes themselves, unless they like themselves too much.

I was really bored, so I unconsciously decided to liven things up. Matthew and I looked up the rules for fencing and had a tournament with Mark in the front yard. It was worth the bruises. I took pictures with a 35mm camera I found at the church. The thing cranked like an old airplane, the sound of retro. I developed some pictures I found inside the camera and they came out nice. Well, by my standards anyway, which are low.

Then a lot older people show up. I meet a guy named Maxwell, and the first thing he asks me is if I'm gay. "Uh, no." He starts to walk off and I ask him if he wanted to know anything about me besides my sexual orientation. He frowns. "Nah."

Most of the night, I was talking music. It turns out, Jerry likes Natalie Portman's Shaved Head. I didn't think anyone but me and a couple friends ever heard of them! What a nice surprise. Two girls, Kelsey and Christie are arguing over the Strokes while playing a game of Pokémon cards. "They sound like blah," Kelsey says. "No, they sound like amazing."

We go to the lake to swim. It's a nice, perfect little beach, and it looks beautiful. Because they forgot to bring bathing suits, some of the girls are sitting out. But not Kelsey. She strips to just her underwear and dives in. She says, "Has there ever been a party where I haven't taken off my pants?"

I find a boat sitting on the rocks and I take it into the water. Sarah tells me to stop stealing. I say, I'm not stealing, I'm borrowing without permission. Maxwell shouts, "I like him! He ain't no Godfearing type." I corrected him, but well, what could I say? I felt kind of sad to hear that.

I floated out on the lake, but without paddles I didn't get far. I leapt off and swam as far as I could, until I felt I was gonna drown from exhaustion. Skipped mussels as far as I could. Stupid little things.

On the way back from the lake, I met a girl named Sadie Paradise. No lie, that's her name. She's wearing a shirt that says, "Single & Fabulous". I tell her, with a name like that, one day she's gonna be famous. She says, "I know, huh. I already know what my bootlegged sex tape is gonna be. 'A Night in Paradise'. Kind of like Paris Hilton's."

I change the stereo to Rage Against the Machine. Sadie says, "This music makes me want to dropkick babies."
"Really?" I say. "Cuz I kinda enjoy that kind of thing."
She says, "I'm guessing no one here like Lil Wayne."
I grimace and try to justify my reaction. "Um, he doesn't write his own songs and . . . "
"Yeah, I know, but he's so hot I'd have 30 of his babies. In one month. That's thirty babies a day."
I nod.
"And you know what? All that child support would make me fuckin' rich."

Sadie says I look like someone named Kgell, pronounced Shell, some kid they know. "But you're not a man-whore. . . Are you?" I just smile. Then she says I also look like "That, that Shaggy dude!" I laugh and write this down. I tell Sadie and all the girls that I've been compiling a list of famous people I've been compared to. Like Connor O'Berst of Bright Eyes. Edward Norton. Eddie Vedder.

As I leave, I give each of the girls a hug, even the fat one without any self-confidence. All the girls call out goodbye to me, each a different celebrity I'm supposed to be. "Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!"

I think there's a lesson to be learned here, but you'd be bored with it.

Day Thirty One: BadSeed

I feel so good right now.

I feel like I should give you some background on my family, because I've written most of my adventures without context.

My grandfather, Robert Paul Farah had three sons, in this order: Scott, Paul and Dan. My father is Paul Robert* Farah, the middle child and the weird one, who moved from New Hampshire to live in Phoenix, where I was born. I am the oldest of eight cousin, two to Scott, three to Dan and three to my father, which really doesn't make them cousins. Also, I am not counting my adopted brothers and sisters, because my grandparents do not, which is really quite sad.

Anyway, being the oldest, I am a positively bad influence on them, because they look up to me. I love that feeling, but it also kind of worries me that I am doing damage to them. I've been discussing my anarchist/libertarian views with my cousin Matthew. He claims he will never do any illegal drugs because it's illegal. I told him I'm not going to allow the state to decide what is healthy for me. I'm seeding little thoughts like this into him. I let him read the Catcher in the Rye, which is way worse than the M-Rated games his mom won't let him play.

My cousin Joshua, lives in North Carolina and is the son of my uncle Dan. Today, I learned he is coming to live with my grandparents for a while. He flies in tomorrow night and I will go to pick him up. He's 14, and you know how influenced kids are at his age. So I'm going to really change him around, for better or worse. I'm really excited. We're sharing a room. We need to get him a cane, so off to Laconia!

Tomorrow my cousins Matthew and Mark return from Africa. We are really gonna have chaos on Friday. It's gonna be so awesome.

I feel peace. So at the top is a weird picture of me. I was riding a kids bike while wearing a Darth Vader mask. Why not.

*Notice that my father and grandfather have switched names. Aren't they clever? I was supposed to be Robert Paul too. Then I was supposed to be Heath. Instead, I am me.

Day Thirty: Shades of Grey

People are always telling me I hate too many things. What exactly do you LIKE? I guess I've been living in a tiny world of black and white, where everything worth my time I love and everything that slightly annoys me I hate. It's the typical hipster attitude.

I'm starting to see things in shades of grey. There is a middle ground somewhere. Some things are just OK.

The root of this attitude is that I'm afraid to be wrong. We all are. So I grip onto monotone ideals to prove myself right. If movie X is the best movie in the world and film Y is the worst, at least I'm right somewhere.

I have the hardest time applying this to people, who continually amaze and disappoint me, almost equally. So it's hard to accept people for all their flaws, because they aren't viewed in a realistic light. But here is my goal, to start seeing more things in grey. And I like the British spelling better.

Anyway, what is it about summer blockbuster films? They inspire me so much, but they are so poorly done. I spent most of the week in a mental stupor, wondering what to do with my free time. After watching the movie Batman Begins, my day brightens, the rain disappears and I accomplish a million things at once.

Today, I threw some books in the lake. One was on the history of art, one was a child's encyclopedia, the last was a dictionary of etiquette, a rule book. It makes me feel better that they're at the bottom of Winnipesaukee.

I burned a candle at both ends. I paid my debts. I danced around. I read.

I went poking around in the basement for the hundredth time. I'm still finding gems down there, such a Sega Genesis including games. Two weeks ago I discovered a SNES but it had none of the controllers or cartridges. Sarah, a teenage girl I am friends with was so happy she took it home and kept it. I don't know why.

Today, I found one of those skeleton sweaters that Ben Mowbray has. It makes me feel like a kid, but not myself. Some other kid's memories.

I found a book by Rush Limbaugh called See, I Told You So. I'm no environmentalist, but that is a waste of a tree. Inside, I found a bookmark that said, "a book is a present you can open again and again". Not in this case. I also found a wooden Garfield statuette, which I promptly threw in the lake and watched it float away. It went exploring.

I rifled through some old photos of my father, reminded that he was quite a weird, ugly kid. But the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Pictures of him make me think of what my kids are going to see when they look at my class photos. God forbid they ever discover Phetish. If they discover half the things I've created, I wonder how they will react.

Anyway, I'm doing my part to destroy history and create it and hold it special.

I'm beginning to see the majesty in God's plan for my life. I know how stupid that is to say, but what I mean, is I really couldn't imagine being who I am today and I can't imagine being who I will be tomorrow. Following God's blueprint is working out for me.

I do believe that God has a plan for everyone, but that doesn't mean predestination to me. You still have to choose to blindly follow an invisible man in the sky and no, it doesn't make sense, but it doesn't have to either. It's your choice, anyway. God isn't forcing it on you.

I think that's all I have to say today. Tune in tomorrow for more embarrassing things I do in private.

Day Twenty Eight: My List

A friend said he has an addictive personality, and I wondered if I did too. A study by Florida State University, and reported by the New York Times finds that there are several ''significant personality factors'' that can contribute to addiction:

- Impulsive behavior, difficulty in delaying gratification, an antisocial personality and a disposition toward sensation seeking.

- A high value on nonconformity combined with a weak commitment to the goals for achievement valued by the society.

- A sense of social alienation and a general tolerance for deviance.

- A sense of heightened stress. This may help explain why adolescence and other stressful transition periods are often associated with the most severe drug and alcohol problems.

Let me put it in my own way. All I care about anymore is new experiences, new flavors, meeting new people, smelling new blood. A new kind of purity.

I'm not worried or upset and I'm not gonna bat an eye. It's almost as if the study proposes this kind of attitude is a bad thing. I'm happy with who I am. Who knows, maybe I'll even grow out of it. Maybe being me is just a "phase".

I was reading Hitler quotes yesterday. Why not. My favorite quote from him (besides the "kill everybody" one) is "Anyone who sees and paints a sky green and fields blue ought to be sterilized." So if you know me, you know what I did. I painted a landscape according to this color scheme. Many people believe Hitler to be the most evil man in history, and maybe, but doesn't it feel great to break whatever rules he makes. A new kind of purity.

I'm excited for school. Not the school parts tho. Those are far from my mind. I'm excited for all the amazing things I will be doing this year. I'm really happy about it. Nothing's gonna stop me.

I explored a thunderstorm today and met the girl my grandma is trying to hook me up with. We'll be good friends, sure. But nothing more.

Day Twenty Six: Mold, Dust, Promises, Memories

Two promises fulfilled. First, I mostly only took black and white photographs today.

Second, I went exploring in my grandparents attic like I promised someone. I found an old phonograph and a trumpet, but I can't get either to work. My grandma can't operate a damn computer and I think she's ignorant, but I really find myself against the wall this time. I'm hoping that the items are broken, not my brain, but I want them to work so I can have some musickal fun. I think I'd have more fun smashing them up. Tossing them down the stairs and watching them float away in the lake. I don't think they'd even float.

I also found an old video camera, the kind you hold with one hand and aim like a sub-machine gun. It still takes film, not tape. The batteries were so old they were oozing acid and it melted the paint on the back. Maybe it will work one day. Maybe I will discover some family memories I never knew I had. They had.

That record player squeaks and grinds against some mint condition Boston Pops album. The volume doesn't go up very high, so it's barely a whisper as the poor record is scratched to death. The sound is hideous and distorted but it makes the best mood music I've ever heard.

More Goals:
Make myself a slingshot and shoot out advertisements. Or buy one from Wal-Mart.

Read advice columns, but just the questions, not the answers. My life is so much better than theirs.

Rip out pages of old books and put them on walls.

Make a new shirt.

Make more oblique goals.

Look up the word oblique.

Day Twenty Five: Pray Tell

i've been taking pictures of things i've found in the basement, things so old they make my parents seem young. after the snapshot, i throw the item away. destroying, history, that's what i'm doing. something about it seems very pure. when i go into antique shops and thrift stores, i take pictures of the clutter. i try to hide my camera so they shopowners won't see. something about it seems very sexual and dirty.

i think i've fallen in love with film. i don't know why, but i did. i miss my SLR and would never sell her for a million bucks. sorry. digital almost makes me sick. my digital not yours.

i kept browsing through tiny vices, a pictures website. i can't look through them fast enough.

i taught myself to play the piano riff in the song hurt. five e's, five d's, three csharps, 3 c's. i think that's about right. something seems like it's missing. can't figure out the guitar. i hate the song anyway. its the most emo thing ive ever heard. everytime i listen to it my heart breaks, not for myself, but for trent and for the poor, miserable world.

i drove to downtown meredith to visit some old shops there. most of them are built right into houses. people lived and sleeped and all that there, maybe they still do, but now it's antique shops and thrift stores. i had no cash and they didn't take debit or credit. however, the manager / homeowner of the thrift store let me take the books and postcards i wanted. i'm supposed to go back and pay her 80cents. she wrote down my debt and taped it on the register.

i will pay it. my reputation is on the line. otherwise that sticker will stay there for all eternity, quoting that i did not pay a mere 80 cents for some stupid items. i got a new orleans tour book from 1997 that claims to highlight the weirder side of the city. i kind of want to visit there and there ain't no way i'm taking a boring generic guide book.

i also got some postcards from places i haven't visited. i will send them off, a paragraph explaining how i wasted a stamp. killed a tree. but love keeps.

3 and half years ago I emailed myself. I never read it until now. the email said:

kkmhbjh bj nbjhjj

i ran around my house tearing pages out of an old art textbook i found in the basement. on a graph of all the major art movements of the 20th century i wrote SHIT really big. the truth hurts, but i love it anyway.

i went out and wrote things on walls with a marker. i wrote PRAY TELL and LOVE KEEPS and WAR underneath a stop sign. a police officer was down the street, parked and scanning for speeders. he didn't notice the real crime. i was on the phone the whole time with an old friend.

my grandma was panicked when i came home. i dont know why. she should've been in bed about the time i left. she went through the papers on my counter and found the SHIT drawing. she wasn't upset which is upsetting. she was worried about some other things, like me being lost. i told her i'm an adult and i can take walks and be fine.

i am still waiting for the citizen to get off their asses and send me some paperwork. i am going to call them tomorrow. i made a list of goals for myself today because i was in a very, very weird mood. here it is:

i want to go to metrocenter and puke on purpose

and i want to get in a car accident and scream

i want to get a tattoo first then get drunk

i want to draw things on walls

fuck
i want to burn things
tomorrow i'm only going to take pictures in black and white
take pictures where the action is
i won't forget anything
i won't stop driving fast

Day Twenty Four: Love Keeps

Got my photos back, the expired film ones. They didn't turn out as exciting as I imagined, but some of them did become really surreal and cool.

The one at the top I chose because, look at that sky. Look at the house and how creepy it looks, yet the colors aren't dark. It may look realistic, but this photo is very, very fake and not on purpose. It tried to be real.

The house has been there as long as I can remember. It used to belong to a woman named Connie Strand who tried to turn her house into a community center, but no one supported her idea. She lost half a million dollars and her house was taken by the bank.

When I was ten, my father was reading Ayn Rand. He explained the arguments to me, and for the most part, I agreed with them. I asked my dad if I could read the books, and he said to wait until I was 18. When my friend Aaron gave me a copy of Anthem in May, I knew it couldn't have been better timing. Exactly eight years ago, I'm fulfilling my own prophecies.

But I can't read it. I can't get past the first five pages. It tortures me. I like fiction about dystopia, sure, but I can't stand the type where individuality is crushed. I hated the Giver and I couldn't start 1984 for the same reason. But I adore V for Vendetta and similar stories, where individuality is not, and cannot be sacrificed.

Part of the reason is I already feel like we exist under a totalitarian regime. I mean, the U.S. government is the most powerful and expensive government in history. It's bigger than the Nazis and it's bigger than the USSR. We spy on our citizens and have concentration camps and we build walls just like they did. How is this different? Oh yeah, we're the good guys.

So I did not and will not completely fulfill my goal, but I learned some things about myself in the process, so all is well. I've been reading poetic, sad, fantastic surrealism and my heart is at peace.

I read an entire archive of arguments between a young man and his girlfriend. It's one sided, so whether she is a bitch or not, the guy's faults are a footnote. My first thought was, I totally understand. Wasn't one or two of my ex's exactly like that? My second thought was, Love keeps no record of wrongs.

One step forward. . .

I've been dreaming, about stupid things. Anyone I respect would think I was making a mistake. I wonder if they can appreciate the beauty in a dream, even one I don't plan on acting on. There's two. The first, is I want to buy a car and drive back to Phoenix. It's about 3,000 miles and would cost a fortune and it would take forever and people already miss me, so it probably won't happen. I'll take that return ticket home. But can't you imagine?

The other, I told to enough people and I don't feel like sharing anymore.

Day Twenty Three: Cradle

Day Twenty Two: ShowKase

For two months, I gave up smoking because I didn't want to be sneaking puffs around my family. Plus, it's healthy. Today, I had my first craving. Maybe it wasn't a craving really. It was, "If I don't have a cigarette, I may become upset. Plus, I'd really enjoy it." But I just went on with life and it went away.

I also thought I gave up creating anything, other than writing. But maybe it's been creating me. The reason for this strange abstinence is, I wouldn't have enough room in my suitcase to return. So now I'm gonna mail crap off. Like an entire box of LP records.

So a profile, on the art I've been doing. Why not? Nothing else happened today.

I already mentioned I wanted to experiment with the expired film I found. It is supposed to have some amazing results, really weird and creepy stuff. Examples here. However, I did some research online and discovered that in order to get the prints I desire the film should be a couple decades old. Preferably. It all depends on how the film was stored and the film I acquired was probably stored well. It's too young. I will develop some film this week and we'll see. I heated the canister up, holding it over a toaster. Maybe that will work.

I take photos like I write. I see everything, record everything but share very little. I have thousands on my computer, but only uploaded a couple hundred to Flickr. So, I have finally finished an old series I call "TOiLET" where I placed inspirational messages on clogged or unflushed toilets. They said things like "You Could Win!" or "Please Try Again!", as if it were a contest to treat toilets with respect.

The pun is, TO LET. This set deals with how we treat an important fixture in everyday life. We leave it unflushed or we make jokes about it or we clog it. We ignore it. We give too much or too little respect to it. There is an I in toilet. That isn't emphasized.

Clogging a toilet, essentially vandalizing the whole bathroom, was what got me expelled from my high school. It was one of the best decisions in my life. I also showcase toilets I've vandalized since or gross ones I've discovered.

Maybe I will make some large prints of these. I dunno yet. You can see some more here.

I was rummaging in the basement today and I found a toy doll. I decided to take a picture of it next to the candles, because I wanted to imitate Snailbooty's amazing, weird still lifes. I placed it upside down in a candle holder. I like how it made a helmet. My example was a little too hurried.

Also, I've been way more eager to take photos of sweet urban decay ever since I found the Urban Decay Colr Picker. So I took a lot. Expect more sad little shots of that kind of junk.

This is the current inspiration I'm feeling. Tomorrow I'm going to Boston. It will probably be refreshing, mentally, physically, spiritually.

Day Twenty One: Brats

At church, I decided to volunteer in the daycare. God knows why. The kids I dealt with were the brattiest kids I've ever met, but I think I loved them.

They were throwing balls at each other and screaming and hitting one another, so I told them all to sit down. Then I asked them what they wanted to do. "NOTHING!" Um. One kid suggested making Father's Day paintings, which made sense. I forgot it was this greeting card's turn.

So we pulled out all the paints and I went around asking them what color paper they wanted. The kids hated me. One little girl named Zoe kept screaming at me, "Go away, you're weird!" She was probably raised to hate all men by TV. She went through a dozen sheets of paper, cause she kept messing up. I kept handing new ones to her and she'd get angry at me for giving her what she wanted. How odd, a six-year-old feminist-perfectionist.

The boys would kick me and try to steal my fedora. They'd run all over the place, leaving their handprints all over the doorknobs and sink taps. All over me. I think their goal was more to make the world's largest mess of tempera gook than to create anything artistic. But it was amazing for me. I loved watching the mixture of color they made, the weird shapes and hues and all that. Everyone was an artist. I really felt that. Too bad they'll grow out of it. They'll grow up and get a job doing data entry at some boring financial office. They'll forget about creating. Just copy/paste like the rest of the herd.

Those kids really were bratty. Don't get me wrong, I'm just telling it like it is. But I really enjoyed monitoring them for a half hour. There was something strange and powerful at work. I don't like kids, meaning, no, I won't do this again. However, I never once let myself get mad at them, even though my knee-jerk reaction to their violent kicking in the shins was to beat the shit out of them.

The girls who helped me babysit thought it was extremely miserable. They told me half the kids had ADHD and I responded, "They're kids! I was like that when I was their age (nine), and I grew out of it. We can't just drug up every kid with a label and sedate them with a diagnosis! They're acting like this cause they need attention. Not amphetamines." If America is so drug-free, why do we use drugs to solve everything socially unacceptable?

I had an epiphany when all the kids were picked up their mothers; the only reason these good church going men get to celebrate Father's Day is because of these brats. I shuddered. But later I laughed. What a stupid un-holi day.

Day Twenty: Motorcycle Invasion

My little house has been invaded by ants. Not tiny ones either. They are the size of wasps, but there's a few of those too. I trapped one between the screen and the window and I won't open that one til the damn thing stops buzzing.

New Hampshire has been invaded by motorcycle enthusiasts. They come up here every year for the races, for something called Motorcycle Weekend. But then they stopped going to races so much and the weekend stretched into week. There is horrible traffic everywhere, kind of like orientation days at NAU. So many loud, noisy motorcycles. It excites me.

A lot of residents of Center Harbor use this week as vacation time. So they're off wherever. My cousins went to Africa for two weeks. I'll be pretty bored without them.

My grandpa bought a motorcycle off a guy who needed money. Got it for $150. It would be an easier way for me to get around, but my grandma opposes the idea. I called my father, and for some reason he does too. He had a motorcycle when he was my age, but no, I can't have one. My grandfather and (for some reason) my mother both think it's a great, economical plan. The others think I will kill myself and are lecturing me like I'm a child, independent of intelligent decision making. I haven't even seen the damn thing yet and it's already caused me enough drama for one week.

Other types of invasion? When I was last here, there were dozens of chipmunks living in the woods, but most of them have been killed by stray cats. There's only one chipmunk left. My grandpa really likes to feed the birds and squirrels and chipmunks, so he hates these cats and shoots them with his .22. He was bragging to grandma about how he's hit this one cat three separate times. He says he saw this cat limping around and now he hasn't seen it for a week, so he assumes it's dead.

The other cat, he really did kill. He shot it in the head to kill it mercifully (or if you prefer, quickly). Then he put it in a sack and gave it to a friend as a gift. It was pretty funny to me, and I hope you don't think my grandfather is cruel just because he kills cats. But I'm not really writing any of this in a way that defends him.

Anyway, I took a walk in the middle of the night, during a light rain. I don't know what it was, but it was terrifying. Paranoid and not of the dark or the woods. It was something inside. I came back and heard something in the trashcan. It leapt out at me and I hit it with my cane and it ran into the woods. It was that damn cat, still breathing.

Day Nineteen: Upward Glances, Downward Glares

Again, I feel run over when I wake up. I think all my life oozed out of me when I was passed out. My grandma woke me up early because she has a doctor's appointment and doesn't want to drive to Meredith twice. So I'm at work at 8:30. I vaguely realize today is Friday the 13th.

This is my last day at Financial Resources. Next week, I start for the Laconia Citizen. I forgot to mention, my second duty there will be to write feature stories. They aren't hardcore news, but they're easy to write and a little bit more creative than front-page garbage. The column I'll be doing is called 'Lake Faces', some lame, candy-ass profile of interesting people in the Lakes Region. (Where I live is in the dead center of New Hampshire, surrounded by the biggest lakes in the state. Hence, the place I live is called Center Harbor. Laconia, where the paper is located, is about 30 minutes away.) I am excited about it anyway.

As I trudge into my office and shut the door, I realize that someone stole my blinds. Why would someone take my blinds? As the angry New Hampshire sun glares off my computer screen, some guy comes into my office and takes the chair I use as a footrest. This one woman keeps staring at me whenever I walk by her office to use the bathroom. What the hell.

My mother used to work at Financial Resources when I was too young to remember. It's kind of weird to think about. She wrote checks or something. At least she had it somewhat easy.

I'm beginning to think of everything as data entry. Everything. Typing up this blog. Sending a text message. Flushing a toilet. And it is, sure, but still, you shouldn't think these things. It's unhealthy, it makes everything a chore. Those little captcha things all over the internet, I used to find them annoying til I learned what they really are. They're a primitive type of the Turing test and for awhile, whenever I entered in xk23tlv or whatever, I thought to myself, at least I'm not a computer! Now I just think, more data entry.

I wrote myself a little resumé for all the jobs I've been applying to. It's weird. It's a one page document about how much paid slavery I've done, how I'm prepared and willing to do more. All those stupid applications I filled out for restaurant jobs I didn't even want, they kept asking if I had any special skills. I thought, sure, but they aren't gonna help. I can paint and take bad pictures and write, but that won't make me better at cleaning up spills in the bathroom. I slowly discovered I have some pretty nifty skills, like typing, a driver's license, HTML knowledge. Those three, that's as far as I got, but who'd think that job applications would bring self-discovery?

My last day at Financial Resources wasn't bad, mostly because I took an hour and a half lunch with my cousin. We grabbed pizza and drove to his house. On the way he accidentally ran over a black garter snake that was slithering across the road. We mashed it something awful. I had him pull over and took snapshots of it. It was still alive, squirming in a pool of its own guts. Later, when I told people about it, they felt bad for the thing. My grandpa asked me why I didn't put it out of its misery. I don't know. Would that have suddenly made me compassionate or even more twisted and sick?

I went to the youth group my cousins go to sometimes. We played sporty games and I felt like a stupid kid again. We watched a video, some speaker guy talking about the immensity of the universe and how we measure up and the complexity of life inside me. How God cares about me anyway. I really hate those kinds of things, big, stupid number games and thinking about those quadrillions of lightyears that I will never, ever travel. But I love them too. Is there some kind of sick, masochist complex about me that likes feeling small when pressed up against the screen of the universe?

The obvious answer is, yes.

When I dream, my inferiority complexes will fade into nothing. And I'll be fine.

Day Eighteen: Pyro / mANIC

So I've been lighting candles every night since I've been here. There are truckloads of them in the basement and I just light them and blow them out, on again, off again. I like the smoke and the fire more than the burning. I dip my fingers into the molten wax and let it crust over my fingerprints. Love isn't right, but it's the first word to come to mind.

Why is this so important? Because I haven't been able to light candles in a long, long time. NAU doesn't allow me to, and my mom didn't allow me to when I lived with her. They're afraid I'll burn down buildings.

When I was younger I used to light a match and watch the fire ebb into the wick. Inhale the sulfur, toy with the heat. I would switch off the light and lie on the floor and talk to God and just be calm.

My mom made me throw the candles out or something. It's been a long time. I can't even remember how much it meant to me.

Anyway, light candles now wouldn't be important if my candles didn't have personalities. The blue one is new and she is arrogant and clean. The red one is angry but now that she's melted down a lot she's mellowed out a bit. The green one is a filthy bum that needs to work. The orange one, that has four wicks is kind and boring and unoriginal. The three or four that melted into puddles and went out are just a blur now.

I've been feeling this way toward my candles since I've gotten them, but only now realized how I felt. Subconscious inversed reflections. These thoughts are associated with the mental phenomenon synthesia. It does that to you.

When I was younger, I thought my synthesia was making me crazy. I didn't know what it was. I used to think my dishes had gotten dirty on purpose to punish me and make me clean them. I used to think the clock was causing me to suffer, mocking how much time I had left to live. I smashed that clock in with my bare fist and swung the rest against the wall. I bled a little. The next day, I walked down to the ditch and tied it to a pole.

So I'm a little abnormal.

Raison D'être

Raison D'être

Another bloody bath drawn today, his fifteen minutes of fame. It's always the suicide notes that get me, but this wasn't suicide, not exactly.

Read all about it, on June 8th a young Japanese man drove a truck into a crowd of people, jumped out and began stabbing everyone he could. Broad daylight, outside an electronics plaza. The perpetrator killed seven people and wounded ten.

He wrote, 'I don't have a single friend and I won't in the future. I'll be ignored because I'm ugly,' 'If I had a girlfriend, I wouldn't have just left my job or be addicted to my cellphone. A man with hope could never understand this,' 'I'm lower than trash because at least the trash gets recycled,'

The police chief said maybe the problem was education, but the kid was getting top grades. The kid said he tricked his parents and teachers into thinking he was a good kid. It wasn't that, so who is society going to point their fingers at now?

This person had a lack of hope. According to him, I can't understand how he feels. And I'm not going to try. I'm not going to make sense out of a senseless act. Leave that to the 'experts'.

My heart goes out to the victims and their killer. The Japanese will probably execute him and I wish that he finds hope before then.

Day Seventeen: Inversed Reflections

Maybe you’ve heard about this whole salmonella-tomato bullshit. No other word for it. A bunch of people get a bellyache and the FDA destroys an entire industry. A few people die, but no one knows if the connection is between the bacteria or not. What a moronic country we live in. I can’t wait to leave.

The problem to me isn’t that I can’t get tomatoes on a Big ‘n Nasty, the problem is this perpetual state of fear we live in. Americans are like children afraid of the dark, except they are fat and unimaginative.

For some reason, I was able to find a Subway that had a different piece of paper taped to the register, stating that their tomatoes were not affected and so I ordered extra tomatoes on my sandwich. They were delicious.

Other than that, I went to work at Financial Resources. I don’t start at the Citizen until next week. The people there really don’t respect my office. They put all the furniture and supplies they don’t want in there, basically using my office as a storage facility. They took my desk and replaced it with a table. Someone stole the batteries from my mouse. Two guys walked into my office when I was out to use it for a private conversation. I opened the door and just looked at them and they glared at me and told me to give them a moment. The secretary thought my name was Toby.

Anyway, you know that Dust Off, Canned Air crap? I found a can of it in my office and so I used it on my clothes. Blows the dust right off. I will never have to wash my clothes again, not that I do anyway.

Other than that, I’m just the little office slave. I get all the jobs no one wants. File this, shred this. My uncle made me program his cell phone for him. It’s ironic, because my uncle reads more sci-fi than anyone I know, but couldn’t work a microwave. Maybe he doesn’t realize we already live in the future and it’s kinda real. Maybe this time he won’t vote for someone who will bomb innocent civilians halfway across the planet. And no, I don’t mean Obama.

Excuse the unprovoked political commentary. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been writing for the Lumberjack in a while. Maybe it has more to do with the fact that I’ve been watching the news. Not on purpose, but nonetheless. I can’t stand how maliciously stupid the media can be, yet I want to work for them.

I’ve kinda done some rethinking. Being anti-consumerist is not the same as being anti-capitalist. And the goal of a corporation is not really to control the masses, to oppress the poor. Their goal is to make money. But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Did I work today? No, not really. Just like when I was in my accelerated high school, I spent most of the day researching topics on Wikipedia. I’m reading about more of the counter-culture of the ‘60s, Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. I wish I had known all of this when I was younger. Now I just sit here and feel stupid, like I missed the wave. Even if I could ride the next one, it doesn’t seem like it would make a difference.

I’m just feeling that suck of air in the back of my skull when you realize the more you know, the less you know. Kinda the same feeling you get when you’re in an airplane. . . free falling into the Mariana Trench.

---x

I’m a little embarrassed to admit this. But it was a real experience, and it was important to me.
I got home late at night, and walked down to the lake. Half a moon glided through the dark ripples. I looked up at the night sky and remembered how I used to think of water as a metaphor for how deep God is. It just gets better and better. Maybe that’s lame, but I was thirteen. Still, the ideal carried with me through high school.
I’d forgotten that. So I had a moment. I removed my hat, joking with the almighty that I was on holy ground. Removed my shoes, too.
And we just talked. I sang and I felt for the first time that whole bridal connection thing. It wasn’t weird or awkward like I’d feared. It was really nice in fact.
I prayed for peace and realized I’m in my head a little too much. I think that’s a cause for stress and torment.
I just wanted to live a little while. I cried, and maybe that seems weak and pointless. I was feeling really distant. It wasn’t shame, it was longing.

Day Sixteen: Showoff

Note: I was unable to post last night because of a thunderstorm power outage. Actually, my grandparents just unplugged the internet router.

I woke up in one of my token hate-the-world moods. I don't know why, but I'm blaming you.

I went to the interview early. Thirty minutes, giving me time to wander around downtown Laconia and take snapshots. I took 189 pictures today, most of which I deleted and not all from downtown either. I haven't uploaded even a quarter of the total I've taken here, averaging about 50 pictures a day.

The interview went well. He was pretending to be nice to me, I was pretending to be a hard-worker. Showing off. I am already very familiar with how a newspaper works and all, so I kept spouting off random jargon. AP Stylebook. Feature story. Word-count. They seem to want to baby me, which I'm fine with. But still, I want them to know I can write the news. They asked if I could sometime do an online feature with a less professional, more personal spin. "You mean a blog?" I do that in my free-time, for fun!

So I easily got the internship. It pays. I didn't ask how much.

I took way too long to apply for this position. I wasn't really sure I wanted it. I wasn't really sure I wanted to even work as a writer anymore. For a couple months, I was having some serious doubt about where I wanted my life to lead. But today I was so excited and happy and at peace with myself for this minor accomplishment. I think I was right about this, at the very least.

I will be doing two primary things: data entry, which I am already doing for my uncle's company. Which I hate. Which is mind numbingly boring. But I'd much prefer doing it for the Citizen than the Man.

It's been hot and humid lately. My cousin Matt came over and we swam in the lake. It was still cold for me and gross as usual. Big oil spills of pollen were gushing everywhere and it got all over me. I poked at a dead fish. It looked cut up from a boat rudder, its guts unfolded, its eyes missing.

Later, my cousins and I took another bike ride. We set off firecrackers. For a Desert Child like me, where these toys are illegal, I was really excited. I love being destructive. We took our canes and hit them at each other, spraying sparks at our knees. We tried to make a few modified firecrackers, but they barely worked. Except when Mark taped a dozen sparklers together and lit them and it launched into their trashcan and set it on fire.

Most of these crackers were bells and whistles. Showing off. Nothing special. They make these things too safe nowadays.

I drove home, as the clouds were lighting up with a thunderstorm. Showing off. But not entirely. It's raining now, and there's that occasional clap, and this is the sound I will fall asleep to.

My Problems Mount in the Night

Insomnia plagued me, the price I pay for those nasty drinks I chug. But my friends the spiders comforted me. I watched as an orb spider compose her web across ceiling and curtain. The absolute silence was tranquilizing. Drooling, am I dreaming? Oh, how I wanted to be her bait.

Day Fourteen: This is it

The first thing you need to know is what I was wearing. I bought these pants for work. They're like khakis but they don't suck. The pockets feel great. I feel great in them. Kick ass.

I'm wearing a blue t-shirt that's tucked in because Grandma says the restaurant we're going to is really fancy. But my cousins are wearing civilian clothes. It's okay. I like wearing nice clothes when I don't have a reason to. Prom, for example.

We're at this boring brunch buffet. Some cozy name. Stupid woodsy pictures on the wall. Two music school dropouts are playing jazz music in the corner. Some atmosphere attempt. We request that they play the "Farmer in the Dell" and they do, with their jazz twist.

Our waitress has a bad case of the 'muggies' which just means PMS or lack of sleep. So my cousins and I try to cheer her up. There's chocolate fondue and we start sticking sausage and shrimp in it. The shrimp must be really fancy, cause it's served to you on rocks. The sausage tastes store bought.

We dare each other to eat the chocolate covered cuisine. I nibble it and almost feel sick. Chug sour cranberry juice. What, on yer period? This brings the waitress a smile.

Earlier, I found this picture of Hawaii and all day I'm taking a screwdriver to it, trying to screw it up on purpose. I didn't think I would do any art here, but it found me.

We drive out to Laconia, where I lived when I was two and try to find a record store I saw once. It's closed of course. Everything is closed at four on Sunday, except an old antique shop. These places cover New Hampshire like a plague but I've never been inside. We're the only customers. Browsing through this elderly expensive collection. Browsing through the history no one wants.

Matthew gets a brilliant idea. He finds a box full of walking canes for a dollar each. We all buy canes and go strolling down the street like gentlemen. I love downtown Laconia. It's a city in the sense that downtown Flagstaff is a city. Small and crumbling and quaint.

There's an old joke. How many ADHD kids does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Let's go ride bikes! That isn't a joke. I'm caffeine high as hell, in my kickass clothes and we go for a three mile bike ride with our canes, eating cheese and whooping like Indians. (Of course, people don't whoop like Indians anymore. That's not politically correct.)

We fought with the canes while cruising and hit signs and all that. I was exhausted by the time we were done pedaling up a hill. I got my second wind just before we flew back down. No hands, I raised my cane in the air and screamed. I couldn't help thinking, this is it.

This is it.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you'll start missing everybody."
-Holden Caulfield.

It's so quiet I can hear how loud the clock is. Time has a voice. It's late, I should be in bed, I don't even feel like writing. Force of habit. My computer is buzzing too much. It worries me. It could explode or something. . .

Someone was blowing something up, fireworks or something, but I went outside and couldn't see anything. Just whistles and pops and explosions. No light at all. The woods were screaming alive. Loons screeching on the lake.

There are weird insects outside that are trying to attack me. They are clanging up against the door and when I open it they buzz in and try to suck the blood out my neck. I've squashed a dozen of them so far and switched off the light and I refuse to open that door again.

I finished the Catcher in the Rye. It was very good, very deep but finishing it depressed me a lot. I've never been so upset about ending a novel and it's not because I wanted it to go on and on forever. I don't know what it is. I almost wish I had never read it.

Anyway, this is some cult book, some book I was supposed to be born knowing every word. People think you're stupid when you get to be my age and you get excited about something that they've loved since grade school. It was this way with Fight Club, with the Mars Volta. "Dude, I love this new band." "Yeah, I know, I heard about them years ago. They're OK."

It's this way with religion too. "Jesus? Sure, I know about him."

What was the point of reading this novel anyway? Chuck Palahniuk has sheepishly stated that Fight Club is just a remake of Catcher in the Rye. Less than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis obviously was. The same message, the same characters, the same people, who like me, like this book. I think Fight Club was more fleshed out. The anti-consumerism ideas were better expressed. There was also a twist ending and some actual sex.

Truth be told, I've just been trying to rewrite these books myself.

It bothers me that Mark David Chapman liked this book and saw himself as the Catcher in the Rye. Because I really see myself as standing beneath that cliff and catching kids, poor depressed kids who don't have direction in life. I mean, that's what I want to do. I'm not doing it yet. I fear maybe I'll end up shooting someone instead. Or kill my grandma. Ha.

It's a weird name for a character though. A 'caul' is a mucus membrane that some people are born in. So it's more like he's holdin' a field of these things.

I met an old lady today that my grandparents visited cause she is having surgery. Her name is Mim. She's so old and so sick that she's nothing but a skeleton. You could see how big her skull was supposed to be because her eyes keep popping out. Think shrunken head. Think puppet.

Her dogs were huge German shepherds and I have a fear of big dogs. I was doing my best to control myself, but they would just sit and watch me. They'd lick their lips and maybe it meant nothing, maybe it didn't. My grandparents kept talking but I couldn't focus in on the conversation. I stared at the TV to keep my mind off the dogs, but I have no idea what I watched. We were there ten minutes, but it should have been an hour.

I asked Mim if I could take a picture of her. She said, but I'm a wreck, but OK. I told her, it's because I didn't want to forget her. I don't know if I was lying or not, just to get another weird picture of a dying old lady. I'm sick in the head, really. But I won't forget her now. I can't.

I went trekking in the woods today. I've been meaning to for awhile. Get lost. Find something else. I didn't go far but I didn't have to, not to be completely surrounded by trees and a shag carpet of dead leaves and you can't smell or hear anything but the woods. I looked up and I could see nothing but blue and green and I told myself, "God is here."

But I ran out of the woods, swatting at my neck and my arms, because of mosquitoes and dirty little bloodsuckers that wanted my life. I said to myself, "Satan is here, too."

Day Twelve: Reading Material

Reading Catcher in the Rye. It's beginning to be good.

I told myself I was taking the day off and I'm glad I did. Unlike my obits, I didn't promise anything. Interruption wouldn't hurt the project.

For an interesting blog read this. Not This God's other posts are blah, but this one is good:

http://notthisgod.blogspot.com/2008/05/seven-essential-sins.html

Kinda got me thinking.

Day Eleven: Inheritance

I'm not gonna be one of THOSE people.
When you're here, dark is really dark. Not some pathetic attempt at it. You'd really stumble, you'd really get lost. There are these things called Loons, which are creepy looking birds that scream at night. The lake is haunted. The forest alive with nocturnal whispers. They won't hurt you, but they will keep you on your toes. No wonder people write horror stories about this place.

I'm just amazed that some of the land here has been owned since before America was the USA and yet, this place is so untouched. You are constantly surrounded by woods and wildlife. Ninety percent of the businesses here are locally owned, small businesses. Few corporate conglomerates here. Nothing is all the same. I don't know if it's better than Phoenix, where they've torn up the desert and made it an oasis, for better or worse. All I know is it's harder to get Monster energy drinks out here because few people carry them.

My grandma told me a story about how my father got into a wreck in a high speed police chase. He was about my age and he was trying to avoid the cops to avoid higher insurance rates. He hid behind a highschool and the cop waited ten minutes on the other side for him. He sped out, was still being chased and hit a wall.

My grandma says she has never been able to understand what Paul was thinking. His mind was always on some other frequency. I laughed and bit my tongue and told grandma that I definitely inherited that.

She said, oh, I hope not!

But I want to be. I really, really do.

Day Ten: Lachrymose Sky

I dented the front of my grandpa's Prius. Last week, I backed into a hill and popped off some sort of fender. He wasn't mad either time. Said he has insurance. I asked him why he wasn't mad. He said, "Why should I be? Do you want me to yell at you?" Oh, the things I get away with. Everything, but that toilet in junior year. Can't do no wrong, not me. Yell at me? It would make me feel better. Just a little.

Down the street the police installed a little speed monitoring board. I think it was put there because of me, narcissitic as that is. What's the name of that emotion? Where you think things are for you because they are presented that way. When someone writes an angry, anonymous blog you automatically think it's about you. It's probably not, but can you ever help thinking that? What am I supposed to do, guess?

The board doesn't take your picture or anything. In fact, there are so few security cameras around here that it was a relief seeing them in a CVS. It would take me a thirty minute drive to find that particular pharmacy again, but going inside was the only breath of normal I've felt since leaving Sky Harbor. I really don't like that about myself. I'm so molded by consumerism, even though I'm mostly against it.

Took work off. I helped move furniture with my grandpa today. Some Keystone Cops moments. Busted a lamp or two. Paint spatters on clothing. He painted the living room for this old cat lady. Her house smells like cigarette smoke, not the good, fresh kind. Cheap cigs. Cat hair and kitty litter and old lady. The weirdness of it all. Why she tapes doors shut. Why she ties lighters to everything. Why she taped a letter about mammograms to the wall. Why she collects spent Dunkin' Donuts coffee cups and uses them as insulation. May I never be so old my brain rots inside my skull, like molded bananas. I've seen this happen to almost every old person I know. I would rather fall down a staircase like ol' whatshisname. Maybe he didn't fall anyway.

I went to Bible study. Me and Rhonda got sidetracked from discussing the existence of God to why and how America is a "Christian Nation" and whatnot. We started arguing over the concept of the Iraq Invasion. I was explaining simple economics to her. When there is more demand than supply, price goes up. When you invade a country that has oil, supply goes down, demand goes up, therefore high gas prices. When you are investing in oil companies, like Bush and co. are, you have damn good reason to invade, because you will make a profit (Exxon made more money in a single quarter than any other company in history). Rhonda asked for proof. Motive. The smoking gun.

In a way, I feel bad that the discussion sidetracked. I have a way of doing that. . . Rhonda said she had a headache and wasn't up to arguing with me because of it. But she complimented me, saying I go right for it. Relentless. I smiled. Whatever.

So I went home and did some research. A lot of people claim Al-Qaeda had no reason to attack the U.S. but if you look back, we've been over in the Middle East since at least the '80s. Shooting down their civilian planes and trying to pay them off? Why wouldn't Muslim extremists be pissed and want retaliation?

It's a pretty disgusting part of history. Trench warfare, human waves and mustard gas. Never learned about this in high school. Wonder why. I got myself on a tangent about the mustard gas of course. The mutagenic, carcinogenic horror of it all. And my sick fascination with it.

It was rainy today, like yesterday, but I've been enjoying it. I love how the wet brings out all the color in everything. The road is black, real black. The trees, real green. Mud, real brown. The sky is the exception, some bleak gray slate, sometimes completely blank. The sky is oblivion. Like a wet water color portrait, every where I go, I track some of the bleeding colors with me. The light stretches out into nothing. No wonder Garbage is only happy when it rains. It's the only time life makes sense.

Day Nine

Day Eight: Scab

There was no picture that defined today, so I put one that makes me happy.
- - - x

Woke up. Something on my neck, like a scab. Peel it off, glance at it. It's a tick. The sight of this bloodsucker squirming makes me impulsively drop it. The shock of being awake and already bleeding.

Two minutes later, I find another or the same bastard sticking his head in my belly. You're supposed to burn them out, right? So I light match after match and hold it up to this vermin. I'm late for work and I'm just burning myself. The tick is still squirming in my gut. So I break the rules, pull the bugger out and decapitate it. A little white spinal cord is oozing out his neck. The head is still inside me, burrowing deeper, sucking me up. Toss the corpse in the toilet.

I could get Lyme disease, which doesn't seem that bad. Very treatable. I don't have the "bullseye" rash.I probably picked the tick up yesterday, when I was in the woods with my cousins finding scrap metal. It was drinking of me all night long.

Work was somehow more bearable than before, but not much. Watching the clock, like some office whore. Tick tock. I came home with a migraine and couldn't think clearly. I felt like I'd given blood.

The tick was still floating in the toilet, waiting for me.