Old Stories: Pazzo

I'd written this story years ago, summer of 2009 when I first began to enjoy writing fictions.

There was this old man standing at the curb. He looked frail and fragile. He reminded me of a very old bird.

I figured he was lost, so I walked to him and kindly asked him, "Are you in need of help, sir?"

That upset him. From the calm wrinkles of his face came the eruption of rippling sags. I figured from the tone of the language he was yelling that he was Italian. I'd never met someone so old and so Italian all at the same time.

His reaction had not frightened me though. In fact, I'd wanted to giggle. I wanted to speak 5 different languages all at the same time in an exclaiming fashion, hands and volume flailing. But I just stood there, and I smiled, and I let him yell incomprehensibly at me.

After he'd finished yelling, he took a deep breath. Deep enough for me to see his chest well up to his chin and down again. He firmly looked at me. Not a trace of the eruption on his face.

Quietly he said, "Thank you for listening. I feel better now."

Tea

I politely asked if you'd have tea with me. You shook your head, stared at me with those goddamned enormous things you call your eyes. 

"I can't enjoy a cup of tea with you. You'd digress nastily about everyone you can't stand and my tea will taste just as bitter," you explained. "And as far as my fondness goes for you, I can't stand a cup of bitter tea."

There was silence. 

Normally I'd look at you incredulously, as if your mouth was created to subtly and indirectly insult me, over and over again. But I wasn't feeling normal today and I politely smiled your way, as if sarcasm was your most characteristic charm. 

You adjusted yourself in your seat by the window, folded your legs and arms, then gazed out the window, wordlessly. I always thought you fit in this picture. You in your room, blankly staring out the window, and any thoughts or emotions craftily masked by indifference. But I thought about how it made your room seem smaller and how it closed in the distance between you and me. You by your window and me on your desk, scrawling the certain words that came out of your mouth because you've found a way to utter them so goddamned beautifully. 

Normally I'd be fixated on the last thing you said, and I'd probably scribble "cup of tea" on some scratch paper because I would've liked the way you've said it. But again I wasn't feel normal today, so I politely stood up and walked to your door. I stood under the door frame, looked at you while you continued to look afar and away. I politely said nothing, politely smiled your way, then walked down your hallway, down the stairs, and out of your front door. 

Normally, once I stepped outside, I'd look up to your window to see you as still as you were when I walked out of your bedroom door. But I wasn't feeling normal today so I continued to walk down the street and politely never looked your way again. 

Charlie

His eyes were charcoal. A thin film of gray would surface over them as his breathing slowed and his gaze narrowed. He looked at me intently. He looked at me like I was the filter of a cigarette. Like I possessed no promises and insisted a slow craving of undying doom. His head faced down after finding the slightest and most insignificant horror on my face. I wanted to gasp. I wanted to dive in some relinquishing escape of anyone's final breath. I thought, who would pass up their one final breath? His eyes became an accumulation of gray. Beads of ash. I backed away slowly... and unlatched the cage. 

Cliches

My distaste for small talk and common speech goes beyond my social skills. Conversations have atrophied below our feet. Disappearing meanings and significance and intentions, we are SHITHEADS. Undeniable truths hidden in pretty sounding words. Nice sounding words. The pleasant and the bored. I am a shithead and so are you.

Random Journal of a Postmodern Nobody

"TO BE FREE NOW ! 

 T houghts are really like smoke, curling around the edges of a life until they disappear irrelevantly or we resign ourselves - perhaps - to purely the simple pleasures andaddictions of life’s very nature…….to free, un-chronicled times with our friends, their characters, their reflections of our own selves and desires and moods…

Turn! Turn away now and behold the views from your windows… be unchanged… byany ramblings or insights here laid down in leavened scrawl… be unchanged by insightsthat feel just as strong unspoken to oneself within the winds of the world as when theyare at all observed and preserved here… but that this writing is a form of worship… adelight to recount and to relive… to recognise the powers that formulate out from our repeating spirits… where we are left to ourselves and to one another…

So ok….Come on in then… let my world whisper out from its particularities and itseternal similarity….unto you and your world… so we may recognise… so we may find our way to what we feel is right and good… For it is the magic of smoke… the quietmagic in the smoke… a guiding and reminding smoke…..

Random scribblings of quotes and drawings fill sketchbooks until a need to makesomething of it comes over me…..a need to lay it all down in a more consolidated fashionleading to some great, entertaining statement for our times, for my time……a project toengage the brain where thoughts may trigger the senses in another…….to inspire or toreach agreement….or expand the vast subconscious of man…….or where there is somuch sharing in these times – these postmodern times where entertainment overtakesreality to leave the Entertained, struggling to reclaim a realism…….or just resignourselves to nothingness…….and make another piece of text floating through brief mental surfaces in the broadly increasing general memory of peoples who are overly pensive…

A bundle of old notepads with assembled thoughts; spontaneous sketchings quickly inkedand later perfected, a bottle of Jacob’s Creek………A glowing screen, the soft tap of letters on a keyboard sent into an electricalinnerspace….So we may interface again into these thoughts now being stored, reflectingto perhaps reflect back onto a new time through new minds……Old thoughts of no valueto my changed self? Observations from one time and one certain society……amid thesilent, permanent, perpetual insistence of nature; of all our ways……….

Everything has been filmed and written and expressed……and we are the uncertainclichés, throwing away the sweet wrappers of our easily satiated needs; the post-passérejecting the dreams and perspectives of society that still intoxicate to shape and inspireour thoughts.…..Are we not reclaiming one another?…Seeking the real….before we aredrawn once more into yet more escapes into more elaborate worlds…..of shadow anddelight.…….and brief belonging."

Source:  Random Journal of a Postmodern Nobody

Rice and Eggs

4:47am

I'm wide awake, as usual, and my stomach is weak from residual intoxication from a few hours ago. I drove home Mikal's car because she was too drunk and passed out to drive me herself. She piled a heap of self-loathing on me before her sleep finale. I wanted to grab her by the neck with both of my hands, wring them, then ask her if she has more to loathe. This goddamn girl... I wouldn't even need to ask. She'll just choke back a "yes..eghck eghck eghck..." then continue letting me choke her. That's just how much self-loathing she'd have left. I would've wrung out nothing. 

When I got home, I prepared myself for bed (even if I knew that I wouldn't be sleeping for another several hours), then sat on my desk and committed to finishing my writing. First I read a few chapters from a few books. Then I looked for this piece that I wrote about Charlie (le bird). I've been meaning to look for it for quite some time now and never got around to it till...well now. I wrote another copy of it on some drawing paper till I was ready to write new things. After I got over procrastinating, I finally committed. I finished a poem. A stupid fucking poem, probably. A stupid fucking poem that I stamped with alliteration because I wanted to read my shit aloud in my room and have them sound pretty. ...and well, I just like alliteration. Then I wrote a hopeless, devastated piece that I will never share with anyone because it's good to have secret pieces. Then I wrote a letter and gave up. My stomach hadn't stopped growling and groaning since I left Mikal's. The sounds inspired me to cook some eggs, and I had em with rice. I mistook the growls for hunger. I still ate em anyway. But that was a mistake. 

Now everyone is asleep. Everyone but me and Winona. One more hour till 6, and by then I'll be begging to shut my eyes. Or so I hope. Because I really feel like seeing the morning today. 

Came Up On Some Boy Pants at the Flea Market

Thanks Aiz.

The Notebook

This is when they die together..
Juls' open mouth and his Adrien Brody nose..........

The Best Cupcake I've Ever Had

Vag's cupcakes. 

And I hate cupcakes... 

Recipe: 

-I don't fucking know 

-Not my business 

Hey

I spent the last four days at Mikal's, pretending I lived there, once again. We didn't hang out with anyone. We didn't do anything exciting. We've been lazy bones and it was alright. We filled her fire pit with cigarette butts, cooked meals for every meal, watched Pretty Little Liars like little girls, and slept like kings on her parents' bed from heaven. I was content. Now I'm home and my room is a mess due to my absence and its time to recuperate again. Recuperate from being a lazy bone. 

What the hell. 

Trying

I've had this guitar for months now and I still have barely made any progress. Alright let me be more truthful. I HAVEN'T made ANY progress...at all. I'm so intimidated and frightened at the mere fucking sight of this thing that I can't get myself to move forward with it. I don't even know where to begin. I'm unmotivated, clueless, and scared. I don't know what I'm so scared of. Maybe because I'm surrounded by my musically talented friends and it's been my oldest dream to pick up a guitar. And now that I finally have the chance... it's like I have stage fright. Which really is stupid because all my friends are so willing to help. Especially Andrey. He's already so proud of me and I haven't even had anything to show or share. But he believes in me. Fuck yeah he believes in me. Every time I surrender my guitar in discouragement, I think about disappointing. And I'm not in the business to disappoint. 

I spent my early mornings playing with the open strings and training my fingers to be fayyyyyst and nibble and amazing. But my fingers are not yet fayyyyst or nibble or amazing. They're still fumbling babies dreaming to  be like their role model Carlos Dengler's fayyyst and nibble and amazing fingers. I'M DREAMING. 

I'll do better. 

Of All The Things I Thrifted

This became my favorite. My loaves of bread homeshoes (Tylerstyle)

W

Good one. 

Credits to alyssacorpuz / intensive

My Talking Head

There was this one day when I called this the multifaceted dream. 
It was a wrong dream. 
A dream I created to find some peace.
I wanted to quiet the screechers in my head. 
The drowners and the haunting. 
The livid and unashamed.
The hungry and the unfinished.
They all screech at me.
I've listened so deeply to their screech that I've felt the monster they wanted to create out of me.
And I thought of money.
And I thought of beauty.
And I thought of greed.
And I thought of lust. 
The ones in between are all there.
Just like the rest of the others that you wouldn't even think of. 
I submerge into them, and I have, consequently. 
These creatures, these screechers.
It's like they're living in me to get me to want to be dead.
And they're fucking fantastic.
I'm screeching the calls for my own death.
That  fated moment. 
They're beside me so tightly. 
Like particles I breathe in.
They've turned me, and I'm indulgently screeching. 

Remember Molly

There's only one Molly in my memory, and she's the awkwardly handsome girl that I will never, ever cross paths with again. 

At least that's what I thought. 

The last few weeks of this year's spring semester, I was driving down the same road I drive down when I get out of class. Except I wasn't getting out of class. I was picking up a friend from his class because I dropped all my damn classes. We were near the 680 freeway entrances, stopped at some red light while we shared a smoke when fate or coincidence or some higher power slapped me across the face. In front of me was a forest green sedan with some short-haired girl on the driver's seat. Immediately my goddamn chest launched itself up my throat. I turned to Xavier and I knew he didn't have a clue as to why I just gasped at him until I couldn't breathe anymore. In attempts to explain to him who she was, I stammered and struggled. Before I could even assure that it was her, I celebrated with the biggest grin I had ever grinned. I bared my teeth, letting them glisten at the hopes that it was her. Then she began playing with her hair. She swiped her little bangs to the left then looked in her rear view mirror where she revealed herself to me. There she was with her boyishly pretty face, looking at herself in her goddamn rear view mirror, and I giddily pretended that she was looking at me. We were stopped at the red light longer than I had ever been in front of a red light (or so it felt like it). And she kept fixing her beautiful hair in front of me, looking at me ignorantly through her beautiful rear view mirror. Eventually I found a level of paranoia as she remained looking into her rear view. I started to get the feeling that she knew I was staring and I began to feel nervous so I looked away. Immediately regretting looking away even for a second, the light turned green and we were moving. I stared intently at her in her car until she made a left onto some street that I wasn't turning left to. I drove on and told myself that this will be the last of it. That this will be the last time she strikes me with her existence. 

Until I see her again, that is. 

If I see her again. 

In reference to: Her Name Is Molly

Behind Her

Last night I met a beautiful dog. We didn't know her name so we gave him the name Undone, in honor of our  raw-lungs car ride song (The Sweater Song). Also, we decided that he can be referred to with either pronouns he or she. His leash was tied around the bumper of some SUV, with a bowl of food just in front of it. We were walking to some Pho restaurant in Milpitas when we first saw him. Excited and wide-eyed and licking my legs, he wouldn't let me walk passed him in one piece. So I showered him with my attention, got on my hands and knees on the sidewalk and everything. I sat on the curb and he would jump on my lap, kiss my face, then proceed to cuddling himself to my entire body. At first I thought he was blind because he kept bumping into me without giving a fuck. Or I thought he would be an idiot dog. But nah. He's just a baby, and a cuddly baby at that. I had a hard time saying goodbye to him. I hate meeting dogs that steal my goddamn heart. What's a dog doing stealing my heart anyway! It's MY fucking heart! 

But here's one to the pit bull of my dreams! Kisses to Undone! 

Relevant Reads

"Joyce cut my hair. 

She did a terrible job."

An Extended Stay: A Murder Story

By 3:30 am the party evacuated the room. I sat in between Xavier and Mikal on an inviting couch that we've covered in ash and judgment. Across us was the picture of a creep and our drunk friend Ace laid side by side on the bed we've claimed. We were their audience and we knew just what to do next.............

Well-Acquainted

An acquaintance of mine made this song and incorporated excerpts from a letter that I wrote her. FUCK YEAH that's sick.

The Rum Diary

This movie kept me up until 6:30 in the morning. That's how long it was. If you watch it, you'll be up until 6:30am. His eyes frightened me. Seeing that burst of blood in them was like a threat, or warning... telling me that I better put down the drink in my hand. But that won't actually stop me from putting down the drink in my hand. 

What I liked: I like movies about writers, that simple. But Depp is always playing the character of a writer. Not that I don't appreciate it. I'm just kind of over it. But what really kept me watching was the female lead... this little number, Amber Heard. She was a temptress. She was a goddess of her own, flawless on her own. Her character falters in the end. Pathetic and pretty in tears. Just like all those unattainable ones. Just like all those temptresses. But I like her. My new girl. 

To summarize, the end bored me to death. It was a goody good ending for his goody good role. He didn't get the girl though. That was slightly exciting enough for me.