ode to the 'stache

a blade of grass, for life

what if i were to take scissors
to every blade of grass
i have no idea what to do with my life
but 'as long as you're doing something'
seems like good advice
i could be busy my entire life
if i made grass my business
i could be content and happy
as long as i never thought about progress
or the futility
of taking scissors to every blade of grass

when you think about progress
and have goals
and need to cut grass
under a timeline
under a deadline
then you can become depressed
about taking scissors
to every blade of grass
but if you just
if you just
if you
if
i
i
i be
i just be
if i just be

why would anyone ever be unhappy
what can you be depressed about
if you just be and not think
but just be
i want to just be and stop thinking about futility
deadlines goals progress
achievement measurement worth
value productivity efficiency
unhappiness depression stress
death

i reject this death
i want to live with passion
i feel passion
i feel love
i dont want to 'just' be
i want to just be
i
i
i

A short play

HOME FOR THE WEEKEND

Me: Mom, do you have any xanax or anti-anxiety meds I could take for my flight?

Mom: No hunny, but I have some percocets.

A FEW DAYS LATER ON THE PHONE

Mom: Why are you anxious to fly?

Me: I dunno, end of the world...rapture...dunno...i think the world is going to end while i'm flying or something, jet might fall out of the sky. (pause) I guess I just don't trust man made structures.

Mom: You have more of a chance of getting hit by a car or dieing while driving, there's nothing to worry about. Flying is exciting! It's an adventure. It's fun.

Me: I know i know, it's irrational. Maybe it's a control thing. i dunno. I'm excited, it's cool, nevermind. I'm cool. Ya. Ya, hm, yaaaa, okay, ya, i'm gonna get a window seat hopefully.

A FEW DAYS LATER ON THE PLANE

[CENSORED]

this wasn't supposed to be a love poem

the shirt i'm wearing is not Springy enough
but the shirt underneath is too small
i have no alternatives
i'm stuck in an in-between and not liking either option
i move to go to the bathroom
i want to drop through the floor
maybe travel through the cold hard rock beneath me
swim through the taffy, be warmed at the core
then come out somewhere that is elsewhere
a different here that is new for a while
that would be adventurous

instead i'm looking over my shoulder
fear is gripping my back and he won't let go
i keep seeing your shadow but i trace it back to a mannequin
the mannequin knows no love
still it stands there sorta perfect and knowing it is sorta perfect
frozen in coquettish nonchalance
stupid mannequin
i sympathize with the mannequin
i love the mannequin

the surface of the earth is rugged
the shape is more like a potato than a sphere
from the outside it appears dynamic, vibrant, healthy
but the computer models all agree:
a misshapen geoid, a hunk of rock
these thoughts plague me while i stare in the mirror,
when i look at my face,
when i catch a glimpse of that headband on my desk

love

twitpic flarf/image macros from http://twitpic.com/lov3 and http://twitpic.com/love

"people would give us money"
"we are adorable"

travel the world
beggars with nice things

stop to pick up a penny
be humbled by your fashion sense

i'm naked
ask for money naked

let people stare at my body
feel normal

thoughts, in moments so holy, of no-thing and no-one, but of every-thing and every-one or franny

this fractured life.
i see you and wish you the way you were-
what happened to you?
i liked you back then;
your awkwardness, the way you didn't quite fit in
we had an affinity for each other -
a commonness in our plights,
a meeting place in our disdain.
when you would put on your music and mope
i would become concerned,
you would become distant.
we were weird, all of us.
what did you accept?
how have you changed? settled?
content with your-self
you're too busy for me now
it's inescapable, this thought, the one that never fades:
you're better than me.


the daffodils have come, the tulips are blossoming.
the fragrant blossoms of flowering trees imitate the winter snow.
they settle around me, on my head, in my lap, 
the breeze wraps around my skin as it gently sweeps the petals away.
the bees are busy dancing in joy, chasing one another, 
hanging for a moment in unison, then separating.
my skin tingles from the sun's warmth - the warmth of the kitchen after a trouncing in the winter frost.
my eyes stare fixedly at nothing, though i see everything -
the billowing white clouds floating through the brilliant blue sky,
smoke rings that we blew out of hookahs in some summer gone.
a jet with contrails of grey fades from view and brings me back to the gritty.
it brings me back to the focus of my consciousness and out of this world,
do you hear me anymore? do you even listen when i speak?
or do you only disapprove?
i breathe heavily, let out a sigh.


am i the one who's changed?

Lifeguarding part 1

Let me start this off by saying I love people. But after a while, they annoy the fuck out of me. I enjoy human interaction. I enjoy meeting and experiencing new people. But when you are responsible for their safety, they start to present themselves as stupid and annoying. The same questions are repetitively and endlessly asked. The same people you answer questions to end up needing saved later. They ask you where rip currents are located, then they go and swim right next to them. They inevitably end up back in your care after ~10 minutes, but this time clutching with all their might to your buoy while you backstroke in yourself+their deadweight and try to lighten the mood because they are aware they just about drowned.

There are a lot of misconceptions about being a lifeguard. Officially I am a "surf rescue technician" on the Ocean City Beach Patrol. This means nothing to anyone who isn't also on a beach patrol. What the general public thinks of when they hear "lifeguard" is: chill-ass job bronzing in the sun and picking up girls. There are also some sweet stereotypes that are, really, mostly true. Eg: frat bro down for the summer, surfer bro, a bro in general. I am a rare exception. Somehow i'm a somewhat self-aware philosophy bro who enjoys, well, everything in life and has a strong sense of childlike wonder about things.

I digress, back to misconceptions. In actuality surf rescue is a high-stress job in which you are responsible for hundreds/thousands of people at any given time for x blocks north and x blocks south of your tower. And it's not just the water, it's the beach. You are responsible for that area where people have strokes, heart attacks, umbrellas impaled through them, pipe bombs, heat exhaustion, and other emergencies.

And the ocean. It isn't a pool. Nor is it a lake. It is the ocean. The ocean is not a consistently calm and predictable entity. It is dynamic and changing, driven by the changing weather. There are also things that exist called sea life and they play in the ocean too. They are mostly pretty chill given the circumstances (thousands of people peeing/spitting/pooping/spitting/dominating their near-shore chill zones for 4 months every year), but sometimes they get unhappy or decide to play a joke on people. People don't like jokes nor do they like sea life because they don't like that they are paying to be at the beach and in the ocean and the sea life gets to chill for free. It just isn't fair. Most people get revenge by eating the larger fish and the crabs that they hate to swim around and step on at night.

So ya, the ocean isn't like a lake or a pool. It has a bottom made of sand (at least here, in Maryland). Sand shifts very easily. Waves are wind energy transferred into the water. The harder the wind blows and the longer the distance it blows over the more powerful and larger the waves. Once the wind energy becomes wave energy it is known as 'swell'. Most vacationers in the summer don't get to see hurricane swell or even any significant swell at all because summer tends to have long flat spells (small waves) via not a lot of active weather. Big waves come from big storms (low pressure, you know, those things that give us widespread snow and rain and wind) and not so much from small storms (thunderstorms in the summer are isolated events, they are from localized imbalances, not widespread at all). Where am i going with this? K. here we go: Waves are energy, simply traveling through the ocean as their medium. Energy. Pure energy. They travel until they interact with something that causes them to disperse their energy. Cue sandbars. Energy comes in, feels itself against the ocean floor, and the top of the wave topples. The energy is directed at the sandbar and is dispersed across it as the sand particles absorb and scatter. This process occurs endlessly.

Occasionally a sandbar will collapse and form an underground trench. As waves come in and suck back out the water takes the path of least resistance out. Since water will flow through the lowest lying area first they suck back out through this trench, widening it. We now have an underground river forming, aka a rip current. This is what people get stuck in and usually drown if they don't know what to do/panic when we are off duty. 

wow

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steve roggenbuck, genius behind downloadhelveticaforfree.com, shipped his book out to me a few weeks ago. review forthcoming. for now i just wanna say this:


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