RIP Anna Nicole Smith (1967 - 2007)

We will truly miss you.

The Sorrows of Young Schylar

So, I just finished reading "The Sorrows of Young Werther" and it may just be my new favorite book. But I guess I may just have some sort of weird penchant for tragic stories. No, that’s not it. I’ll be candid about it, what have I got to loose. I like the story so much because it reminds me of myself. But perhaps I am getting ahead of myself; let me give you the synopsis first.

Werther is the main character and he writes these letters to people, mainly his best friend. He’s this artist, a real free spirit, almost childlike in his love for life. Well he falls in love with this girl, Lotte but you see she’s already promised in marriage. So long story short he looses his sanity out of heartbreak and ends up at a funeral where “no clergyman presided” of you know what I mean.

So that’s basically it, if you want the full thing click here, it’s on Project Gutenberg, which by the way is one of the best sites out there and it's free, I also highly recommend going to the Distributed Proofreaders site and doing some volunteer work for them it’s a good cause. I do it every week. I’ll put the links to both of the main pages on the sidebar.

So anyway back to me… [I really do just love being able to say that] I really do feel a true kinship with the character of ‘Young Werther’. I look at it like this, I parallel him in so many ways that book might as well be my biography. I’ll make a list.

1. He is financially dependant on his family and his family uses that money to control him.

2. He loves life as a child, full of awe and joy, but that joy is increasingly being sapped from him.

3. He wants to be an artist yet his family forces him into a ‘practical’ career.

4. He is in the throes of unrequited love.

5. With every day his life tunnels out further until only one thing can be seen, despair.

Now I haven’t made it al the way to the end of step five yet, but I am getting rather close. It’s just that damn tunneling out felling. But I’ve digressed quite a bit. I was talking about how this has become one of my favorite books.

I like it because I find a sort of empathy in it. From the very title inscription that reads “let this little book be your friend if through fate or your own fault you can find no other one.” And it seems to me that in this day of my life I do indeed have no closer friend, no single person in my life comprehends me in the way that this book does. As to the cause, fate or my own fault, that is still to be decided. I have a theory on that though.

So long as I live it will be my own fault. It is always like that in life. When someone lacks the will to make or maintain their relationships it is forever something wrong with them. But once that demon that gave birth to these events consumes their host it is always ‘poor unfortunate soul’ to the one in the grave. So I guess the real question come down to the origin of this demon that is eating through me progressively, daily.

That no one will ever know, try as they might.

But then again, I always complained that I wanted this kind of friend who understood me. I mean if it really came down to it the closet two I have are K*****n and M***a and bless their hearts they are two of the best friend anybody could ask for, they still fall short in the most important ways. That was harsh to them; I did not mean it in the way people would probably take it. Just let it be known that they are indeed wonderful friends and I love both of them dearly, I’ll leave it at that, I feel no need to justify my words further. But back to the point, I feel as though I have finally found that singular person who I share a kindred soul with, it really is too bad that he’s fictional and from 1774 Germany. Oh well, c’est la vie.

I’ve found that friend at long last, but I still feel that same nagging emptiness. At the risk of sounding histrionic I was wrong all along. I was never a vessel yearning to be filled. I am a sieve which things only touch briefly as they pass through and beyond me. And now with that realization I am lost. A vessel may be filled but what is to be done with a sieve? Is there anything that one can do with such an instrument to make it complete and whole? All my earthly riches to the one who can solve that one, I mean it. Every single thing I own to the person who can answer that question.

And with that goodnight and Godspeed.

Podcast Test Episode: Julia

This is a song that I recorded in a back dressing room at the old Victory Gerdens Theatre on Lincoln Avenue in Chicago. I never got the name of the artist but I still feel that the work is amazing and should be shared. Also, the instrument is not a guitar but a baratone ukulele. [Click on the title of the post to listen or subscribe by clicking the button on the left.]

You Just Have To See This

Ok, so here's one that's not my own but so damn interesting that it had to be posted...

Six in the Morning

So it’s six in the morning and in four hours I’ll be at church. I don’t even know if I believe in God. In fact, I don’t even know why the hell I’m going in the first place. I lack conviction but I am at the same time so bound by habit that I have to go. I like ritual though. It allows you to loose yourself in repetitive motions and allows your soul to wander. But I undergo rituals every day, so why do I keep waking up when my body is crying to go back to bed when I cannot really give myself a single good reason for doing it? I suppose that I could blame it on my family. The one thing that my godfather, more like my father really ever asked of my family is that they, “keep their faith,” but to me that is ridiculous. How can you ask, or for that matter even expect someone to do you a favor of personal convictions? And even if that person were to agree, could they actually do little more than act the role meaninglessly? And that brings me to the point. My entire life is like when I go to church. No part of me wants to be present wherever I am but I still do it, because the only thing that is really expected of me it to stick around and play my role. But life as ritual is different. Instead of getting lost in it I am consumed by it. The method acting of my existence is so intense that it is becoming increasingly harder to discern where the role that is put on me by family and friends ends and where the real me, and my real wants and motives begins. I am the epitome of a puppet on strings. I dance to the needs of others and never really even know where I am let alone how to take charge of things. I want to run away, I want to tell everyone in my life to fuck off and be alone for the rest of eternity, and I want to be my own for once. For once I do not want the bell to toll for me, I want to wake up and not be greeted with a sea of faces expectantly leering at me, awaiting my service to them to begin. But what the hell, I’m tired, and church is in a few hours.

The Follies of Technology

I just wrote a very long piece on the concept of the Hermit, then as I was about to post the computer dies. So there is no piece today, perhaps I will rewrite it for tomorrow, perhaps. So take this lesson in lieu of a post for the day: Beware The Follies Of Technology.