Transitions

Logion

2007-02-25T02:06:01Z

We do not bear the burden of honesty;
It is words that speak the truth, that
Turn meaning into intention - the
Inverted paradigm of distant minds.

We began quite as innocents. We
Shunned our words with trepidation and
Left too much to the stale reticence,
Poised to offer no interpretation.

But for the silence we would all be
Kings and philosophers.

But the image did not forgive us
For our trespasses. Our silence bordered
on criminality: a cruel judgment of the
Wind made us shiver in the quiet night.

Our words did not choose us, we sinned not
Against the pluperfect certainty of our acts;
Inaction was our complete defense.

It was left to the unspoken image to tell us
We bear the burden of words.

Hmm

2006-07-18T23:23:36Z

I just realized that I haven't posted in months and months and months. Maybe I'll start writing one of these days again.

No subject

2005-09-20T06:26:17Z

We are funny men
lobbing jokes at the world that denies our laughter
trying to fill with comedy our hollowed shells

The echoes are murderous
bloody in the night when everything becomes trite
semblance of reality falling into disrepair

Is it me you’re calling
from your sad tower
farther out we’d drown

We are funny men
drawing circles at our feet
enclosures of ignobility

You said, after he had gone,
we’d all be like tattered flags,

And in every shadow of an ant
there is the face of God

joechang @ 2005-08-12T23:57:00

2005-08-13T05:03:22Z

In the hush of the streets busy with tourists
you and I walk on the cobblestone
Searching for food or drink, something to fill
our empty stomachs and aching hearts.
It is not, like I said to you, the scenery that I crave,
Nor is it that charm in the air, that quaint air, where
the people living amongst these old walled-in streets
tend not to notice.

It is not those two kids, tanned and exuding their Provincial
innocence, who played on those steps in the town square,
that bring my heart to a contented fulfillment.

Nor is it the simplicity and easygoingness of it all.

It is not, as I suspected, because you seemed to reflect
What I ought to have been feeling—the careless smiles,
The infectious boyish giddiness that seemed to follow us
Wherever we went;

Is it the sun, the weather maybe, that made me want to
Simply halt time, so that space could overcome me
and make me give up all the things that I held back:

They rushed in and away like the waves.

joechang @ 2005-07-02T12:24:00

2005-07-02T17:24:15Z

Learning to Ride a Bicycle

It is unfortunate that it had to end
like this, my hand on my heart and
whispering gently against the wind,
saying goodbye and this is it, rewinding
the days and weeks that passed before
me and before the road comes to an end.

It isn’t deliberate but the thought is
debilitating, those two divergent pathways
where the unchosen one always seems
wiser and more chaste, and the hand steering
the fate cannot but obey the heart, and
before the false façade of friendship crumbles.

They say the unbending will succumbs
to the unending road, but the hand on the heart
and steering the fate knows no end, and the wind
gently blowing cannot unsway the crooked path,
where missteps are fatal and shattering and
do not bring back the days and weeks that passed.

Even when the joyous songs break out
among the strangers whose unknown faces
bear the crosses that are mine and not the wind’s,
even when that happens it is impossible to unwind
the spool of thoughts that have crinkled the heart,
and that is when the road splits and the hand shakes.

It is possible that the unspoken word died
under the rolling wheel, where even the most
delicate of thoughts becomes bumps in the path,
and where the path diverges and splits the heart in half
and lets the wind gather and wither the moment away,
like the heart that is never made to crumble.

It is, and it isn’t how it is supposed to return,
not sagged down heavy with the crosses that the others
have born to the satisfaction of the rare heart
that beats against the wind and the hand that strikes
against the separate paths, but it is, and you say
this is it and it is unfortunate but it is at least the road.

T minus 4 days until Europe

2005-06-05T06:10:51Z

Yay; it's a proper response, I suppose. It is what's expected. I think I've learned how not to look forward to things in life ever since I figured out that expectation is the only cause of disappointment. Everything to look forward to--I'm just not doing it.

Jean-Paul Sartre, in his essay on The Sound and the Fury, writes that the events during Quentin's last day, leading up to his suicide, are written in such a way that it is as if we, the readers, are sitting in a train with our back against the direction of travel; we watch the world escape forward in our peripheral vision, while the locomotion drives us toward an unseen terminus. "It has already happened," I think those are the words that Sartre uses to describe the death of Quentin. When does one realize that the train has hit a brick wall, when the brick wall cannot be seen? When it has already happened.

Existentialism, such a depressing topic, like showers in April. And to think that soon enough I will be at some cafe in Rive gauche, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee--something that Sartre must have done at one time or another. And to think that I have putatively rejected existentialism. Too depressing. Too high school. I'm not sure that I'm better off now, unhinged in time, lost in my own nebulous construct of a world. A postmodern quagmire that reeks of Sartre and Eliot--look, there's Nietzsche pushing up daisies in the corner there.

I hope my time in Europe will at least take my mind off the present, a little less pressure pushing up against my cracked shell. Too pretentious, describing myself using Scott Fitzgerald's words. I need to stop living in literary allusions.

Happy birthday to my father. I cooked dinner for him tonight.

Tragedy for Beginners; Paint by Numbers

2005-04-14T04:39:03Z

So the only thing that keeps me buoyant is the emptiness inside. Great is the feeling of having put aside all school work for 2 weeks, great is the feeling of feeling alone in the world, knowing the sky is falling and that I won't be the first one or the only one to be crushed by it.

Last night I was repeating out loud the phrase 'I am unhinged in time' to myself. Looking forward, I see an uncertain summer and an even more uncertain life. Looking back I see myself in more vivid colors than I see myself now. Life should be like Paint by Numbers. It should because it'd be easier. I'm sure that's how God created the world in the first place. He probably painted according to transcendental numbers.

Back to smoking a pack a day. I'm rather proud of myself now that I'm a recovering ex-smoker. Maybe time to get back on antidepressants. It would make the colors more vivid. Same old ugly landscape though.

Tragedy for beginners. I guess that it could become a poem at some point. Or a short story. But I don't do those, short stories.

Tragedy for Beginners: A Play in Two Lines

Didi: Shall we go?
Gogo: Yes, let's go.

No, that's quite the tragicomedy. Thanks Beckett, but not quite it. Perhaps another try, at another time? Only if I don't sink before that.

Color me in.

now this is truly experimental, done nothing like this before

2005-03-18T03:18:31Z

When that time you curved your arm over your head
and tried to be both the moonlight and mountain,
and the silver lining behind that cloud,
the cloud that never dissipates but hung around
days on end, thinking that less sunshine was what we needed.

When that time you kissed me on the cheek
and said that all we’d ever need was a little house to live in,
maybe a kid or two, and ran your hand through my hair
and said that you loved me so, that not even tragedy itself
could tear us apart from each other.

When that time you were upset, not talking to me for
days on end, not noticing everything I’d done for you
despite your anger, not noticing that I had even changed
the brand of salad dressing on the dinner table because
you didn’t like the taste of blue cheese.

‘It tastes fake,’ you said, and you were angry because
your day didn’t go you way, your past two days didn’t
turn out the way you would’ve liked, and that your life
had been a miserable failure despite of me, or was it maybe
because of me?

I wasn’t angry the night you came home drunk and
smelling of another woman’s perfume, no, I didn’t even
ask you where you had been; I think it was clear in my mind
that our relationship had been digging its own grave since
the day you asked to marry me.

When you got into our bed, after having undressed and made
an excuse of an attempt to brush your teeth, and with me
smelling the scent of liquor on your breath and that exotic,
unfamiliar scent of another woman’s perfume, and I asked you,
‘would you like me to wake you up at the usual hour tomorrow?’

You were too drunk to answer, maybe too angry,
or is it that you were simply ashamed to return home to
someone loving, someone knowing full well what you have done
and yet still had chosen to love you, still had chosen to ignore
your faults and instead tried to patch up the relationship.

And when that time you were in an accident on the interstate,
rushed to the hospital at three in the morning, and the police
called and said that you’d need emergency surgery, was I not
there in half an hour, hardly dressed in a presentable way
and sat there in the waiting room waiting for your sight?

And when the doctor came out of the operating room and said
that he was sorry, that you were in a coma because your heart had
stopped beating for too long, and that my tears came falling down
believing that my life had ended as well, and that he was truly sorry
and that I should try to get some rest.

And was that not when I realized that I had truly loved you,
despite of what you had done and despite of what you weren’t
or couldn’t have been, and that I thought perhaps it was because
of my weakness that you had not lived, and that had I been stronger
you would’ve come home safely that night.

When I came home the day of your funeral I went into the bedroom
and buried my nose in your pillow, that scent of your hair which
still reminded me of how you tried to be the moon and the clouds to me
was still there, that despite how my love had died for you, yours was still
there, a scent in the wind lingering for me.

don't know where this is going

2005-03-18T02:09:38Z

J. Terry was more than a little angry when he discovered that his girlfriend of 2 years has been cheating on him. He became suspicious when Leslie, the girlfriend of 2 years, started to show less and less interest in having sex with him. Although he wouldn’t admit it, the sex was probably the best part of their relationship, and it was probably the only part, all things considered, that actually worked. The first met when they were undergraduates at Crest College, a small liberal arts school that had a reputation for cranking out small-time novelists and television screenwriters. She was a senior when he transferred in from UCLA as a junior, and they first met each other during a drunken party when the both of them were high on ecstasy. They were at an off-campus house, on St. Patrick’s Day, and since he was half Irish and she was dressed in fluorescent green bikinis, they decided that it was only natural for them to go to the upstairs bedroom and fuck each others’ brains out before the ecstasy wore off. They didn’t see each other again until 2 weeks after that, when they ran into each other, or more precisely, when she ran into him, at the ice cream shop just a walking distance from the campus.
He was just trying to lick off the ice cream that has dripped down the side of the cup as he handed a $5 bill to the cashier when he heard a voice call out from behind him.
“Hey you,” he wasn’t quite sure he was being hailed but turned around nevertheless after retracting his tongue, tasting vanilla and rum in his mouth. He was a bit surprised when he first saw her. The recognition was immediate, but he struggled for half a second before he could remember her name, and put on a full attempt of a smile. He didn’t know whether to give her a hug, since he was holding two giant scoops of Special Vanilla in his left hand. She smiled back.
“Oh wow,” his tongue stumbled a bit, “er, Leslie, it’s been a while hasn’t it.” To be honest, he didn’t expect to see her ever again. In fact he was beginning to wish that he hadn’t run into her, because as far as he could remember, he hadn’t been the nicest person on the planet when the two of them were last together.
“So what are you doing here?” he added.
“It’s my shift coming up next. I work here.”
She is wearing a plaid beret sideways, has on a brown pile jacket with a tank top underneath, and a pair of rather vintage jeans. A man’s cravat was tied around her waist, serving as an ornamental belt. He tried to picture her with those fluorescent green bikinis on.
“You want to sit down?” Leslie asked, sensing that he was glancing down at her chest. “We should try to catch up. And don’t forget your change.”
He turned around and saw that the cashier had been waiting for him, felt a little embarrassed, took his change, and followed her to a booth toward the back of the ice cream shop. They sat there and talked for just a few minutes, enough for him to finish most of the ice cream and for her to give him her cell phone number. Most of the conversation was just basic small talk, making up for what they should’ve done on St. Patrick’s. He called her later that week, they went out for a dinner and concert, and then they got back to her place and fucked again. This time they were both sober.
And then they started dating, and fell somewhat in love with each other, and since they could see no reason to break up, they instead stayed together due to a lack of excuses.
Now we skip about two years, but not because of what happened in those two years are trivial, but because they do not fit the frame of this story, which is about their relationship. They have both graduated by now, and live in an apartment in the suburban area of Los Angeles. She has found a job with a creative agency in Pasadena, and it is agreed upon that for him waiting tables in Santa Fe and in Los Angeles don’t make that much of a difference. So after some searching around, he is able to find a busboy job in one of the Italian restaurants on Colorado Boulevard, in Pasadena. With any hope, he’d be promoted to a full waiter in a couple of months.
So he was, and let’s not bother with the details and get back to the main story, which is how J. Terry discovered that his girlfriend of 2 years has been cheating on him.

roadtrip

2005-03-15T06:54:01Z

Monday night. Cabinet turnover at the pub. Per tradition, they hired a stripper for lapdances. Wade, once again, is the prime victime. The incoming president of Hanszen didn’t feel quite up to a male stripper, dressed as a UPS man who ended up stripping down to a golden, yellowish G-string that barely covered anything and showed all, including the cockring he was wearing. I was there around 10:15, sat with some friends and chatted a bit. Just before that, I was in Michael’s room to drop off a check—I owe him some money from the roadtrip.

Speaking of which.

Last week was spring break, and I was with Michael on a 6-day trip to New Mexico with him. He took his car (since he doesn’t know how to drive a stick shift) and drove through El Paso, Las Cruces, Alburquerque, Santa Fe, and on the way back, we made a stop in Fort Worth to check out the Modern Museum, in a brand new building. The trip, more or less, was amazing. Mostly we visited museums and galleries—it was an art trip, with the exception of a stopover at the White Sands National Monument and the Sandia Mountains in Alburquerque.

Nothing otherwise exciting happened on the road.

Michael and I spent quite a lot of time talking, and with his comment that I don’t understand myself (possibly because I’m too complicated), I feel like I need to figure out some things about myself.

Am I complicated? Yes. I am too postmodern to have a real grasp of the world. I don’t have any firm principles except that every truth in life can be looked at another way and turned into a non-truth. I am atheist yet I mourn the loss of religion; I crave to be able to have a God, yet I cannot bring myself to subscribe to all the laws and dictates of a religion. I drive too closely behind other cars (yet he was the one who ran a redlight). I am full of ideas, yet I cannot express them or put them into a coherent system. But I do have a coherent system, I just believe that it’s too complicated to explain. And as a result, I often ignore to do so, because I don’t believe that anyone can actually understand or care to do so.

It would be easy to say that I’m twice as complicated as the normal person because I grew up in two cultures. Because there is a gulf in my life that separates the two parts of me. Because I was another, at some point in time, and who I am now can never know who I was.

But to me this is just all fancytalk, a bag of mulch rotting under the midday sun. Did I really open up to Michael, did I tell him all truths and none of the lies? In a way, I suppose I am more honest than I have ever been. After all, spending almost a week sharing a room, a car, the expenses, and everything single thing you do with another person can be quite revealing. I chose a level of truth that I was comfortable with. And to be honest, I’ve never been quite comfortable with even the idea of truth.

We looked at an exorbitant amount of modernist and contemporary paintings on our trip. Some of them were truly amazing; the rest, certainly, were no more than pieces of compromised artistic integrity. I think I was truly happy at certain points in time, when I was so enveloped in the experience that I, in a way, was truly myself—denuded of my cracked mask, robbed of my sense of suspicion of other people, wholly swallowed up in the moment of being.

But on the whole, now looking back, I’d have to say that I was mostly disingenuous with Michael. Because he is such a precious friend, because I love him for who he is, because it is so rare in the world to find someone who shares my interests and is willing to put up with me, even for a moment; because it is so damn impossible not to compromise, because I don’t want to make him angry or ruin his impression of me, because I’ve learned that life’s second chances come sparsely if ever. Because of all of these reasons, and dozens more that I’m either unwilling to think about or unwilling to put down, that I’ve tried to be my best to him. After all, these are moments so rare, so hard to find in life, I’d rather be fake and bathe in the veneer of it than be truthful and suffer the real consequences, what they may be.

And is this me, this complicated, calculating, inauthentic shell of a man, who changes colors even when the wind shifts? And what am I doing here, mixing metaphors and blathering on about things that few, if any, will ever read, and even fewer will care about?

Thinking, believing that this is my catharsis, my redemption, my last chance to patch up my faults, my confession, and my salvation—I am here, in my best attempt to be honest. Yet to what? To a computer screen, a laptop on which Michael spent hours trying to write a short story but failed, during the nights of our trip? On this lifeless pieces of integrated circuit boards and electrified diodes, I am rewriting my life. But this is the only way that I can come to know myself. Something about the Wordsworthian “emotions recollected in tranquility” still captures my essence. Yet, I have been lost for so long, so out of touch with who I really am, while, oddly enough, becoming more in touch with the harsh realities of this world.

We spent some time talking about the future, our careers and aspirations and so on, and I realized that we are both too pragmatic for our own good. I am an escapist, he said. And while I don’t completely disagree, I do think that no matter how far I try to run away, the world will still be there. And the only true moments of escape for me comes about only through self-annihilation coinciding with death—not drinking myself silly on a Friday night, not getting stoned out and listening to Radiohead, but merely being able to create artistically, to write down something that I know in several days or weeks or years, I will be able to come back and read and feel completely overwhelmed—by my talent, by my feelings, by what I at the time could not have done or experienced. Delayed gratification, in a way, is the thing that drives me; my bliss comes not from the immediate release, but sometime no release at all. What I keep bottled up may kill me, but it is what makes me whole, and that is probably why I have never been able to be truthful, never been able to find myself to the notion of truth. Because I know that only what I don’t know is true; or, to put it another way, the truth is yet to be discovered, out there under some stone on a beach, just waiting to be overturned by me. But perhaps that notion of the truth, the unison of being and existence, scares me. Because so far only in the most tragic and pathetic moments of my life was I able to reveal what is underneath that stone to myself. Every revelation is a price to be paid.

And now, I am afraid again.

After the trip, I feel like that I am on the brink of overturning yet a new stone, yet about to uncover a morsel of enlightenment that I had been afraid to come to terms to before. I feel, I fear, that something in me is about to change, and I dread that change. What I don’t know can’t hurt me—or at least, I will be unaware of its injuries. My struggle to maintain my blissful ignorance has been a losing one, and still I pretend that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

So this is it, I suppose, 1,400 words in 20 minutes, the kind of speedwriting that I am always to attempt because of what I let slip through my fingers. Have I been completely honest? No. But did I unwittingly let some of those things that I try to grab on to, to guard, come through? Perhaps. I won’t know, and I don’t want to know, until some time has passed. That is my weakness. That is my bane.

And that is my life.

A writer doesn't know

2005-03-05T07:11:41Z

A writer doesn't know until he knows. What is truth in life but something that we stumble upon, and we fumble with our words until it comes out just right, that just a little piece of our soul has been put down on the page and the whole world can partake in our joy and misery. That little kernel we call the voice is nothing more than happenstance, a linguistic coincidence, an accidental synaptic misfire in the brain--and people win the Nobel, the Booker, and the Pen Hemingway because of it; they are also murdered in cold blood, executed in front of firing squads, withered away in camps, or forced into lifelong exile. No, I don't believe there is something intrinsic about the power of the word. Nothing, after all, is as powerful as human drama itself, and no word, no arbitrary system of signs, can give life to what is life. Life is the sole giver. And life taketh away as well.

Is writing autobiographical? I'm not quite sure what that means. Without having lived, no writer can write, or indeed be a writer at all. Life is not the canvas but the palette. We pick out the colors from it, and what we paint cannot replace or become life. The wall of humanity divides art and life, and if such a wall were removed, art would be unpalatable and life would be inauthentic.

We are all writers by chance, not by birth. Those who go into a career in writing, those who by the time they graduate high school have decided that their words can move mountains or feed a family of four--those are the ones so sullied by their own tragic life that they choose to believe that tragedy in art is higher and more potent than tragedy in life. We are all Hamlets, we. We are all little avatars of pathos, walking our own paths toward some fatalistic end. But even when we're desperate, even when others see daffodils and we only see nihilism, we still practice our sacred rite and write down page after page of damned lies.

A writer doesn't know until he knows. When will he realize that all words have lost their meaning, and that belief in anything is absurd?

Thresher cartoon

2005-02-13T01:39:27Z

This was in Friday's Rice Thresher. Die Rice Review, Die.

joechang @ 2005-02-10T19:32:00

2005-02-11T01:49:34Z

Children are obnoxious animals
Especially when they're on bicycles,
Or when they scare your cat by running at it, arms outstreched
And yelling in that vile voice, "Come here kitty, let's play kitty."

Children are obnoxious animals;
Just recently several came near to destroying your car
After having set off the alarm several times in a row.
Now you stand guard by the window.

Children do not intimate immortality, but are
Testament to your own mortality and thin patience;
They are prefigurations of your ugliness, their
Carelessness prophesies of your damning excesses.

Why bring them into this world when you know
Full well that in years to come they will suffer
The charmless whims and throes of a younger foe
Who will scare their cats and scratch their bumpers?

joechang @ 2005-02-06T23:23:00

2005-02-08T05:24:06Z

The Great Disconnect

I was watching the Super Bowl Pre-Game Show earlier, and realized that I am completely disconnected from popular culture, whatever that may mean. I was also thinking about how I said yes to a friend’s invitation to go see a matinée performance of Il Travatore today—meaning, among other things, that I would miss most of the Super Bowl game.

And considering that I ended up watching the pre-game crap, No, I didn’t go to the opera. He cancelled it at the last minute. I was angry because I had to wake up at 10:00 this morning. I was angry because I was excited to go. There are 42 seconds left in the first quarter, the score is a pathetic 0-0.

Maybe no one really cares for me. The few people on the planet who actually do all seem to have my last name. That is one connection I can’t simply wipe away, the same blood that runs through the family. And my family is drifting apart, and I from them.

I remember I used to be able to write about these things so grandiloquently and so self-importantly, and that when these words are read my troubles will somehow dissolve away on a metaphysical level. Now I can hardly even write.

Do I not know how to put them down in words? Do I not know the proper grammar and diction? Yes and yes, and no matter how many more yeses I can give, I’ve realized that my problems don’t go away.

Catharsis, whatever happened to it? I abuse the power of words, twist them and bend them to my own emotional benefit. I disparage whole paragraphs in order to expound on one single insignificant dissatisfaction I have in life.

Touchdown Eagles. Extra point good. Commercials – the part that’s better than the game.

So how pathetic is this? I’m doing a running commentary on my life while the greatest game in the world is on TV, and I’m giving almost no attention to it. Perhaps I have my priorities wrong. The worst enemy an artist can have is self-doubt.

joechang @ 2005-02-01T23:55:00

2005-02-02T05:55:36Z

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan opened his desk drawer and took out a yellowing notebook. He opened it to the first page, which was filled with the fluid yet forceful handwriting of Stephen Dedalus. No, Kinch hasn't sent word yet, he thought to himself. Where is he now, in Bath like he promised or did he scrape enough together for a passage to Calais? He'd be desecrating his manhood with those Montmartre gals just about now.

He traced his fingers over the words, written across the top of the page: The Portrait of a Young Artist: A Memoir. To be transcribed and submitted to Mr.--

There was a knock on the door just then. Milkwoman. Haven't paid her since Stephen paid that

Okay, I was really bored. I still am pretty bored. I don't know why I just wrote that. Maybe I miss Ulysses more than I should. Anyway, life's busy. Too busy. Not getting work done at all, woohoo. I'm aiming for passing grades for all my classes this semester. Alright, I'm starting to become random. I should stop.

One from the vault

2005-01-23T08:20:51Z

[Background: I was in Australia at this time. It's really in the afternoon, but the time stamp is translated because I'm back in Texas now. Oh, how this brings back memories.]

AIM IM with Nate

9/21/03, 20:49
JC: there's a bee in my room
JC: any suggestions?
NS: don't get stung
JC: besides that
NS: try herding it towards the door
20:50
JC: well it flew in through the window
JC: there's gale force wind out
JC: i doubt it'll go out on its own
NS: can you lure it towards the door with food?
JC: dunno, it's stuck by the window
JC: it looks injured
NS: kill it
JC: no
JC: this is the most amount of sympathy i've had, for man or for bee, in a long time
NS: fix it a drink and put on some barry white
JC: haha, i was planning on fixing some wine
JC: but no barry white
JC: maybe i can trap it
NS: a cup and a sheet of paper usually does the trick
JC: easier said than done, but i'm a man of action
20:55
JC: ok done
NS: do you miss it?
JC: slightly
JC: life all of a sudden got a lot more boring
JC: i mean it's the most authentic experience with another life form i've had in a while
NS: you need to get out
JC: get out from? get out to?
21:00
NS: to
NS: and from
JC: i just got back from borders
JC: yes they have those here too
JC: books are people too
NS: what a coincidence
NS: well, clearly
JC: actually now that you reminded me, i've met you before at the montclair borders
NS: borders and starbucks are really masterpieces of engineered atmosphere
JC: dit-TO
21:05
JC: and the starbucks here are transplanted from the US
JC: as in transplanted
JC: except they don't call it grande and venti, it's just small medium large
NS: have you eaten much vegemite?
JC: actually, no
JC: from what i hear it's rather disgusting
NS: understandable
NS: it is
NS: ear wax is the only way I can describe it. but I think it behooves you to have at least one vegemite sandwich
JC: i haven't even seen it in a supermarket before
JC: maybe i'll look for it
21:10
JC: but really why in the world would i want to try it
NS: it's a cultural experience
JC: i'd rather have sex with aussies, that's cultural too
JC: besides i'm almost certain that sex tastes better than vegemite
NS: I'll grant you that
JC: of course, unless you're into rimming and all that, then it might come out on par with vegemite
JC: ah red wine, chariot me away bacchus
21:15
JC: nate you should come to australia
JC: it's heaven for americans
NS: my roommate says they kick americans asses
JC: in what way
JC: so far i've been kicking the asses of australians
NS: in a literal sense
JC: that's a myth
JC: there i've debunked it
NS: ok, I'm down
JC: hooray
JC: seriously, save a few literature or sociology classes for a semester in australia
JC: it's only a 12-week semester, and you get credit for 4 classes
JC: i'm assuming harvard has affiliations with some schools here
NS: I'd have to believe so
JC: good change of scenery
JC: good place for you to experiment sexually too, no one would ever know
JC: haha, sorry had to stick one in there
21:20
NS: ::rolls with the punches::
JC: seriously though if you one day feel that you want to get away from boston for a while, this is it
JC: so what's your verdict on wes clark?
JC: legit contender or just another roadblock to a dem in the whitehouse?
NS: I can envision no way for him to live up to the delirious hype surrounding him, and I have yet to hear him really articulate his positions. so I'm reserving judgement
JC: well he's a genius when it comes to warfare, but he's awfully bad with interpersonal relationships
JC: last time a general became president, he did nothing
21:35
JC: holy shit the Germans are offering help in iraq
NS: chirac wants control to shift hands
JC: so the frenchies are behind this
21:40
JC: hmm this iraq thing is going to ruin our economy
NS: and not just that
NS: I went and heard paul krugman speak on friday
NS: incidentally you should absolutely, absolutely read his piece on tax cuts from last sundays newyorktimesmagazine
JC: if it's not online or free, there's no chance
JC: unless i want to walk to the state library and find a physical copy of the ny times
21:45
NS: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/14/magazine/14TAXES.html?ex=1064289600&en=e34fcb0e02afe2f6&ei=5070
NS: brb
JC: k
22:00
NS: actually, here's another good long krugman piece from about a year ago. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/magazine/20INEQUALITY.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5070&en=2f6704a7e5f5ebb8&ex=1064289600 bookmark it
JC: you do know you're preaching to the choir eh?
NS: just making sure the choir is well equipped
JC: well my equipment is none of your business
NS:
JC: ah, blah blah
22:05
JC: brb
JC: back
JC: and ready to dominate the world
22:10
NS: so basically picking up where you left off
JC: insightful, nate, insightful
JC: do you read harper's magazine?
NS: no
22:15
JC: you should
NS: I think the atlantic and new yorker fulfill my quota for that genre
JC: forget the atlantic; read harpers
JC: http://www.harpers.org/online/jesus_plus_nothing/?pg=1
JC: enlightening, to say at least
22:35
NS: I'm going to go read john locke. good night
JC: peace be with you bro
NS has gone offline.
You left the chat.

Snow on Christmas Eve; Walking Alone

2005-01-04T09:48:23Z

Snow on Christmas Eve; walking alone
in the streets of Houston, Texas, wandering through
the kingdom of suburbia, searching for the shadow of
the crucifix and a pack of cigarettes.

The newborn Christ, shoulders dusted white,
smiled a weak smile under the sodium-vapor light;
Shielded with a gloved hand, a lit match, a beacon of wisdom
drunken yet edified, ignited, carcinogenic yet mollified.

Footprints on the frozen grass, such as
I have never seen in winters past.

Exhale, and I became a furnace, my breath
mingled with smoke expanded in front of me,
out of me, like the dying cry of an obsolete ghost.
Inhale, and the cold air like incense became
warm with the fervor of a thousand sages
on the mount receiving words of undying ages.

Snow on Christmas Eve; walking alone.
My shoulders covered with snow, shoes with sludge.
A cigarette in my mouth, yelling out "Merry Christmas"
to unsuspecting passers-by, who least expected me,
the quiet man coming around the corner,
wearing a smile in unlikely weather.

Beer and Cigarettes

2004-12-07T00:48:19Z

[This was written in the December of 2003, during my last days in Australia. As I mentioned en bref in the entry, my internet was disconnected at the time, and I never got around to posting it. Until now, I suppose. Looking through my files, this struck me as uncanny: I quit smoking this week. I also stopped drinking, for the moment. Quelle chance.]

Beer and cigarettes. The Strokes on headphones. Just bought their old CD, Is This It, which, I think, was marketed in the U.S. as The Modern Age. It’s the one with ‘Last Nite’ on it. I really don’t know why I bought it. Maybe because it was cheap, only A$15 at the discount record store down by McDonalds. Maybe because I felt like spending money. Maybe because I needed something to accompany me in my beer-drinking. Tonight is probably either the last night or the penultimate night I spend in my apartment. Thinking back, it’s been just over 4 months. Nice little place, right in the middle of things.

I’ve been feeling really depressed tonight, I think it has something to do with moving out. The night I moved in, I was feeling really odd, somehow really out of my place. The French would call it mal-à-aise. I decided to celebrate that night by buying some beer and enjoy myself. After I went to the supermarket, I went to the bottle shop just down the street, at the southwestern corner of Flinders Lane and Elizabeth Street, to buy some beer (I asked the checkout girl if she knew a liquor store near here that I could get some beer at). It was the first time I have purchased alcohol legally at a store. I’ve already ordered some at a bar on Philip Island a few days before that. So being 18 and being alone, and being in Australia. That pretty much sums up my life for the past months. Nothing really too interesting, I guess. Boredom permeates my days and nights, and without any friends here, I truly have lived a life of a loner. Sure, thinking back, there were some really interesting stuff that happened, but nothing that I really feel proud to boast about.

Really, my life is pretty boring, and the things I write down aren’t any better. Usually I can manage to put some effort into it (the writing, that is), and make it interesting to read. But more and more it’s just, well, I don’t know. See, I don’t even know how to write this. I don’t have an audience, I don’t have anything to say. I don’t feel inspired, and I don’t know why I’m writing this.

So the night I moved in, I got drunk and probably passed out in my bed. I don’t think I threw up (that came later, when I decided to get hard liquor and really drunk). So again, it was beer and cigarettes, pretty much like right now. I didn’t have internet or phone back then; right now my phone is disconnected. Back to where I started. A full circle. Really odd.

A couple of nights ago, I decided to learn Japanese. I spend three hours and memorized the entire katagana. So now at least I can pronounce a lot of Japanese words without knowing what they mean. Besides, I know Chinese, so I can probably read a lot of Japanese without knowing how it sounds like but get a lot of the meaning.

**
Anyway now, two nights later. It turned out that when I wrote the above, it was my final night. I moved back to the Spring Street apartment last night. Funny I used the term ‘moved back’ in the last sentence. Am I really getting back, or did I leave in the first place? Meaning is very diluted for me right now. For a while I thought I had found some direction in life. Right now I’m pretty sure I have lost it again. Well, not like it hasn’t happened to me before. The next thing you know I’m back to being depressed. I feel like laughing right now, caught in the middle of my meaningless reasoning. Perhaps I’m just fed up with words. Ever since they stopped carrying meaning for me (both in the linguistic sense and in the literary sense), it’s just a lot of mumbo jumbo, sound and fury, that go on in my life. I guess when that happens, I’m doomed to be somewhat depressed about it.

"Socialism takes too many evenings." -Oscar Wilde

2004-12-05T07:22:30Z

Footnoteworthy.

Had about the most random comprehensive controversial yet congenial and coherent conversation tonight on divers subjects; and from now on I will try to follow the rules of basic, goody-good grammar.

Fragments, paraphrases, or topics:

Justin: Islam is the single biggest obstacle to democracy in the Middle East.
Me: No, America is the single biggest obstacle to democracy in the Middle East.

Justin and Michael about the last chapter of Ulysses, Penelope. Michael said he'd be offended by Joyce's sexism if he were female. Justin defended Joyce. Michael said he was offended. Justin demanded to know why he was offended. I stepped in and changed the subject.

On the qualifications of the writers and editors of the Rice Thresher: too vile to quote here.

Which is worse: the lead singer of Hoobastank or the lead singer of Lincoln Park? (Justin)

Which is worse: the Mormon church or Islam? (me)

Favorite novels. TV shows. Whether Pynk Floyd is overrated or not.

Posthumanism, postliberalism, postcolonialism, posthistoricism. Post-thisisms and post-thatisms.

Supplmental relationships between reactionary Islamo-militarism and the Koran.

Huh?

Who's worse: Vin Diesel or the Rock? (Michael)

Sunday evening procrastination

2004-11-22T02:50:16Z

Semester is winding down. Emotional tensions are winding up. Alcohol consumption way up. Cigarettes smoked approaching a pack a day again. Temporarily staved off depression by taking higher than recommended dose of St. John's Wort--the alcohol and nicotine probably helped too. And I'm quitting smoking starting at the end of this month. Why do I have such bad timing.

Glad that my pocketbook wasn't dented severely when Apple fixed my laptop for free. Speaking of which, need to buy a CD-RW to backup all the data on the machine; don't want to have to lose it again.

Felt bad about Friday night--asked people to come to parties with me and then not answering my cell. Got drunk alone instead, was in bad mood.

I even gave up on Halo 2. Well, temporarily put it aside.

What happens when life suddenly becomes a swath of meaninglessness again? Well I guess it's not really meaningless. I still have friends. Funny I should say that. Can't say anything meaningful anyway.

Blah.

Quitting smoking

2004-11-21T06:39:52Z

Earlier today I decided that I'm going to quit smoking, starting the end of this month. I'll go see my doctor and get some Wellbutrin prescribed, and I'll get some nicotine patches. I don't know why or what this means, but I guess I'm glad and sad in a way that I'm quitting smoking.

joechang @ 2004-11-20T18:37:00

2004-11-21T00:37:39Z

sing along at:
http://www.firstworldwar.com/audio/Albert%20Farrington%20-%20It's%20a%20Long%20Way%20To%20Tipperary.mp3

It's a Long Way to Tipperary

Up to mighty London came
An Irish lad one day,
All the streets were paved with gold,
So everyone was gay!
Singing songs of Piccadilly,
Strand, and Leicester Square,
'Til Paddy got excited and
He shouted to them there:

It's a long way to Tipperary,
It's a long way to go.
It's a long way to Tipperary
To the sweetest girl I know!
Goodbye Piccadilly,
Farewell Leicester Square!
It's a long long way to Tipperary,
But my heart's right there.

Paddy wrote a letter
To his Irish Molly O',
Saying, "Should you not receive it,
Write and let me know!
If I make mistakes in "spelling",
Molly dear", said he,
"Remember it's the pen, that's bad,
Don't lay the blame on me".

It's a long way to Tipperary,
It's a long way to go.
It's a long way to Tipperary
To the sweetest girl I know!
Goodbye Piccadilly,
Farewell Leicester Square,
It's a long long way to Tipperary,
But my heart's right there.

Molly wrote a neat reply
To Irish Paddy O',
Saying, "Mike Maloney wants
To marry me, and so
Leave the Strand and Piccadilly,
Or you'll be to blame,
For love has fairly drove me silly,
Hoping you're the same!"

It's a long way to Tipperary,
It's a long way to go.
It's a long way to Tipperary
To the sweetest girl I know!
Goodbye Piccadilly,
Farewell Leicester Square,
It's a long long way to Tipperary,
But my heart's right there.

joechang @ 2004-11-19T19:29:00

2004-11-20T01:30:02Z

Death by Water

To avoid injuries, keep your babies and alligators in separate pens.
Raunchy postmodern art deserves a second look.
Cuca Cuca Cuca.

Rochester?

It is as if it's theft to steal from God.
You don't remember memorable phrases.
Second harmonics are more complicated then first harmonics.
But that never stopped anybody from wishing me dead.

On the Jewish high holiday of —, find yourself at the height of existence.
Don't take drunkenness for granted; some might disapprove.
Economy of words has nothing to do with economy.
The Viceroy then said to Sir Ralph, "Sir, I do find it in good taste."

Little Jimmy met Little Matt by the swing set.

What was going through Ted Bundy's mind?

When he
When he

Cellphone causes the incidence rate to increase by up to 3 percentage points.
Ethereal sounds actually come from quite literal stuff.
Have a liposuction, treat yourself this Christmas.

Freedom fighters find Wagner libretto liberating.
When the chamber clears, insert ammunition.

Roland takes credit for his soul.

Step One: Debit the investment account the amount amortized.

One might find two and make a company.

doomed

2004-11-18T03:30:02Z

work is piling up. why am i not doing anything about it?

THE COMPUTER IS BACK

2004-11-17T03:42:50Z

Finally got my old powerbook back from Fry's today, after 4 weeks of being in limbo. Do miss the nice loaner they gave me, but ain't nothing like the old pb. Memories, sweet sweet memories. Life is suddenly meaningful again.