Booze n' Branches

Watch Wednesday (Week 16)

Stats:
Running Mileage: 263.99/1,000
Push-ups: 2,165/10,000
Sit-ups: 2,130/10,000
Pages Read: 3,312/10,000
Books Completed: 9/25
Words Written: 29,349/100,000

Fasts (Days without)
Internet: 29/100
TV: 41/100
Gaming: 104/100
Meat: 43/100
Junk: 25/100
Booze: 18/100

A Letter to Alcohol

Dear Al,

We've been pretty close friends since we met back in my freshman year at college. I thought you were a little weird at first and I wasn't sure exactly how to act around you. It didn't help that lame Uncle Sam forbid us from hanging out, but we made it work. Those were some good years, and we were practically inseparable when we went to Scotland. 

But I'm four years out of school now and I'm afraid our relationship has stagnated. Sure we've gotten more serious, I got into brewing and I'm able to keep nice liquors in the house for more than a few days, but I'm getting less and less out of this arrangement. Your tastes have gotten REALLY pricey since moving to Boston and you never foot the bill. Our interactions are more exhausting than I remember and I'm in a lot of pain after a night of hanging out. You make me eat bad food and things always get so emotional and intense with you around.

The thing is, Al, I'd like for us to go to being just casual friends, meeting up maybe two or three times a month to catch up and maybe have a little fun. But damnit Al, it's just too hard. 

We have all the same friends and I can't hang out with them without you showing up at some point. EVERYONE thinks you're just the life of the party and I tend to agree with them, but sometimes I wonder if it's all hype. Yeah you have the special way of getting people to relax and feel good about themselves but I see how you treat a lot of people too. You're manipulative and selfish and sometimes downright maniacal. I don't even think you realize the effect you can have on people...

Anyway, I don't know if this letter will change the nature of our relationship or make much of a difference in the long run, (we could end up friends for life,) but I at least wanted you to know how I feel.

Thanks for being there, despite everything.

Michael

Haiku of the Day:

Our show was cancelled
due to a freak lighting surge.
Supremely saddened.

Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "Mythomane" from Dictionary.com's word of the day. It means an individual with a strong propensity for lying or exaggerating.)

Today's "365" Project (Do something with a map)
"T Expansion"

The Creeps

Midnight Showing

Breaking out the fevers,
The shambling graspers
bow their heavy crowns,
taking shallow dips in the fragrant pools
that gather with expectation.
A fleeting peace wafts through the planks
of my makeshift garrison.
You hear the hearty plunks?
The song of the skeleton man
as he walks and jangles
out the rickety pier
on feet, slender and jointed -
A limp succumbant
to the whims of strings.

Ring Around

Coiled tight in the flow of my dervish
my eyes swell as the weight of my blood
pulls flesh away
from the painful curvature of my spine.
Centrifugal abandon.
I'm filled with the glee
of vertigo and vomit
and fall to hard wood
worn by callused soles
and scratched by night creatures.
I giggle and subside
as the grit digs my naked back.
In breaths, the beginnings of a cold
needle my throat
where the snot and spittle drains.
And I feel so close
to what the space between
fingers is all about.
But the rings flash and fade
etching out the branches
behind my eyelids
and I dissolve back
into the mystic ether.

Haiku of the Day:

Closeness on the train
dupes the mind into feeling
intimacy there.

Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "Juvenescent" from MW's word of the day. It means being youthful or young.)

Today's "365" Project (Do something with tin foil)
"Magic Swan Pie Boat"

Fear and Snails

Monster Monday

The Mid-Atlantic Rustler

The Mid-Atlantic Rustler is an eight foot tall sand crane native to the Chesapeake Bay. They eat seals and large sea bass and have been known to eat human swimmers if hungry or provoked. Not much all is known about them because they have amazing hearing, sight and memory and have hunted down nearly every human observer that has seen them in the wild. Except for me. I am the only person to have seen a Mid-Atlantic Rustler and survive. I live in fear everyday. Someone help me. I'm reaching out now because I saw a Mid-Atlantic Rustler in a trench coat and sunglasses on the T today. I'm afraid to leave my apartment. I don't know how much time I have left...

Haiku of the Day:

Tikka masala

made with chickpeas is freaking

super delicious

Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "Posthaste" from MW's word of the day. It means with all possible speed)

Today's "365" Project (Do something with red. "But wait," you say, "Shakespeare's not red!" And then I say, "Shakespeare's read by lots of people!" And then I cry myself to sleep. )
"Red Shakey"

Table Scraps

So I missed my first day for posting yesterday. With two shows and family in town it was a sort of perfect storm. Managed to get the drawing, haiku and project done, but got hung up on the writing too long and ended up posting a few minutes late for the deadline.

This is a milestone as much as my hundredth. It may actually be more important because I am inclined to quit when things become less than perfect. It's the dance between the rule enforcing and rule making.  This is not a setback but a step forward.

Haiku of the Day:
Gripping the seat's edge,
the passenger bites her lip
and prays for reprieve.

Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "Megillah" From MW's word of the day. It's a slang term for a needlessly long story that stems from yiddish.)

Today's "365" Project (Do something with toast. I got some good olive bread from "When Pigs Fly" a wonderful local bread company, and stuck some eggs in it. Garnished it a touch with a Peach-habanaro salsa I received yesterday from my aunt, the whole thing was delicious.)
"Brinner Joy"

First Missed Date!

Not much happening today. Talking about 8th grade breakups with my brother and his girlfriend and it's a beautiful thing.

Haiku of the Day:

Five shows this weekend

and the neurons fry full blast

I smell the sizzle

Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "Prehensile" co-opted from Noah Simes and Kaitee Treadway.)

Today's "365" Project (Do something with paint swatches. I made a little man from wedding color swatches.)

"Minimalist Simpsons Character"

Diatri-Ball

Emily left early this morning to go to a family wedding. Next week she'll be heading off to Baltimore to run the half-marathon. I'm sad to be missing both of these trips, as traveling with my lovely fiance is one of my favorite things. But part of the price of pursuing passions (unintentional alliteration) is missing out. It's this difficulty I'm running up against more, and I'm torn about whether it's a product of the time I live in, the age I'm at or the ambitions I have. Of course, like most things, it's probably a gradient blending of the three, (with some fourth, five and sixth reasons just crouching behind them, waiting for enough passing time to present themselves when it's no longer useful.)

I have all the normal fears of wasted potential, but so much of it hinges on my future self being disappointed with the decisions I'm making now. Only I currently have no regrets for what my past self has done: Those actions have made me who I am today and I like that person. I think the big fear stems from there existing an act so irrevocably bad that when I make it, I will become a regretful person. Or that there is a "point of no return" in aging where I realize there are things I will never get to do. But if I had wanted to do them, they would have been done.

This is where my frustration spirals. Despite "logic-ing" my way out of the anxieties in the realm of head-space, the heart space or lizard-brain-land creeps in the default switch, reverting everything back to an ape normal. And I have rejigger my way back out all over again. It's in those moments of reversion, when I realize I've been on this road before and I know what I have to do to get back. That's when the Sisyphus loops play out and I crave course correction.  That can take a dismal route if I'm in a dark mindset, but most of the time all it takes is a good song or a long train ride to cleanse the circular palette  and start up from a new point of reference.

Yetch. I get all reflecty without the Kuehn.

Haiku of the Day:

Halogen bathes dank
spaces in ultraviolet
sheens of pale sickness

Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "Solipsistic" from Michael Underhill while he was applying makeup in a bald cap and dirty red boots. For those unfamiliar, it relates to the notion that only the self exists, or that the self is the only thing that can be proven to exist and that everything and everyone else is a fabrication/illusion)

Today's "365" Project (make a ball out of something...or do something with a ball.)
"So I was drunk coming home and it was already 1 am so I rushed around the house to find something that either resembled a ball or could be made into a ball. And then I got hungry and thought "Oh man, bread is malleable." and then took out one of the heels of a current loaf and balled it up and took a picture of it. That is the story and title of this entry. Hope it makes up for the crappyness of the post in general."

Outpour

"Free-versin'-it" Thursday

Noesis

Blurting the Lord's name in panic,
As a bus nearly barrels me out of existence,
I succumb to a spiritual shuddering.
A deluge of fond memories cascade
with the bustling Bostonians,
making their pilgrimage to bright, looming marvels.

I recall a time of comfort and companionship
when God was my council. When I imagined a pervading vein
of humanness throughout all of creation,
a humanness that listened, loved
and guided the world in tiny motions.

Who sent me angels in my direst cells,
when minutes became infinite with itchy echoes
of burdens, surly and ravenous.

Who cushioned psychic grapplings
with a knowing silence
and whispered warm vibrations
in the dreaded hallows of night temples.

This imagined force swoops back,
in the wake of the bloodthirsty bus,
and takes hold of me.
I am swaddled
from the steam,
the squalor,
the gaunt lifeless faces.

And in that gasp
of weightless reassurance
I lose my mind
and feel the bile and bristle
of the forward push
flourish into a glowing milk,
a salve for gaping lesions.

And then it passes.

Like a flash of lightning,
I'm left with white hot retinas
and the gnawing impotence
of witnessing unadulterated
power.

Haiku of the Day:

Girl attempts to light
a cigarette while on bike
nearly eats asphalt

Today's Drawing (inspired by the word "Infinitesimal" from MW's word of the day. It means infinitely small.)

Today's "365" Project (Get something from the thrift store and make something with it!)

I found something wonderful. It's called pneumablock. They're little blocks with eyes that look like the "Kilroy was here" dude.

 They are from Japan apparently. Here's a picture of the transcript from the back of the box it came in.

If you can't read it, my favorite part is the final line:

"In the complex world we live in, Pneuma Block helps philosophers of today and recalls the past with this word"

Glorious.

Here are some of the shapes they suggest making (this is all verbatim from the back of the box):

Man with hat

Farmer on water buffalo

Pigeon gazing at sea

Unpopular octopus

Lonely pirate

Sea otter preoccupied with eating

BBQ Friends (my personal favorite)

Cowardly baby wolf

And then I made some of my own:

Yosemite Sam without hat

Race relations in America

The Nuclear Incident

Hollering Luchador

Could not have been happier with this purchase. It was at the thrift store called "Boomerang" They were having a relaxed Thursday thing and serving free wine that I would have had if I wasn't on the way to a show. The woman at the counter also tried selling me a Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Puzzle and I immediately regretted not buying the minute I left the store. So great.