news of the day. yes…this day

chad doesn’t see the truck pulling across his path in time, his bike plowing straight into its blank white side, leaving a violent dent and helmet residue streaked across the cold november sheet metal. an eon of mindless dark separates the collision from the concerned eyes now peering down on him from a cool blue sky. muffled voices pry his battered ears open, attempts at communication resulting in confusion and pain. in a haze, he tries to get up, soft hands pushing him back down to the frosty ground, sirens cooing in the distance.

hearing his bosses repremands for being late ringing in his skull, he tries again to rise, a gentle voice along with the hands coaxing him to the ground. the silky voice commands his attention as a girl’s shadow comes back into view, peering anxiously at his rattled figure. in motherly fashion she strokes his long brown hair from his clammy, palid face.

“joy?” he begs past her shoulder into the cold city. “is that you?”

” just take it easy, now. you’re banged up pretty bad. do you know where you are, babe?”

synapses begin to fire as chad goes in search of a cohesive memory which could have led him to this hard street and the raw pain in his lower legs.

“i remember filling up my bike. no. wait.” he breathes, struggling to find the air for his uncertain words.

“no, i had to make a call…nnnnghhh” he groans, trying to shift sides and closing his eyes with resignation. “i think my arm is broken. some ribs or something, too.”

“wouldn’t surprise me, hon. from what it looked like, i would have bet you were trying to go straight through my truck.”

“i hit a truck?” he gasps, partially relieved to clarify the source of such impossible pain pulsing through his crumpled body. her face comes into focus in front of a blazing sun, a gentle smile joining raised eyebrows in calm concern.

an engine nears and squeaks to a stop behind him as the sirens trail off into an anxious silence. two faces, a man and woman, hover above his body, questions flowing rapid fire.

“do you know who you are?”

“where does it hurt?”

“do you know what happened?”

“yes.”

“my heart.”

“not really.”

man, it’s been a while since i blabbered on this site, so I will use this spare moment in time to expell my deepest thoughts, convey my most poignant emotions, and try to gather together the strands of the last couple of weeks.  we’ll see how it goes.

I have not been going to work…as far as i can tell, it is not the best use of my time at this point in my life.  after the school has just given me 2,500 bucks to farm (fuck yeah!) i don’t feel necessarily ’strapped for cash.’  I have been indulging in a lazy, libertarian, moocher lifestyle which seems to suit me just fine…especially since i try to reciprocate, giving back to my local community, taking pictures with babies, giving tax breaks to large-scale industrial farms (just to underproduce, of course)

the new farm bill, from the minimal information i have gleaned,  is a horrific espousal of big  business, big agricultural and a mindless political administration which, despite all calls from PI groups, scientists, and environmental groups, have failed to impliment the necessary environemental/social/political reforms needed to face the next half-century.  it makes me pissed as shit…as  bill mckibben has said, “we know what to do, we just need to do it.”  of course, easier said than done, but widespread social change must have pressure from the bottom.  more importantly, however, is the implimentation of socially-conscious, ecologically-sensitive plans which take the long-term into account.  we need a society based around clean, cheap energy production, sustainable agriculture, and community enhancement.  rather than estrangement, we need cooperation.  rather than big, we need small-scale efforts, small pieces of a larger social movement to shift to a new world, a new society.  this ‘movement,’ or whatever you want to call it, starts with each person.  it starts with turning a light off everytime you leave the room.  it starts with buying less plastic shit from target.  it means supporting local businesses, farmer markets, and creating a sense of communal efficiency, for the more we are aware and concerned about immediate environmental, social and political issues, the more each person is likely to feel connected to other’s around them. new paragraph…

i will argue that the root of our environmental problems stem from a failure to realize a common interest.  of course, this is a shallow rant, but i believe it holds some pretty fucking true mother fucking truths…excuse my algerian.  there is only one earth  there are many of us…either share, or tear each other apart in a post-apocalyptic world of death, starvation and destruction.  i know that is laying it on heavy…but if you have half a brain for current events and what is going on in this world, you will realize that things are fucked!…

take africa for example.   I haven’t even been there, but from what it sounds like from our little amherst courses, the few african peers at the school, and info in the news, africa is fucked.  aids, hunger, corruption, tribal and political warfare…these all destroy this continent, and its people.  i know it sounds corny,  like ‘one love’ shit…but global peace necessarily equates a shift in global consciousness.  i will leave it at that.  i am as confused as all of ya’ll.   happy summer!  sorry to be so depressing, but its real-talk.

love,

ben

i am david.  you are my goliath.  you are a pile of stacked books peering down at me in massive form, seemingly endless terror and confusion.  first, i try to run you over all at once, knocking you to zero potential energy, quickly realizing that this battle is of epic proportions, and sagas aren’t recorded in one day or event.  so i will take you on book by book, page by page, word by word.  just as you we’re logically constructed i will pick you apart and use you for my purposes, stressing your deepest points and bending certain meanings in order to create a few of my own.  Every research paper is a collection of poorly represented facts and beliefs.  i hope to do you justice o tower of books.  i hope that your deepest passions and finite print ring true through my fingers and into the minds of others, ideally becoming an A.  whatever.

but seriously, spring and freedom are bangin’ on my door right now.  the call of adventure is too much to bear.  but i’ll sit here for a while longer.  i’ll be better for it.  terras irradient.

Are you lonely?  I am

lonely.

Let us share our loneliness together.

Let us shout our fears and reservations

to the highest hills

and the lowest valleys.

I am scared of you are scared of me.

Let’s be scared together

and jump around the fire, primordial

hoots and yaps.

Indignation for the unknowable.

I went into the night with a positive attitude, some apples, cashew, a small gyroscope, herbie hancock, some beer, some books, a drawing pad…the works. I ingested two and a half tabs of high dose blotter. I waited….
……..

walls looked the same, and the food was tasty but there was a distinct sharpness to the air, a crispness in the music. I watched my incense trails for an hour or so, listening to the traffic and student migration outside my bedroom window. outside, a night was beginning. inside, a storm was brewing, the inhabitants unaware of the thunderbolts in store. some beers, video games, giggles, friends…and then frisbee for a bit. oh how I looooove frisbee. in my previous life I was a black lab. no doubt. eagle before that. then an echinoderm. I lose track after the Paleozoic. enter the wise dragon (not that one mike) who slays me with a nash of his delicate teeth.
I lay back and sank into the couch as ratatat suddenly dropped its beat hard on nostrom. the room was not divided into time in my mind, or even events. I thought of personal interactions, and judgments, and vibes, and how people said what they did. I realized that everyone around me was interacting, they were playing their own games. They were being their own selves. The anxiety that set in was heartwrenching, and my mind couldn’t run fast enough from the self-deprecating truths. I felt a surge of brutal honesty from each persons eyes. I felt what I had done wrong, and was sad…but glad. the night ended after hours of conversations and wild yaps and yarps from the beast on acid (that’s me). I fell asleep to jeff buckley and a head ringing with thoughts, perspectives and emotions. Goodnight.

………..

There’s one thing that is irking me (was that the proper use of irk?) at this moment. As I passed by the mirror, shirt off I thought to myself, “Hey, it couldn’t hurt to do some pushups.” Down I went and I mindlessly cranked out 20 pushups. I stood up, walked to my room to get my book and when I came back into the common room I decided to horizontally battle gravity 20 more times. 20. Why 20? what is our obsession with 10’s and 5’s. Why don’t I routinely do 17 pushups. I know if i were to do 17 pushups I would end feeling I had either a) cheated myself or b) defied some higher power which mandates pushups in sets of 10 or 20. Now I know there is some mathematical rationale behind this and in reality it’s just late and I wanted to ramble. But that said, what the fuck. Multiples of 3 work just as hard and they get swept under the rug only to go home at night to drink themselves silly, passing out on the kitchen table for their little baby 3’s to find in the morning. One noteable exception is in Junior High when classes were 43 minutes long, with 4 minutes in between classes. I never figured out why they did it (there are many mystical cults in Ojai so the school board must have been in the know as to which class intervals pleased the gods.)

I’m trying to think whether I would rather be a hippo or an elephant. As we all know, hippos are some of the most aggressive animals known to man. So i’d probably be safe. But the idea of hangin’ out in the swamps with all the crocs gives me the hippo willies. Even though I could probably snap them in two with my hippo buck-teeth, they would creep me out floating there with their beady, mischevious eyes staring me down. An elephant however, is way big. I’d be afraid all the other animals would call me fatty, or big ears, or stub-foot or something. Also, you get those fucking poachers constantly trying to jump your bone (tusk bone that is). I guess there is something nice to the idea that you may be turned into fine ivory keys for a nice piano. But who honestly plays their piano nowadays…its usually just a social farce to convince company that you are moderately cultured and don’t curl up to CSI and ramen every night. So I wouldn’t want to be a waste. The trunk would be pretty killer. In water fights, i’d be king. I’ve got the Super-Soaker 5,000C attached to my fucking face! Can’t get much better than that… Also, self administered showers. It’s like drinking a glass of water and then drooling it all over yourself….I wish social mores were accepting of such behavior. Well I think it’s time for beddy boo. If said enough useless crap to last whoever is still reading this a lifetime so at this point in time and cyberspace, I bid you adieu. Flog the dolphins particularly hard these next couple weeks, it’ll all be worth it in the end.

Love,

Ben

sowhatiamdoingrightnowisattemptingtowritewithouttouchingthespacebar.ihavedonethisbeforeanditissurprisinglydifficult.contrarytobeliefitactuallygetsharderasyourthumbbeginstocravecontactwiththatgiantconvenientlyplacedwordseperator.ican’tstandthisanylonger.mythumbkeepsturningitslittlethumbheadandlookingatmequizzicallylikeadogwhohasn’tbeenfed.i’mrealizingasiwritethisthatiusuallyusemyrightthumbtoindicatespaces.myleftoneseemstoacceptitsnewfoundrole(orabsenceof)buttherightoneisinseriouswithdrawal.ifyouarestillreadingthisthentryonemorething.aftertryingtotypelikethisforawhileyougetthehangofit.now,trytowriteusingthespacebar.youwillflipyourlid.itslikesayingblogasfastasyoucan.youwillloseyourmindeventually

“Red Light’s Broken”

Stuck in perpetual motion

with this rotten know-nothing feeling,

a delightful taunting from

ambiguous eternity, roullette

with the big wheel in the sky.

Somehow, you slow it down

a bit. Absolute zero with the wind

carrying your red hair away,

a runaway fire.

The library is a distracting place.  As I sit staring down a massive pile of books for my research paper, my eye wanders to the obscure shelves looming overhead and around my little nook.  Obscure economic policies, distant cultures, bloody wars and religious texts hide within the intillectual chasm which is Frost.  Many times have I decided to put off my studying in favor of a quick stroll throughout the shelves just to read the titles.  This simple act is one of the most mind-boggling thing, for it often makes me never want to attempt to write a paper again.  You know that feeling when you are writing a paper and your ideas are just flowing from your head, heart, whatever.  Well let me tell you something…somebody’s already had that idea AND…..THEY SAID IT BETTER THAN YOU!!!  The thought just leaves a sour taste in my mouth and a blank page on my screen.  However….I then begin to think like this:

If I give any credo to the books themselves, it is because the words come from a fellow human being, one who cared enough to eternally preserve his wise words for my future consideration.  Likewise, I care enough (although sometimes this may be grade-influenced) to digest his thoughts, add some of my own, mix a little syntax and punctuation in there, and out pops a paper.  I think it was Emerson who said something like, “In every work of genius, we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.”  I believe that this is oh-so-true.  While some other dude may have expressed what I am feeling better than I, that fact does not take the truth away, as it pertains to me.  I don’t know if this all makes sense.  What I’m trying to say is this: we’re all human, and reading some great book or even some annoying research text always reminds me that we’re trying to create a better, more peaceful world.  I need to do my work!

love,

ben

so it’s been a good day in the neighboorhood. val piled greasy, oh-so edible food on me. ben and jerry’s rained from the sky. i started a blog (what the FUCK!? tim that’s for you) hoping to sleep sometime so i can dream. cuz everytime you’re in your dreams, you are flying with magical dolphins in the sky while blasting duck-shot at passing wallabyes. how the fuck do you spell wallaby? i think that’s it. anyways, i’ll probably forget this blog exists…so until next time. flog the dolphins, people. flog the dolpins.

BBBTT