Sam and I were sitting in Pizza Hut (in Fort Stockton, Texas, of course – our mecca). I had taken David’s jambox and set it on the window sill. Spectres was in the tape deck. This song was playing. He listened intently. Sam was definitely good at that. His comment was that it did not create the mood it was attempting to create well enough. I’ll listen to it again now and give my opinion.

Initally, the guitar does, for sure. Loneliness. Solitude.

Lee also loved this song very much. There was a compilation tape (a mix tape, as peasants call it) on which he included it. There were various other more popular songs from bands we listened to. For example: Tom Sawyer and Dust in the Wind. This was one which he dubbed fantastic. It wasn’t a popular one, however, meaning it got no airplay at the time, of course. Well, it probably did somewhere, but not in West Texas. He was, at the time, rather immune to popularity or obscurity. He just chose what made him wince with emotion. It was one of his positive traits. Yup.

I think the song does create the intended mood. For me. I’m a relative bastard, though.

The next one is the best on the album and I shall listen to it in journalistic silence.

The telephone in my room in Fort Stockton was, like Facebook or Twitter or LiveJournal or whatever, my connection, however vague and arrogant, to the outside world.

I’d call people and force them to listen to Blue Öyster Cult songs over the line. The quality was amazing, as you might imagine. The one victim which was the most pitiful was Sharon Weber. I made her listen to this very song attemping to convince her that BÖC were contemporary enough to be poppy. Well, yeah, this song is a bit poppy. I’m not sure about the quality these days, however. Nostalgia reigns.

In Journalism class at Fort Stockton High School, I was listening to the new Yes album at the time (Big Generator) and she was impressed (maybe that is an absurdly hyberboliscious word) that I was listening to something which was actually played on the radio. Hm! I wonder if she is still single. I’ll probably never know.

Well, this one has the most formiddable memories attached to it.

She spread her wings, and then she was gone.

Blue Öyster Cult is the music for the evening, though I shall run out of albums at some point. As I wrote to Tony earlier, I do wish I had Fire of Unknown Origin. I suppose I should do as I did years ago with The Church (and can be read in this particular journal of mine), and write about each memory each song contains for me. As Searching for Celine just finished from Spectres, it may be a problem.

I say a problem because there are dizzying memories from mostly High School which these songs bring back. They are vague and ultimately unreachable in a form which is tangible.

I do recall Todd Templeton (see Facebook) and his friend whose name I do not recall blasting Godzilla from their TRUCK outside of Fort Stockton High School after school one day. See, I’d loaned Todd Spectres. The funny thing (to me, anyway) is the fact that the cassette I had given him was damaged. Damaged? you ask? Well, my old stereo system had deleted the first 20 or so seconds of the first song (Godzilla), so, it came crashing in after Buck Dharma was already wreaking havoc with the gueetar.

Fireworks is ending at this moment. Perhaps it reminds me of Brandi and our excursions about the town, or maybe about David, who shared much of my musical taste at the time. I’ll listen to it once again.

Most probably, this song should remind me of the endless hours I spent in my room in Fort Stockton (105 S. Everts, if you need know) listening to music. I had most of these albums on LP. The happiness this song exudes is rather disconcerting considering most of the band’s output. The lyrical content, about banishing tradition in the light of immediate needs, I can relate to. It was the antithesis of what I was taught as I was growing up in the hellish atmosphere which was (and probably still is) Fort Stockton. On the other hand, it is a lascivious tale of a man manipulating a woman into sex by some other-worldly spiritual means. Albert Bouchard was a fuckup. Possibly he still is. My kind of fuckup, though.

R U Ready To Rock used photetic letterabilities to represent words long before Prince did, and for sure the trend to use such in our ubiquitous text messages (a practise I eschew). For some reason, this song is supposed to be a part of the third cycle in Imaginos. I can only take the lyric I only live to be born again to make any sense in the context. One day (soon), I shall put together the whole three cycles and listen happily whilst intoxicated on something. Perhaps then I’ll be enlightened to Sandy Pearlman’s young idea which was spread through a multitude of songs.

Enough for now, veverko.

The dark form of the world is hollowed out by each of our beliefs and it is dissonance between such worlds which brings conflict. Multiple worlds. Perhaps only those who lack imagination can perceive without distortion.

I believe I typed this into Eira approximately a year ago. It was inspired by a paragraph from a novel by Cormac McCarthy. His point was that how we perceive the world - our personal beliefs - carve out the substance of existence just as wind or rain.

Reading my quote again, it seems obvious. After all, I was scolded today for stating the obvious. I say fuck criticizing myself, however, because it bludgeons down my will to write. That takes my mind quickly back to so many conversations with Christian about negativity and Energy Vampires and how our lives were better with out either. But that is another story (most likely already told elsewhere).

The idea of the quote does seem obvious. Of course dissonance between humans results from differing sets of beliefs. The views we hold do carve out our perception of reality. This perception directly leads to our expectations of how events should unfold. The dissonance results from these expectations not being met. All this leads to the obvious conclusion that humans with similar belief sets will basically get along better than those with differently shaped carvings.

I disagree with what I said about imagination, however. I believe it takes a large dollop of imagination and creativity, but most of all, sheer intellect, to carve a belief system out of the substance of reality which allows one to accept other belief systems on the surface and in their individual volumes. I’m thinking of a meta-carving. A space which accommodates different carvings and perhaps modifies itself in the process. A learning space. If the stuff of reality is three dimensional, then my meta-space is four dimensional.

Those who lack imagination will, like Roland, be single minded, have a static space carved from reality, frozen long before. Advantages to this mentality abound, and the immediately obvious disadvantage (at least to other humans) is that such a carving is obstinate to an extreme. Plodding onwards, this hollow will swallow none but perfect matches. Others are rudely thrust aside.

I could easily be drawn into thoughts of the brief exchange I had today with Miss Sunshine about proselytizing and continue. It is a natural continuation…

My parents have a tendency to place light switches either exposed and just out of reach, or hidden strangely behind furniture or appliances. My first thought is that it is a result of my father’s insistence that work, no matter how unfulfilling and strenuous, should be the priority of everyone’s life. So, that old fashioned switch, which must be rotated instead of flipped, is placed just out of reach of the edge of the bed. I must, therefore, work to get at it. His unconscious provides these little frustrations for all humans around him. My mother has absorbed the habit over the years of their marriage.

Complete convenience is the contrasting viewpoint. I wasn’t brought up a fucking Catholic, so I don’t have even a residual bias for such bi-chromaticism.

Hall

There is a discussion at the moment on Progressive Ears concerning the lack of an identity for years after 2000.

(Progressive Ears)

I see where the topic eructer is coming from, as, looking back on fashion and music, there is always a few prominent trends which span the decade. I posit that there were always multitudes mulling in the background, creating a tapestry on which the big-wigs could lie. Every trend has roots in so many flowerbeds that its petals are hybridized to the point of being no species at all.

Yet, in retrospect, they are named something specific.

Now it seems as if there’s this big, huge, metastasizing mass of STUFF, and one stakes out one’s territory therein, depending on taste or preference.

Yes, but I have always staked out my territory in any particular time frame in my life. Humans such as Tony, Christopher and I were out in our teenage years specifically for this reason. Our own paths were never chosen out of love or hate for the current (ok, perhaps a bit, at times, because of the latter), but by what appealed to the static electricity flashing between our semi-disassociated hemispheres.

It has always been as the quote above describes. Retrospect just shows otherwise, lying to our present senses at it fleshes out skeletal memories.

Invigoration.

I need a splash in the face with the frigid water of existence. Probably existentialism, as well. I am surprised that I grew up to be anything interesting psychologically at all. The drab, washed out setting all around me attests to only stagnation and death. From where did I pull my inspiration? Possibly from pain. Obsession?

Newly found old friends have inspired the gut instinct of creation to an extent once again, but it is not going to be nearly enough to get me off of my lugubrious buttocks. Of course, Sweet Entropy sucks out my soul once again in a mere ten days.

But how to keep up until then without it being a toil?

No, Maggie, making lists don’t help.

I turn, once again, to bygone days.

I can’t forget that by ideal standards, we’re all of us silly-looking, witless geese.

My idealism is a thing my parents certainly cannot relate to. Peering at it from outside, from the, as it were, listless sands of West Texas, it seems an unlikely oasis. I must be a stream of pure water amid the muddy regularity of their life. I do not mean to seem pretentious in that statement. I just want the imagery of contrast to be readily apparent.

By platonic standards, our clunky reality certainly has shortcomings. I do posit, however, that the clunkiness, when not sanded down to soundless and frictionless clockwork, is charming. It is also the nectar of fecundity. A platonic solid cuts out its place in space by sharp edges. As less than ideal worm-fodder, we less-than-perfect must struggle against routine which will smooth those edges completely away. It is a curve which peaks somewhere between beautific perfection and mechanized perfection. First, beating at beauty with an angry, iron rod to shout against its implausibility is fuel for the upwards climb. The calculation and craziness combined. Etched upon the peak of the curve, shrouded in clouds, looking outwards from the two-dimensional page is where we want to be. But submitting in entirety to routine will swallow us whole. Tempering routine with jagged bursts of chaos is the meta-routine, and the only solution which does not let us drop downwards into the doldrums of mediocrity.

Lina and I have reconnected after nearly six years of silence and oblivion. The past two days have been filled with conversation. Perhaps it is now as it was when we first met on the internet. ICQ volleys our messages back in forth. I tend to put more effort than she does into it, I must admit.

She is working on her thesis. The subject is the changes in local culture in her home town of Fulnek from 1989 until now. Not a bad topic. It focuses the glass on a small community developing in a new regime. I’ll read it when she finishes if she is not too shy to share.

After the unfortunate misunderstanding and demise of our relationship during the last days of summer, 2006, I thought of her recurringly. Of course, as time passed, the frequency grew lower, but in a very slowly decreasing modulation. There were dreams, even. I recall once stopping in front of her living quarters on the way back from work. I walked from the bus stop that day, not wanting to wait for the next bus to Stará Osada. I even remember that I was listening to Ëmëhntëhtt-Rê. The time before was when I returned her magazines she had mailed me. I thought our relationship over. And I’d only met her in person once! (And now she doesn’t even recall that meeting!)

Perhaps I’ll chronicle our newly kindled friendship. It is eking along so far.

I awoke from a vivid dream. I was living still, for all this time, in the flat on Petra Rezka. I was the only one living there. A space I had never been to before showed itself to me. It was behind a door that I had always taken for a closet in Jeníček’s room. My room was abandoned and I lived in one of the strange alcoves beyond that door.

How I knew it was the flat on Petra Rezka, I know not, for it looked nothing like my old home (possibly my happiest home, for my interaction with people was at a maximum on my lifetime). It is obvious, however, that my mind associates that time with high dopamine levels.

Is there a method by which I could test my dopamine levels at the moment? I should use Google to find something adequate. The times like those at Petra Rezka are long gone and I have spent much of my life since then either in isolation or in a cloistered relationship which is akin to isolation. I miss laughing. I miss my friends.

Christopher is in a similar situation, hobbled with girlfriend and child and interminable job. He has more than once expressed his distaste. He has more than once expressed the fact that he has no one to talk to who he can call a friend. I suppose this also means he has no one to laugh with. Fucking New Zealand. I wish I had the means to visit him.

In one week, I shall be with Tony. We’ll have a few laughs and a few intense moments, I am sure. Old times may be hinted at, but most likely not reached in dopamine levels.

I need to laugh.

I realize that I have problem recalling faces because I study lips as they speak. Were I to focus my attention on a central part of the face, or even directly between the eyes, I’d burn portraits of humans in my mind. As an experiment, I’ll begin to do so.

Meanwhile, I am listening to Dokken, provided by Nathan Waldrip on Facebook. The song is power pop metal stuff. It is not really my thing.