Patrick

unscripted

I had a conversation with an elderly black woman in an elevator today. She initiated. —How are you today? —I’m good, you? —Fine, fine. —Looks like it’ll be a rainy one. —Yes, it does. That made me happy. As if, for her, it was the most normal thing in the world to greet a total stranger on the lift. Usually, that’s just awkward. Also, it was misty today. I know the weather service probably didn’t say this, but it was. It was like how I imagine walking through a cloud would be. Little flecks of water are landing on you, but you don’t get wet. So yeah, that makes me happy too. Join the random acts of randomness club. Do it do it.

every once in a while (at least once a day) i have to confront a deep eternal question of existence: why do i keep writing when no one reads this shit? i think it is the nature of the medium that lends itself to being ignored. more or less, this is me at my worst, my most complaining. no one wants to hear it. i hardly do. yet i keep writing it down. somehow, little snippets of how life is going, progressing, falling apart, is important, if only to me. exhibitionists writing to voyeurs is how someone once described “blogging”, that awful little word for a private journal spread thin over the consciousness of the web. in some ways, the megalomaniac in each of us loves to see our name on a website. i’m practically famous! i have a hit count in the thousands! i can google myself! and then i realize that the few people that have even accidentally stumbled across this site looking for song lyrics or lost cousins are a very small percentage of web users, let alone the world. so if you have plans for world domination, or even world notoriety, the blog isn’t the optimal tool. you won’t even make too many friends via a blog. so what’s it for? my theory is that there is a general need for a creative outlet, and a blog is about the lowest common denominator. all you need is some (very small) skill with language, and you instantly have….not art, but something that developed into it. it’s sort of a step beyond basic communication. with whom a blog communicates is a totally different question. this journal is probably mostly for me. who/what do you blog for?

warning! the pudding is hazardous
This was my room right after I moved in This is my hair And now my room is clean. Yayy! wtf? You have just received 158% of the daily recommended amount of contraband.

Standing on the edge of the palisade’s cliffs In the shadow of the skyline very far away A lightning rod that couldn’t pull the storm from me I was five years old My best friends older brother died He fell from these cliffs The river washed him away The current pulled him downstream In our eyes floating in the headlights So we parked these cars Parent’s garage Listen to the lullaby Of carbon monoxide War all of the time In the shadow of the New York skyline We grew up too fast Falling apart Like the ashes of American flags The sun doesn’t rise We’ll replace it with an h-bomb explosion A painted jail cell Of blood in the sky Like Three Mile Island Nightmares on TV They used to sing us to sleep They burn on and on like an oil field Or a memory of what it felt like To burn on and on and not just fade away All those nights in the basement the kids are still screaming On and on and on and on War all of the time In the shadow of the New York skyline We grew up too fast Falling apart Like the ashes of American flags And we’re blowing in the wind We don’t know where to land So we kiss like little kids We used to be very tall buildings We’ve been falling for so long Now your eyes are the sign on the edge of town They offer a welcome when you are leaving War all of the time In the shadow of the New York skyline We grew up too fast Falling apart Like the ashes of American flags The pieces fall It’s like a last day parade And the fires in our streets start to rage So wave to the people that long to wave back From the fabric of a flag that sang “love all of the time”

[Thursday, “War All the Time”]