walking home one night. sent to my email by text. I dont really know anything- these are just guesses in an attempt to understand what I do.

I can give myself completely because once I have, that's just a layer for me that Ive sloughed off and although aspects of that, what I just revealed that is, leave a residue on my skin, they dont necessarily still (or maybe no longer) define me. Or maybe its just that I dont let anything (nothing that can be put to words at least) define me.
Or maybe there is nothing that is me. Nothing to me. Im not even let in on that. Im an observer to myself as much as I am to the rest of the world.
Im always on the outside, a shell, so theres no core of me to give (nothing to compromise or maintain). If you pour out my contents, Ill find something new. That change, defines me. That constant reshaping, revising, evolving. Im a host to whatever I let fill me and Im not the same now as I was yesterday.

There's a notion people have, have been taught, that they must look out for their safety at all times. Never let down their guard. Never miss a beat or slip up. And safety first: watch out for numero uno and thats good. I believe that. I do think that its healthy to meet ones own needs before trying to provide for others. But with that notion, has come an assumption that forgiveness is bad. That, by forgiving someone, you must compromise yourself. Compromising your own morals. And that, I dont agree with. And I think its okay to compromise ones own morals here and there. Relax. Stop trying to maintain yourself. Keeping this steady image of who you think you are: as something in your control that you can hold onto and rely on no matter what else happens. But I think thats the thing that must be most flexible. Staying true to oneself is not necessarily staying constant. People change. So dont limit yourself and restrain yourself by trying to stay true and constant to an image you want to maintain. Thats as superficial and out of touch as it gets.

I went to church with Seth one night and I think it backfired

God, for Seth, is an unsinkable tanker built up in the water that will stay afloat through the storms and that mutes all the waves and cold.
I have no protective tanker and Seth knows that. But what he doesnt know is that he doesnt have to look down on me, swimming in the water along side him and throw me a vest and pull me up into safety and sweet salvation. Not only does he not have to, I refuse it because- as easy as that would make things- I dont want anything to be muted for me. I want to feel every rise and fall and Im saturated and my skin is pruned but thats how I like it.
I dont need the horizon line to be off in the distance so I always will have something unattainable to grasp at. Im there, I set the horizon for myself and its not just a pretty view. Beauty for me, is not just beautiful because its bizarre, other wordly and unattainable. The reason why its beautiful is because when the sun sets, it comes down right on me and crushes me into the ground and I burst into orange light and pink rays and purple shadows and when it rises in the morning, it pushes me up with it, balancing and Im part of the sky. I can see clearly the whole sky looking up and the whole world looking down and it pushes me through the clouds for that moment. Im part of it all, not just watching from the shore. And I can feel every part of it and I wouldnt give that up for anything. I would never give that up for security and stability.

A forest cant always flourish and be lush and healthy. Every once in a while, theres a forest fire. And that forest fire has to happen. And then theres rotting wood and ash and that feeds the things that eat that stuff and strengthens the soil so it will be fertile for the next generation of trees and plants.
In Boulder, the hundred year flood is due. The local newspaper has mapped out flood plains and given advice on what to do when the flood happens, Y2K, 20/12. What if the flood happens, and we get out of the way and let it happen and then carry on? I used to be afraid of earthquakes, growing up in LA. The thing that cured me of my fear was when it occured to me that, without infrastructure (building freeway onramps, stacking people on top of each other in high rise apartements so there are four layers of beds and cabinets on a shoddy short-sighted foundation, just to tempt something to come and knock it all down), earthquakes would be no problem at all. Nobody would ever die from an earthquake! again!
All of this, all of these "natural disasters" are no big deal. Its fine. And people die and friends are lost and opportunities are passed by and its all okay.
Religion (providing that unsinkable tanker for people to hop onto when really, theyve just got to swim) is halting and limiting our evolution just as vaccinations are promoting an unnatural health, a fake immune system that can fight off the little guys just by forcing them to evolve into huge killers. And hell, its the same with the economy. Now, I know nothing about the economy but I do know that theres a boom and bust situation here, and its got to be the same thing.
Its time to let go

Boulder's Cafes

--I realized, reading over this, that is sounds really bitter. I didnt intend for that. I see most of these things as just funny and amusing. Quirky enough to put into writing. Hope it didnt come off too bitter.--

Baxter's favorite Boulder cafe is the Cup. Danny likes the Tea Box. Helen goes to Espressoria. My former English teacher can always be found with a laptop and a stack of papers in a manila envelope at the Bookend Cafe. Seth and Daniel call me to come join them at the Trident.

The Trident is probably my favorite too. You can always expect to see the same people at the Trident. Some go there for the indy hipster atmosphere, some to study. Some for the chess boards and backgammon- one of whom is the terrifying Israeli-Romanian Alex, who makes persistent eye contact and speaks in a thick undistinquishable accent. He looks like the kind of person who you would see at one in the morning, drunk, brass knuckles in pocket, looking for a fight to pick or a girl to rob. Im telling you, he's scary looking. Bald, stocky, dismissively flaunting muscle tees, gold chains and rings. But he wouldn't hurt anyone. If he's ever wandering dark allys late at night, he's just looking for someone to discuss developmental phychology with and to beat in backgammon. And oh my god he will. He knows more strategy that I thought was possible in a game made of cork triangles and stone discs.

Samuel's another psychologist I met at the Trident. He hangs around, petting and adjusting his flowing sandy 80's rocker hair, pouting his lips, making skittish eye contact with girls, hoping they'll be impressed by his highlit copy of the DSM-IV and the pot of tea on his table that maybe makes him look sensitive and in touch with... you know, horoscopes, yoga, feelings, all that crap. But no. He just wants someone to watch him from across the room, to partake in his impossible, tempestuous, star-crossed romance. He's a 28 year old man but is in all ways a 16 year old girl. I know this because one day, I went over and talked to him. He was reading The Sun Also Rises, one of my favorite books, and I noticed the little skittish eyes he had been making at me. I was brain-numbed from studying and felt like bursting his little self-indulged bubble of unilateral romantic tension, so I leaned over my table and invited him for a game of boggle. He killed at boggle so naturally I was impressed. But those were the only points he earned in my book. Literally, everything he said was a turn off, from his humble recounting of elicit, dramatic sexual escapades, to his shitty poetry and the invitation for a day of meditation and rock-climbing with him. No way would I go out of city limits with someone who lives so much in their head, could convince themselves of whatever truths favored them, and who didnt mind being suggestive with a 17 year old girl.
"I guess it would be illegal for anything to happen between us, huh."
It must have given him chills saying that. The situation was perfectly unattainable and I'm sure the word "illegal" complemented my eyes and made him squirm and smirk.
"Yes sir it would. Anyway, I have to study so Im leaving bye."

And then there was Spencer, the English major who's impressive ability to whip out of his bag whatever author or poet was mentioned, increased my visitation of the Trident in hopes of bumping into him, until I realized he was a one-act show. I like my guys multi-faceted. Also he straight-up sucked at boggle. Beautiful, though. He looked like a Greek God. A chisled statue of bold features, dark hair and black eyes. I never found out where he was from. But his personality was a bit too much like the stoic, severe statue of his demeanor so I branched out from the Trident to see what else Boulder had to offer.

Now Im at the Laughing Goat. Same cozy space with makeshift furniture but with less Naropa graduates reminiscing over charity drives, meditation workshops, astrology and the power of Soy. Here, people are concious of their volume, showing an initiative other than impressing the table next to theirs', bolstering their failing egos based on disillusioned self-righteous supremacy.

Okay, there's one problem with the Laughing Goat. The only thing in their glass case that wouldn't exacerbate my annoyingly persistant sore throat was a wedge of quiche smaller than my fist. (I have fairly small hands too.)

This quiche is made of egg-flavored rubber. I should have just gotten an italian soda. It's hard to go wrong with an italian soda.

Danny and Isa and the Functionality of Reliable Disfunctionability. Part I

Danny is a jew. He's big and loud. He's not exceptionally tall and not overweight. So maybe it's his hair, his nose, or his voice. But he takes up any space he's in.  Which falsely offers a possibility of flexibility to his impenetrable personality.

"Rushmore".

My dad met him in LA when Danny flew out to get more information on his scholarship to USC film school.  I watched the movie with my dad a month later.  Danny IS Rushmore.

"If you plan on working in LA, everyone will have gone to USC film school.  But if you say Harvard, that'll really shrink their testicles."

That sounded good to Danny.  So he took my dad's advice and will be moving out to Cambridge this fall to stake his claim in Harvard class of 2013.  One year after the world is supposed to end.

Isa is an Italian.  She's confrontational, loud, and dramatic.  She's ivy league. She's beautiful.  She's pencil thin with boobs and jet black hair which has, by now, given in to her will to dye it black, and now just stays that way.  She laughs at nothing and her body shakes and she glances in the mirror and approves.  She limply holds a spatula, making pancakes, reading directions from the box, falls on the counter laughing, the box of powder mushroom clouding.  She's the only one I know who can make a nuclear bomb out of a box of pancake mix.  It's two in the afternoon.  We're making breakfast.  Anyone could tell from a mile away. There are ingredients everywhere. 

She's mastered the impeccable equilibrium between pathetic incompetence and a will so strong that everything and everyone around her doesn't have a choice but to fall in line and make possible whatever the hell it is that she's passionately half-assing- which now is frying pancakes. A yippy dog goes off in her yard like a car alarm.  She leans out of the dining room sliding glass door yelling, 

"Basta basta! Steinbeck! Auhh fuck. Basta!", she falls against the curtains, her deep v-cut shirt drawing attention to push-up bra breasts heaving in her laughter, sapping the energy out of her whole body.  A white fluffy bite-size dog comes running up, disoriented, mislead, riled up.  A completely useless imbred dog.  Did I just miss something?

"I'm going to ask out Isa", Danny proclaimed, smirking and overly confident.  He has a quick stride.  He walks looking down like there's nothing in the world that would merit his sanctioned and carefully sanctified attention, nothing he doesn't know about. He tilts his head sideways to me to see the reaction.  The doubt in my face that will turn his desire into a challenge, something he can take on.  An outlet for him to prove everyone wrong.

There's no way.  Danny's the kid in school who crosses the line, who seeks and pushes the fuck out of everyone's buttons.  He talks too loud in the library. Like everyone would be doing themself a favor by putting down their textbooks to listen to him. He raises his hand in class for an excuse to bloviate his prolific, impressive, but in all ways excessive and obnoxious knowledge.  No way is Isa going to go out with that guy.  She's gorgeous.  She's Italian.  She can get any guy she wants.

"Okay", I say.  "If this is going to be done, it might as well be done right.  If you have to do roses, make them black.  If you're going to see her, make it today- it's raining.  It'll be that much more dramatic."

They dated for a year and a half. At least. Maybe more.  Before breaking up the first of many times.  We all had no idea they would last that long.  It makes so much sense though. They're perfect.

Isa loves attention.  She's never single.  She's been with boys. She's been with girls.  Sometimes in the same night.

Danny loves sex.  He can turn anything anyone says into a sexual innuendo (no, in-YOUR-endo!!). But even more than sex, Danny loves Drama. Danny LOVES Drama.  Drama loves Danny. Drama, Danny loves.

Isa yells. Danny yells. Isa argues. Danny rebuts. Isa gasps and cries. Danny rolls his eyes. Isa gets exasperated.  Danny gets a hard on. Clothes fly off. They are so in love.

A coffee and Ayn Rand

You say there are two things, maybe three, in the world and by all means, I believe you.

So why does a jet stream cast a shadow on a cloud and split it in half and make me look at everything differently knowing that everything that makes life beautiful and fun, is an illusion, not there, made up by us :put to terms by us. And beauty is not in the yarn, the carbon atoms, but in the tangles we build above it, the mass we define as another human standing before us.

Who would look outside if we couldn’t see the O2 combined with the H suspended, as a cloud ? Who would so willingly learn that love is the meaning of life if that mutating mass before us wasn’t defined by us with features and chemical happenstances tweaked to resemble individuality, purpose and intention. (and does it match mine ? Is he what I’m looking for ?)

So it’s established: nothing’s wrong that the hat you make of twists and knots is more interesting than the yarn stretched, linear. Yarn and further, the fibers. Solitary in color- how many colors are there really? Three primary and white. Would you call white a color? Maybe there are only three things in the world, maybe four. Would you call white a color?

That hat- it keeps you warm if you need it to- now it has a purpose- does that give validity to or does that degrade the fibers?

Now the only problem is up on the tip top shelf of a bookshelf. Sturdy as it is, can only be built so high until the top begins to sway and make the foundation, sturdy as it is, creek and give and pop. This bookshelf, the shelves built on each other, every one a little further from the foundation, the network of tangles and the way we connect dots, simple dots, not even round or aware of one another, into shapes and conclusions, stacked higher and higher, making pictures of the pictures of the pictures of the dots that weren’t put on the page with any initiative, any picture in mind. And every level, is an extra distraction and every level is a little further from the foundation, resembling less and less the dots we started out with.

So my question is, does making the hat, a scramble, something perceivable, definable in our eyes- we can file it off, now that’s it categorized, write it off- deem the fibers, the foundation, invalid? And can I be genuine if I say that I cannot fall in love with just a mutating mass of carbon but this thing with eyes and insides as opposed to outsides, that's something that I can love. Am I defining it, so filing it away, so writing it off? Or am I finding a way to take astigmatism, give it glasses and tell it to walk like me? (If we all agree, there's no one to tell us we're wrong.) Or have I found a way, it doesn't matter how, to fall in love with a mutating mass of carbon and derive warmth (however much twisting and knoting) from a linear stretch of fiber?

So, is it worship or degredation to create purple, vermillion and shiny gold all from three colors, maybe four? so that everyone can find there own way to fall in love.

If I do end up posting this, it will definitely be a little scary for me.The "you" is pretty ambiguous- in the beginning it's refering to a specific situation and person and then it gets more and more generalized until the specific person doesn't matter anymore...
I was at the Trident today, with Bax and ran into (insert potentially embarassing name here). Bax thinks he's a total dork. He kind of it but I like it when someone embodies something fully, no matter what it is.But I don't like it when someone embodies something in order to avoid all else.Either my love for people is not reciprocated or I expect different things than what is often given. I'm not sure which is worse.
I should leave. I really should. I don't know what's keeping me here. It's him. I don't know if I like him, or am fascinated by him or enjoy his presence. Or am I experimenting and curious and learning? I like and am attracted to elements inferred.
I love. I really do love. And the only way I know that is because I also hate. Simultaneously and always. Right now. A ravishing emotional and primal response. of love and lust and hatred and destruction. It is so strong at times I cannot distinguish between the two.God- fuck. Im dillusional. I really am. I create my reality. I live conceptually and I have reality checks and watch my world crumble and crash down in on itself. The foundation not strong enough for the bricks and the house I build above it. 
Im essentially a cave in the side of a rock face by the sea. Water flows in and out of me. But never stays. I want so bad to be happy with, to base myself on- be content with, the knowlege (the faith?) that the tide will rise again and the water will again flow in and fill me and at times suffocate me and leave me again, drying and still.
You are oblivious to me right now, sitting before me, but still kill me- more than kill me, so much more. Fill me! and leave and come again and I do not know when I will see you next. And you filling washes me clean and puts myself into terms so I can look at, understand- or not- but love myself- maybe. For this. For hosting this teeming life that you shove in me and take away as yours. I am scared by everyone of you- everyone like you. And for you, it is just another surgery. You don't know the power you have over me- the life you can give me and take away as I sit- lie- euthenized underneath you. Vulnerable, open.My strength is in that openness. I host life. And am nothing myself and in that, I create an eternity that defies- creates a devastating paradox with- my very being. But I claim as well, maybe again just host, the diastole and systole of life and of love and hate.