10/13 -- X-Files Day!

I keep meaning to update this more regularly...

Perhaps I'm destined forever to the land of pen and paper... not that online journaling is a bad thing at all, I just feel a little more at home rockin' it old-school in spiral-bound notebooks.

Anyway, good things today:

• Thrift store finds: goofy-looking owl novelty bank & a set of drinking glasses, both of which are materialistic proof that the 1970s actually existed.
• Sweet Peppers Deli -- chicken club, no mayo, pasta salad, honey mustard on the side.  Sometimes positively nothing else will do.
• Californication.  Finished season 2 with Joanna, started season 3 ... and decided that in the world of Bex Logic, Californication ended with the second season finale.  I'd rather have the plot maddeningly and questionably open-ended than forced off a cliff.
• Rain.  Rain, rain, and more rain.  I've listened to it on the car roof, the windows, the street today.  People forget to pay attention to the little things, and I've always adored the sound of rain.  I was thankful for its presence on my only off-day.

Unfortunately, I believe my bed and my iPod are calling my name.  I would hate to disappoint either of them.

I think it's going to be a Jack's Mannequin type of night.

Sweet dreams, angels.

Love is a mix tape.

I ♥ mix CDs. They're the quickest way to my heart. I have been blessed with friends who have been known to rock a playlist or two.

The track list to Jo's mix to me, titled "The Bex Sessions," is as follows...

1. Something to Believe In [Aqualung]
2. Swimming in Miami [Owl City]
3. Weightless [All Time Low]
4. Take me fo the Riot [Stars]
5. Oxford Comma [Vampire Weekend]
6. 1,000 Words [Savage Garden]
7. Last Words [Real Tuesday Weld]
8. The Man Who Can't Be Moved [The Script]
9. Nicest Thing [Kate Nash]
10. We Are Not Alone [Karla DeVito]
11. Good Girls Go Bad [Cobra Starship]
12. Lever [Takka Takka]
13. Xavia [The Submarines]
14. Cute [Stephen Jerzak]
15. Extraordinary [Liz Phair]
16. Strange [Tori Amos]
17. Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? [She & Him]
18. Queer [Garbage]
19. Womanizer [Britney Spears]

We Had Him.

Beloveds, now we know that we know nothing, now that our bright and shining star can slip away from our fingertips like a puff of summer wind.

Without notice, our dear love can escape our doting embrace, sing our songs among the stars and walk our dances across the face of the moon.

In the instant that Michael is gone, we know nothing. No clocks can tell our time and no oceans and rush our tides.

With the abrupt absence of our treasure, though we are many, each of us is achingly alone, piercingly alone.

Only when we confess our confusion can we remember that he was a gift to us and we did have him.

He came to us from the Creator, trailing creativity in abundance.

Despite the anguish, he was sheathed in mother love, family love, and survived -- and did more than that.

He thrived with passion and compassion, humor and style. We had him, whether we know who he was or did not know, he was ours and we were his.

We had him, beautiful, delighting our eyes.

His hat, aslant over his brow, he took a pose on his toes for all of us, and we laughed and stomped our feet for him.

We were enchanted with his passion because he held nothing -- he gave us all he had been given.

Today in Tokyo, beneath the Eiffel Tower, in Ghana's Black Star Square,
in Johannesburg and Pittsburgh, in Birmingham, Alabama and in Birmingham, England
We are missing Michael.

But we do know we had him, and we are the world.

[Dr. Maya Angelou]
[read by Queen Latifah @ MJ's memorial here]

Remember the time…

…you first heard the voice of the adorable little boy who would later be crowned the undisputed “King of Pop”?

…you saw the “Thriller” video premiered world-wide, forever revolutionizing the definition of ‘music video’? Remember the controversy that surrounded it?

…you tried to do the Moonwalk on your kitchen floor? Remember the rush you felt the first time you got it right? Remember the time you tried to do the ‘Smooth Criminal’ lean and nearly ended up flat on your face?

…you heard the single that you knew would forever be your favorite? What was it?

…his hair caught on fire while he was shooting that Pepsi commercial and the media flocked all over it?

…you watched his live broadcast from Neverland Ranch and he begged the public to stop treating him like a criminal? Remember crying for him during those dark years of his career and vehemently defending him against ignorant snarks from your peers who were looking for a cheap laugh?

…that he fought to overcome the evil of greed and lies that had sullied his reputation, and he just kept singing anyway -- Album after album of the brilliance we had come to expect from him.

…you heard that we had lost our beloved Michael? Do you remember where you were when you heard? Who you were with? Were you there to watch the headline on CNN fade in transition from “Michael Jackson hospitalized due to cardiac arrest” to something much more terrible?

Who did you tell? Which song did you play first as a tribute? Did you cry? Did you share stories with your friends or post on message boards? Did you glue yourself to your television, hoping desperately that it wasn’t true, feeling your heart sink when you realized it was, and worrying about his three beautiful children, his family, his friends that he left behind? Were you close enough to a landmark of his life to be able to go and leave a letter, a candle, a picture, a flower? Did you hear the hearts breaking around the globe, or did you just find your favorite album and turn it up as loud as you could?

Love him, hate him. Listen to him or don’t.
Criticize him for whatever you think he did or didn’t do right, but right now is not the time for your negativity, if that is what you choose to bring to this discussion.

No matter your opinion, no matter my opinion, Michael Joseph Jackson changed the way we listened to music. He changed the way we danced. He changed the way we watched music videos and he broke the race barrier on several levels. Those truths are undeniable.

The world has lost its most revolutionary and ground-breaking entertainer of all time.

The King is dead...

... and I am having a very, very tough time dealing with that.


Rest in Peace, Michael Joseph Jackson.

More Bukowski.

Excerpts from "Portions of a Wine-Stained Notebook."

• Why do you write?
  I write as a function. Without it I would fall ill and die. It's as much a part of one as the liver or intestine, and just about as glamorous.
  
  
• Does pain make a writer?
  Pain doesn't make anything, nor does poverty. The artist is there first. What becomes of him depends upon his luck. If his luck is good (worldly-speaking) he becomes a bad artist. If his luck is bad, he becomes a good one.
  
  
• all that I know is that I believe in the sound of music ... all else is squabble.
  
  
• perhaps the greatest achievement of Man is his ability to die, and his ability to disregard it. certainly poetry and paint are no deterrent, nor the high hurdles of the mind over the skulls of realism. let us say, finally, that truth is not all that matters -- often, it is the putting aside of a truth.
  
  
• a good man can climb any flag and salute prosperity (we're told) but how many good men can you get in an air-tight jar? and how many good poets can you find at IBM or snoring under the sheets of a fifty-dollar whore? more good men have died for poetry than all your crooked battlefields were worth; so if I fall drunk in a four-dollar room: you messed up your history -- let me dawdle in mine.
  
  
• When I have a poem accepted by a magazine that prints so-called quality poetry, I ask myself where I have failed. Poetry must continually move out of itself, away from shadows and reflections. The reason so much bad poetry is written is that it is written as poetry instead of concept. And the reason the public doesn't understand poetry is that there is nothing to understand, and the reason most poets write is that they think they understand. Nothing is to be understood or "regained." It is simply to be written. By someone. Sometime. And not too often.
  
  
• our Art is our agony turned to reason. We are the prize of a twisted mind, dirty bits of clay that sit and wait on some imbecile table in some imbecile darkness. our world turns on a violated wheel held up by the thin spokes of poetry...
  
  
• I don't force the hand to write the lie for the sake of creating another poem.
  
  
• death batters at my mind like a wild bat enclosed in my skull.
  
  
• Do you believe in the price of life? he asks. I don't quite understand your question. I do not believe in the price of anything. I am a dreamer. I believe in possession without pain. I am not a realist. I lack backbone, I hate boredom and striving. I'd rather listen to the overture to Samson by Handel.
  
  
• the dead are so very old and the
  living so very practical.
  bestial rhymes assault my heart, congregate there, stamp their flabby feet amongst the plague and wreckage.
  
  
• death, at last, is a bore -- no more than pulling a shade. we do not die all at once, generally, but piece by piece, little by little. the young die hardest and live hardest and understand nothing. but they are the most generous and the truest and better fit to lead than the cautious wise. who survives out of candor? show me those who are left and I will show you nothing. the young have yet to surrender to fact. and fact is nothing but the grime of centuries. the young bud is the hardest. I am old, so you cannot censure me with prejudice.
  
  
• Do you want an ending?
  write it yourself.
  

Anne Sexton

Admonitions to a Special Person
[Anne Sexton]

Watch out for power,
for its avalanche can bury you,
snow, snow, snow, smothering your mountain.

Watch out for hate,
it can open its mouth and you'll fling yourself out
to eat off your leg, an instant leper.

Watch out for friends,
because when you betray them,
as you will,
they will bury their heads in the toilet
and flush themselves away.

Watch out for intellect,
because it knows so much it knows nothing
and leaves you hanging upside down,
mouthing knowledge as your heart
falls out of your mouth.

Watch out for games, the actor's part,
the speech planned, known, given,
for they will give you away
and you will stand like a naked little boy,
pissing on your own child-bed.

Watch out for love
(unless it is true,
and every part of you says yes including the toes) ,
it will wrap you up like a mummy,
and your scream won't be heard
and none of your running will end.

Love? Be it man. Be it woman.
It must be a wave you want to glide in on,
give your body to it, give your laugh to it,
give, when the gravelly sand takes you,
your tears to the land. To love another is something
like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall
into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

Special person,
if I were you I'd pay no attention
to admonitions from me,
made somewhat out of your words
and somewhat out of mine.
A collaboration.
I do not believe a word I have said,
except some, except I think of you like a young tree
with pasted-on leaves and know you'll root
and the real green thing will come.

Let go. Let go.
Oh special person,
possible leaves,
this typewriter likes you on the way to them,
but wants to break crystal glasses
in celebration,
for you,
when the dark crust is thrown off
and you float all around
like a happened balloon.

Favorite quotes from Odd Thomas, part 1.

I'm currently in the middle of re-reading my favorite book -- Odd Thomas, by Dean Koontz. Here's the intro (wonderful, wonderful) and a few of the many highlighted quotes in my tattered copy.

"My name is Odd Thomas, though in this age when fame is the altar at which most people worship, I am not sure why you should care who I am or that I exist.

I am not a celebrity. I am not the child of a celebrity. I have never been married to, never been abused by, and never provided a kidney for a transplantation into any celebrity. Furthermore, I have no desire to be a celebrity.

In fact I am such a nonentity by the standards of our culture that People magazine not only will never feature a piece about me but might also reject my attempts to subscribe to their publication on the grounds that the black-hole gravity of my noncelebrity is powerful enough to suck their entire enterprise into oblivion.

I am twenty years old. To a world-wise adult, I am little more than a child. To any child, however, I'm old enough to be distrusted, to be excluded forever from the magical community of the short and beardless."

"You can con God and get away with it if you do so with charm and wit. If you live your life with imagination and verve, God will play along just to see what outrageously entertaining thing you'll do next. He'll also cut you some slack if you're astonishingly stupid in an amusing fashion. Granny claimed that this explains why uncountable millions of breathtakingly stupid people get along just fine in life."

"Too much mystery is merely an annoyance. Too much adventure is exhausting. And a little terror goes a long way."

"I prefer ghosts to be somber. There's something about a walking dead man trying to a get a laugh that chills me, perhaps because it suggests that even postmortem we have a pathetic need to be liked -- as well as the sad capacity to humiliate ourselves."

"Fire scares me, yes, and earthquakes, and venomous snakes. People scare me more than anything, for I know too well the savagery of which humankind is capable."

"From time to time, I do consider that I might be mad. Like any self-respecting lunatic, however, I am always quick to dismiss any doubts about my sanity."