Untitled 3

He closed the door, put the bags on the floor, and took in the living room scene. He was alone again, and confirmed this by letting out a gasp of total defeat. He walked into the kitchen, and once again was defeated by loneliness. His feet dragged behind him as he walked towards the couch, dropping himself into its warm comfort and immediately began to mope.
Tears, sympathy, sadness
Tired, his eyes focued tenderly towards the reminders. They focused on Dinner with the family, they focused on decisions made regarding the two of them, they focused on long talks that ended in sex, they focused on how completely of an empty life he led. It was their life. Not his.
The pain and suffering of something that was never meant to last. Of an idea that lasted too long to actually turn into memory.

untitled 2

Subtle. I would call you subtle. I'd call you subtle because you did the subtle things right, when you did the rest of it wrong.

This is the end

You see, you have to hit bottom, and then you can get a visual perspective of ''up'' and plan accordingly. Especially in todays world of spontaneously well planned subrban lives, you can't really know yourself until you've destroyed yourself. So really, hitting bottom is like the Disney version of Jim Morrison's life, except this time he didn't overdose on barbiturates and heroin in a nasty as fuck restroom stall but instead went on to become a mentor and father of three.
First of all, it's dark. Pitch black dark. You can't see the bottom coming and it scares you even more, because you never stop falling. You extend your arms to claw at the walls, you flail your body open to catch some air under you but it doesn't matter because suddenly your 19 years too young and in the emergency room for an overdose of intoxicants.
You wake up, your arm is hurting from all the IV protrusions but you're too fucked up on morphine to even realize you hit rock bottom. You sleep, you groan, you live your life and you wake up not remembering the horrible circumstances and unpleasant memories you made for yourself...and trot...trot down the same beaten path, falling forever down the same well. What they need to do for rehabilitation is tape the whole thing so you can watch it when you're "better" and you can see what a complete ass you made of yourself as you wallowed in your own vomit right before you die.

Deep water

I spent my last 50 bucks
responsibility just aint my thang
spending it like water
ohyou know its bound to come back
what do you do when the lake goes dry
money dont fall from the sky

I spent the last 700 days...
I spent the last 700 days doing my punk rock routine.


I just took my last puff
sober living aint for me
breathing it in like it was air
oh you know its bound to grow back
aint got money, i aint got time
all i have is my punk rock routine.

End lesson:

And we liked to party
and we kept it live
and we had a three volume tome of contemporary slang
to keep a handle on all this jive

-rod

It doesn't matter what we do

I could feel

your warmth.

You held me tight and dug your nails into my back. I remember when I dipped my face into your hair, that smell that drove me crazy filled my breath with ecstasy. You and me enveloped into one, pushing ourselves together again. That warmth filled the room, growing more and more as we forced each other closer. Your fingers trailed along teasing my skin that begged for more, Your small hand tightened around my arm as you dug your fingers into my skin after every breath. Oh but how momentous was it when I stood apart and we gazed into each others eyes for a second admiring the beauty of our skins.

I stared into your eyes and remembered that gaze. There had been many times when I had stared into your eyes and knew what they said. I am sure that I had given you the same look so many times, "I want you." I yelled with a look, blinked and screamed "I NEED YOU."

[end]

Nude

Words come and go
They are like my breath, constant and always recharging
They are like my weapons, loaded and ready

I have so much to say, so much to exclaim. So much to settle with the world but never enough time to structure my words! The papers are on the floor, the notebooks in the car, and my pen - where is my pen? Mess! Too many words and not enough time to organize them.

Then blam.

You hit me so hard I can't keep myself from being breathless. You make me speechless. The things you can do to me and the ways you can make me feel are ultimately distressing at the end of the day because I can't be with you. Ohhhhh and why not....

Why not....why couldn't I? Didn't I take care of you?
I've seen your biggest smile, I'm in the middle of your picture. You're hung tight around me.
I'm in the middle of the picture.

Pleasure, peace, love, comfort, religious

Call it what you want but it was my something else. I think back and try not too, its the worst when I see you away from me, being OK. I want you to be ok and I want you to feel horrible. I want you to miss me damnit.

-rod

There's nothing wrong with me...

Loving you. I know that this emptiness would disappear if I could fill the giant void you left when you walked away but although its been grueling I've been putting up with it. Letting it tear me up. The truth is that we both know this'll probably work better. We can say good-bye as friends and continue our life as that and not as lovers separated.

The truth is I don't want to say good-bye.

I've been feeling tried, for a long time now. By everyone and everything, and its way exciting that its been this long of a run. Don't think what I know you're trying to make it. Thoughts I know plague your mind with ideas of me - looking for clues to the possibilities. Truth is not even I could explain it but I know what I'm doing.

Tackling the waves of problems we faced it was nice to be back up against the wall but knowing I at least had you to confide in. You were there for all of it and we were there for everything. This is more memorable I think than anything in my life. Somethings though don't last forever, and some feelings don't stay strong. This is when perseverance and tolerance or something should have stepped in, but at our young ages and our hearts full of ambition I think its best if we tackle everything head on, alone.

Used to be one of the rotten ones...

The idea was not something that I really understood, I would argue how the artists never really drew upon anything meaningful with their words and they never played any instruments that required real skills. I remember making point of the fact that they would incorporate other peoples music and create very basic breaks(chops of songs usually in 4/16 breaks). Hip Hop has grown to be something completely different now. It's instrumentals have increased in not only complexity but diversity, pulling inspiration from long lost indian records, to completely recreating a genre with old, dusty records from a time long gone(blunted in the bomb shelter -- Madlib). I think all the beatheads from L.A. are doing a great job at progressing the genre but more importantly to me, they opened my eyes to what they were doing.

It's not about the end product for us I'd say. It's the journey towards it, the end part is just a culmination of the ideas you had while listening to all those dusty old records. Anyone can lay down a drum loop and throw a cute sounding horn or a fancy piano piece. It's a little bit more difficult though to find an original sound, a style, to pull it all together with. I think a lot of that comes from what you grew up influencing you up to that point, I never chose a genre to love or stick too although I do have my preferences(and hip hop is not really one of those). I think the spirit of hip hop can be carried through all sorts of mediums, and hip hop embodies a more updated jazz feel. The ability to be free from any classical rules, while still applying the basics though: Harmony, melody, and structure(albeit any of these can be argued). My musical journey has taken me from punk, rock, classical, jazz, all kinds of world music and even for awhile indie pop but I do believe it's that knowledge that all these genres has bestowed on me that let's me create something original.

Records...are something I just love. My equipment can't really keep up with me anymore, but if I could I would still buy records everyday of the week. I pick up whatever looks interesting, and yes, I do judge a record by its cover (hah!). I remember at first being interested in records because of the collectible aspect when it comes to indie bands releasing limited press Vinyls but soon I purchased my first set of tables, a mixer....and I can only say that since that moment I have not been able to get rid of my itch. I enjoy the music as a hobby, not as a background noise to drown out the emptiness of a room, and this is the ultimate way to enjoy your music, by making it yours.

It echoed louder

than usual that night.

The moon poured through cracks in the blinds, even still the room was as dead as a mausoleum. From one side came the quiet pips of someone snoozing quietly, from the other wisps of music in the air. I was comfortable though, laying on my bed running through my memories, watching the highlight reels.

The headphones sang their songs and brought memory after memory. The darkness was my blanket, engulfing me in that comfort of anonymity, in that area where nothing was real and everything was only a faint memory of a time where almost nothing seemed real. The echoes of laughter rang through my ears, the sounds of children on some island in the middle of a vast sea enjoying life without hesitation. The lawn was washed out, too green to be real; and the sun washed everything white, a contrast to the darkness which I lay in, a floating sun burnt 70's polaroid hinting of a time when nothing mattered.

The neighborhood was small, uninteresting and run down. Boxes of the same looking little apartment were huddled together within the gates but at the west end of the complex, on the far corner sat a little piece of heaven within this purgatory. There, the door would open wide to a vast wide open green field, I remember you could comfortably fit 22 of the best football players you could find in little Garden Grove. At one end of the field giant trees lumbered over the whole complex, their gigantic arms stretching out past anything my little limbs could ever reach; and soft green grass till the opposite end.

One room held all the wisdom, experience, lies, and problems. Another held hope for the future, evolution and adaptation. And yet another helped pay the bills. The grand hall contained our souls, entrapped in the tube and glued to the chairs. Our galley, well food.

It feels good, to be so lost within oneself sometimes.

It's when the memories burn brighter than the sun that I can't help but want to go back to that place. When the audio of happiness stream from one side of my head to the other, echoing as it comes back, and back, and back, and back...

A surprise event

The new year came and went but I was too busy to notice.

Straddled down in the ICU fighting...fighting...fighting for what?

Life? What is it?

It's strange. While I lay in my bed with morphine pumping through my body I got scared for the first time in my life. I got scared about life.

I didn't get scared that I was going to lose my life that night, no never, i'm too much of a fighter to go out like that. I wasn't scared that I was going to never wake up but I was scared that had I not woken up, what would have been of my life?

What would people remember? That every time I inhaled some smoke that I could blow a ridiculous O? That I was phenomenal at Halo? I didn't know, I still don't. That night I could have disappeared off the face of the planet, and maybe that could have been my end.

It's funny, the kid who was all the questions and ponders, abstractly might I add, about life could have lost his life in some stupid event that was not even important. For the first time in my life I was scared that I would have ended up being nobody.

Nothing.

There already is enough Nothing and enough Nobodies in this universe, especially on this tiny dot in the middle of the infinite nothingness we know as Space.

But it was a good experience sitting on my death bed, IV's streaming out of my arms, monitor pads watching my heart; I learned that I can't just be NOBODY, and that my life right NOW is just that - nothing. I have nothing to look forward too, and nobody to help share it. I've never been the kind of person to want that routine life I've never been one to join the idiot box generation either, then why would I waste my time? Why would I waste the precious seconds I've been granted to experience and understand the most I can doing nothing and being no one?

Is it because I can't find my calling? Or because I can't find a place to be someone?

The truth is I don't know. I've accepted the fact that somethings I will never know, and that sometimes you don't need to know. Life can't wait for anyone and life sure as hell isn't going to land in front of me.

The following night I was left alone to recover and I thought about myself and those close to me. There's only one way I can be happy I realized, and I have to take action now because if I don't I might one day die as a nobody, who did nothing. And that scares me more than death itself.

Spider sense tingling!

There are plenty of times when you find out in your life that things are not what they seem. Many times one could plainly be sitting in his most comfortable armchair, sipping on some Cognac, while puffing away on the huge acorn pipe unknowingly aware as your read your paper that the wife whore you've been married too so long is actually in the back room with five of new yorks blackest, roughest natives.

Unfortunately for many, it's never that entertaining, or hilariously dramatic. For many it is actually a quick slap to the face. A snap of the fingers, a blink of the eye. Maybe even just a realization. I am telling you, although more subliminally, that my life has gone through such a great change.

Too many times have I sat upon my porcelain throne reading for hours sometimes about a little funny chemical reaction that we all know and LOVE to call it by its fabled name - Love. Simply put, that amazing feeling you get when you pee, smoke some weed, or see a sibling. Love is simply that, a chemical reaction that is impossible to gravitate from. It is human, and being human is allowing the flow of these chemicals. Whether it be sadness, happiness, or in our case love, you must feel it. You must kneel and feel stunned when you get hit by it.

That's my realization.

There are somethings that are human, and there are somethings that are imposed, whether it be by society or media(which I guess is sort of the same thing but not really). Being able to tell the difference and understand the fullness of the emotion is not giving in or anything of that sort it is simply just being.

Being, being, being.

That's all we are, beings. I think people forget that though.

-rod

Praise and Shame

I see trees of green........ red roses too
I see em bloom..... for me and for you
And I think to myself.... what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue..... clouds of white
Bright blessed days....dark sacred nights
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world.

The colors of a rainbow.....so pretty ..in the sky
Are also on the faces.....of people ..going by
I see friends shaking hands.....sayin.. how do you do
Theyre really sayin......i love you.

I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow
Theyll learn much more.....than Ill never know
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world

(instrumental break)

The colors of a rainbow.....so pretty ..in the sky
Are there on the faces.....of people ..going by
I see friends shaking hands.....sayin.. how do you do
Theyre really sayin...(I ....love....you).

I hear babies cry...... I watch them grow
*spoken*(you know their gonna learn
A whole lot more than Ill never know)
And I think to myself .....what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself .......what a wonderful world.

Freedom

There are bars and prisons everywhere.

In my wallet, in my phone conversations, in the people I deal with daily.

My family, my hobbies, my genes and my love.

I am almost ready to take whatever is necessary to free myself. I understand that freedom is a subjective view, that freedom can only exist in ones mind and never be fully exerted.

A free man is a man that does not live.

A man is born free, but there are chains everywhere.

-rod

Tune in, Drop out...

Has been repeated over and over by the great Timothy Leary...

Tune in, Drop out

Tune in, Drop out

Tune in, Drop out

Tune into your senses, tune into your being, tune into your essence, your life; tune into this world and understand the gift that is life! Drop out of the mainstream, drop out and under the radar and live this life as free as you can.

Tune into yourself, drop out of yourself.

Tomorrow I will tune into myself.

The sun will rise around 5:40 and life will begin again. At eight thirty I will rise out of bed unlike any other day. I will continue to excercise my body and leave my conciousness contempt after studying and reciting my work materials. At which point I will fall into comfort and relax myself whilst I await to go to work..

Dropping out of my existence as I see it and encompassing a whole new way of life. A whole new vision.

I guarantee and promise this to nobody but myself and I believe that effect starts today.

-rod

The calm before the storm...

I know sometimes I can be drastic.

There's always a reason behind it and honstesly I always find my reasons to be justified. Even today and with all the impromptu decisions I have made I can still take comfort in the thought that I am always in the right.

Last night I had an argument, or discussion, about how my arrogance secretes out of my body and filters into my words, unconciouslly. This causes me to think twice about wanting to express my opinion as much as I do. It seems everyone is too retentive on the comments others have to say, sometimes they even take things literal, even when the comment was totally not intended to be taken to the degree it was.

Thoughts or something like that

Today is tuesday, I said to myself at first light. I'm usually never up this early, but today was a different day. Today the light would shine so bright into my room I would wake up to find myself more aware. Aware of all my surroundings and all the thoughtless things I've done. All the people that have endured my actions.

I just need some more time.

I just need a little more time to figure out who I am. I have found why I am the way I am, I have found out why I believe what I do but I am still not sure who I am.

I am.....

The most important idea in human history. The most astonishing little sentnce and the words that speak louder than life and all its motions. Here I am, Rod sitting on the corner of Fair and Harbor attempting to find the ultimate answer of who am I? I still wonder what divine purpose I might serve, or what belittled existence I might lead. Unfortunately that is the least of my worries, whether I am leading a virtuso life ttat is undoubtly being measured by such low standards, how much money I make and what kind of car I drive. But I ask you this, is it not worth more today anymore to know about who you are?

I think in an effort to find out who I am, and what purpose I shoud lead I keep finding myself mor and more spiritual. Not in the sense that there is a spirit essence in all of us, because that of course is not true, but that we are here for an entirely different reason than the one we are being told. I can't help justify the work week alone. I can't bring myself to understand and believe in this system of giving up my precious limited time on this grand earth to work in some shitty retail store or in some company to help it make profit I will never see. It seems almost outlandish that this system has withstood the test of time.

blah blah blah

-rod

Everything sprouted and intertwined

A little like a redwood's branches and roots, but more like the cell structure of a plant. If you can understand what I mean, and I know it's abstract, you have felt this very same feeling of comfort in knowing that everything you see is real, but only because it can only co-exist with you.

It was then that I could feel the songs bass reverberate through my body, it was then that I could feel every little piece of grain that helped create the fiber that created the wooden floorboards that my drunken face lay on. It was then and only then that I could feel comfortable in my existence, and in my purpose. It seemed very simple at the moment I thought to myself as I stared down the floor over to where the busy feet scurried and stumbled towards the alcohol and back to the dance floor. The floor bent and spinned and my eyes tried and tried to keep focus but everything was lost, yet everything was in place in this skewed view.

Nevertheless the purpose was simple, to enjoy myself. To live and not bother with the specifics, the calculations of it all, because at the end of the complex logarithm needed to express a humans place in the vast universe would only be a man explaining to you that sometimes you don't need the grand finale of a billion year old epic. Life, he would say, only exists for you.

Enjoy. That would be his final word and with that the logarithm would compute that there is insufficient data.

I took a breath at this moment, I remember, because it was curiously 'filling'. It was as if I had reached the top of a mountain and breathed in the world all at once. I was empty and full all at once. Exhaling everything and nothing, then all was black.

I'm stumbling towards the couch...

And i'm trying not to gag at my own stench. It fills my nostrils and i feel it drift slowly into my lungs. it was about this time that I remember the floor growing rapidly in my eyesight, and suddenly feeling really heavy.

It was a couple minutes till I regained conciousness; as I lay there wallowing in my drunken stench I realized something about myself. There was nothing in my head at the moment, and I remember vividly looking up from the cold wood trim flooring and into the billions of dazzling lights and flashing strobes that everything was tied together as one.