mood: neutral music: 'fade into you' by mazzy star

it's been a few days hasn't it? forgive me if i miss anything as i try to recall everything that's happened since december 29th. of course, most of you out there wouldn't know if i left something out, so it doesn't matter whether or not i offer my contrition. meh.

on the 29th, i decided to mute my financial prudence and go cd wild. this means i bought 4 brand new cds based mostly on spontaneity. can's 'ege bamyasi', slowdive's 'just for a day', yo la tengo's 'i can hear the heart beating as one', and finally, interpol's 'antics', which i hear chris is greatly enjoying at this point. i regret nothing since each of those cds rocks in entirely unique ways. rock, cds. rock.

afterwards, i went driving around, as i tend to do, and found myself driving through uncharted territory in santa monica. it was raining that annoying way that smears whatever visibility you've got into oblivion, so i decided to park and walk around. after maybe 5 minutes of walking west, i stumbled across a nice little coffeeshop. not one of those behemoth monopoly coffeshops (read: starbucks) but a quaint little one that reeked of cigarettes and poetry. of course, i ventured in for a small (read: large) cup of coffee, and found that the coffee was immensely better than that uniquely generic crap at starbucks. also, it was open mic night, so i decided to sit down and listen to santa monica's best. mostly, the performers were either stand-up comedians or intense poets. even if the act/poem was bad, there's a certain panache about a coffeehouse open mic night. une certaine je ne sais quoi.

well i managed to stay for about 3 hours, sitting on a chair just around the corner (i don't always like to see the performer perform) writing in my notebook/drawing on my bag. the walls were decorated by a medley of interesting objects: an old-fashioned 'big front wheel' bicycle strapped to the ceiling, patron-donated murals coating the walls, vintage furniture in place of ikea-like fixtures, christmas lights in seemingly random places. the woodgrain of the ceiling crossbeams was even outlined in black marker. this is the place i've been looking for for months, if not a few years. i'm going to have to return, even if it's a bit out of the way from my neighborhood.

hmm, what's next... new year's eve, i went down to torrance to spend the night at chris's house along with andres, kristy, and allison. i thought it was going to be us outnumbering his mom's guests, but it turned out that the opposite occurred: they outnumbered us, and we weren't even close. at 2 in the morning there must've been 2 dozen drunk argentines stumbling around the house. it was great fun, though i'll admit i found it a little dry. you see, i couldn't help but play the part of 'odd man out'. chris and allison are, at the least, close and dear friends, and you couldn't pry andres and kristy apart with a crowbar. this isolation thing even manifested itself in concrete terms: andres and kristy shared a bed, as did chris and allison, while i slept on the floor at the foot of andres and kristy's bed. each time i woke up in the middle of the night, i could hear light smooching or heavy smooching, depending on how awake i was at the time. needless to say, i got the best night's sleep; i was the most unoccupied. that morning (read: afternoon) was even worse. it seemed like each time i was about to go into the room i wasn't in, i had to wait so as to avoid barging in on either an intimate conversation or a session of tongue-tag. again, i had a great time, if not a bit awkward as stated, but all in all, the best parts for me were the hot shower on new year's day and the alcohol's happytime buzz the night before.

thus brings us to today, actually yesterday at this point. yesterday was the first day of that big senior service project i've touched upon previously. 85 hours within 3 weeks, to refresh your minds. i worked for the first time today at st. john chrysostom school in inglewood, though you could hardly call it work. basically i moved some malfunctioned computers, watched over the kindergarten class for 30 minutes, and sharpened a few pencils, in that order. the rest of the time was spent lounging around in empty classrooms with the other loyola students serving there, and catching up with my old 6th grade teacher, who teaches at st. john's now. i'm not sure how the remaining 81 1/2 hours are going to turn out. let's hope well.

ah, chronology. very neat, very orderly. and now for something completely timeless. i was just thinking: i feel like i'm in a symbiotic relationship with my sadness. i would've said 'parasitic', but sadness doesn't just manifest itself, now does it? i've got to do something to make it show up. anyways, it seems as though i start finding truths and expressing myself more dynamically when i'm like stella the diver. i feel better about myself when it's raw emotion flowing out of me. that's the only time i can be sure i'm not lying to myself and to the world around me. i can make sure i'm not putting up a facade like i've done so well in the past. and maybe that needs a little deconstruction, to understate it a bit. but i'll be damned if it doesn't leave me disenchanted and feeling like shit. naturally i want to be happy; it's human nature. but i've realized that as much as i hate emotional desperation, i really love it, too. that's where the 'emotion' in my 'interests' list comes from. i love it in myself, and in other people. raw emotion. isn't it kind of odd, though, to be seeking something that's a polar opposite to what human nature suggests? or is human nature just a way to keep us from life's harsh realities? is the 'cold dead earth' too much for us to handle? are happiness and comfort human nature's way of saying 'don't play with fire'? just speculating, that's all.

---Goei---