life/sleep


i am going to watch the science of sleep for the rest of my life.

character

i'm pretty sure that in the last three or four weeks i have gained a greater sense of awareness. i have gained more knowledge on who i am. i am beginning to look at myself from the perspective of the bystander. three or four weeks ago i was content. three or four weeks ago i was brian. today i am still brian. but i can also see brian. i can see what three or four weeks of thoughts and drives and rides and walks and talks and prayers could do to that guy.

what's crazy are the words that have been exposed from my mouth. words i did not know because they knew me so well.
escapism, numb, immune.
what is also strange to me is that at times i have been more interested in how sentences are formed versus what they are expressing. this had caused me to love dave eggers whilst forgetting story-lines.

this has caused me to realize that i have been a jerk to people. i have ended friendships because i was too cool for them. i have hurt people. i did not realize any of this prior to three or four weeks ago because myself and my group of friends have not brought it up. we hid it. we buried it. we lied to ourselves and said it was ok, because we are comfortable now. we lied to ourselves and said that we could get away with this. we are jerks (i really do not want to offend anyone with this. i really want to make sure we are on the same page).

i am so glad that people care.
i am so glad that people pried into my mind.
i am so glad that this world is not about my level of comfort.
i am so glad that these thoughts happened.
i am so glad that people said what was right, even if they didnt know.
i am so glad that i found issues.
i am so sorry to everyone at the same time.

non-books

right now, at this exact moment, i would say my non books would be these that i will list below. for those that do not understand the concept of non-books, here you go:
I now propose a new tag: Things which one has read and has been influenced by which are not confined to those paper-bound vessels of the printed word we refer to as books. Let's call these Non-Books. Or maybe Impossible Books. Or Limen Books? It's up to you. List five.
1. dessert music
dessert is not consumed daily, dessert is a treat, a reward, a thing we crave, a thing to be treated with respect and taken in moderation. dessert music are amazing albums that become simply the best thing in the world. years after originally hearing it, it can be reheard and the taste of it is amazing. my favorite dessert albums are:

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
the number one album of all time in my mind. even the great color / photograph / century gothic cover art is amazing.

Death Cab For Cutie - We Have The Facts And We're Voting Yes

Jimmy Eat World - Clarity


2. typography
i truly dont know if this is legit. books equal large selection of type, whereas typography contains much more than books. there is something truly sexy about certain letters (the gill sans "g" / ligatures)


3. being lost
before lost in translation hit theaters i rode in a taxi from one end of beijing to a mall in the city centre with two chinese girls and an older chinese taxi driver. for forty minutes i had to trust everything: god, the driver, these girls, everything. i was in a different world. i spoke like three lines of mandarin. the driver spoke no english. the girls spoke conersational english. we were going shopping. we get out of the taxi and there were crowds everywhere. i did not understand any word. i couldnt tell if people were happy or mad. i do not know the world. i do not know the people. i do not know everything. in usa i felt comfort because i know everything. comfort does not stretch us. comfort is our dream. i love not knowing my surroundings. i just have to trust and adapt.


4. outside
i have fallen in love with being outside. probably from travelling. i love rolling up my pant legs and riding my bike around town. i love walking to campbell. i love laying on the grass at the park. i love the breeze. i love reasoning with god when the heat is too much or the wind is too strong. i love not being inside.




5. a nice pint
i truly love a nice cold pint of beer. it has nothing to do with getting drunk or hyphy. its all about the actual enjoyment of the beer. it has that dessert aspect to it. different pints for different moods. i dont have "my beer" anywhere. its always dependent upon many things that go on around that time. this also feeds into my love for finding the best pub. these are mood-dependent as well. sometimes i prefer the quieter ones. sometime i like the loud places. sometimes i like sitting outside in the afternoon with one.

shropshire





this is where i will be in november. along with a flurry of friends and english-coutry-folk.

hallelujah

killing of time

deal with the footnotes. just pretend klosterman wrote this.

moving out last summer, mixed with not having television or internet made me appreciate life more. the influence may have come from the trip to europe that i had just been on and the idea that "i spent all this money to go here, and i am not going to waste time" [1]. so i would walk around campbell, ride my bike, become a part of the community instead of being a tenant of the city. one of my highlights still is walking into town with my laptop to do what i need to do on the internet. no surfing really. im not saying i am greater than that. its more of the thought that "i dont spend money at this coffeeshop and i just sit here and use their internet, let me get out of here as soon as i can".

i feel like ive been embracing life more, based around the fact that i dont feel like im wasting time.
maybe this could do with everything that i take on, all these roles i have put myself into[2].

but somehow i feel fully responsible [3] for people who dont enjoy life. i am also totally looking into this from my own perspective, assuming that everyone wants to not kill their days with video games/internets/televisions.

at the same time, life is amazing. im 24. a large chunk of my life has been used already. that gives me subtle motivation to do something. to go climb and run and see and hear and to experience.

it basically just kills me to walk through the library at school and see so many people sitting at their same computer each day [4] playing online poker. or kristin can attest to this one man whom i witnessed playing a few different online games all at the same time. there would be so much more to everything if these people were to actually play with other people in a real game, to verbalize, to laugh, to experience.

i feel like im just hitting the gamers.

i dont even know my motivation for this. i just get stressed out when people stay inside all day long. and it doesnt even concern me. its not my issue.

[1]: i did not view reading books or relaxing as wasting time. staying at the hostel/train station/airport/___________ would not compare to going out into the town whether it was to grab a drink/watch boats pass/go to a market/___________. the alternate was always better in my mind.
[2]: im not saying these roles are bad. i love all of them. i may have originally "taken" them because they were an escape from this evil killing of time.
[3]: slight exaggeration.
[4]: multiple times a day for some

books



"The human race publishes a book every 30 seconds. If current trends continue, by 2052 the number of people writing and publishing a book in a given year will exceed the number of people who will read one."
-Gabriel Zaid

werewolf

get up on that horse and ride into the sunset

im ready to be done. i know ive counted down. and ive filled you in on my final moments.

but i went through this sadness (mild) that had me wishing that my graduation would coalesce with me finishing 7 tests and 3 papers all in one day, just so i could throw the pencil down and walk out with a smile. meanwhile the whole school would greet me on my walk from the art building to the light rail station, with high fives and handshakes.

but i am finishing my final tomorrow. and i dont graduate until the 26th.

so there are these vague "in betweens" until then. these are the opposite of high fives and handshakes.

but i do have a bit of stress (mild) that is ok with me. i work well like this. i have this and this and those to do and this place to go (de young museum in sf). and i feel that i only have two free days to accomplish these, if only i could say im done at that point.

in other news, starbucks/customer service has killed my empathy. the opposite of high fives and handshakes. but the good from this is that it is coming back. with handshakes (high fives are overused, unless its graduation) and hugs and talks and eyesight and time.

this is my informal thank you to everyone ive talked to in the last month or so about anything basically. i think only 4 people read this anyways. thank you to you 4. [high five].

valentino achak deng

"...there were things I wondered about seeing. I had heard of rivers so wide that birds could not fly across; the birds would drop midway and be subsumed by the limitless water. I had heard of land that rose so high that it was as if the earth was tilted on its side; land that was shaped like the contours of a sleeping person. I wanted to see these things and then to return to my parents, to tell them about my journey. It was when i imagined doing so that the strings inside me felt taut again, and I had to breathe heavily to loosen them."

high fiving teddybears



i gave one of these guys a high five the other night. and it was truly awesome.

Teddybears - Yours To Keep