three min. post

seems like everything is beginning. Im beginning to pay back debt that has been hanging over my head for so long. I know that Ill beginning nursing school perhaps as soon as next january. I really cant wait for that day when it seems that all the shit in my life has lifted off and it will feel good to wake up in the morning, feel good to look people in the eye, and feel good to talk to everyone. My life so far, ive begun to realize, has been spent in hiding. Favorite word of the day, torque.

"It is, of course a luxury to create art and on top of this, to insist on expressing one's own artistic opinion. Nothing is more luxurious than this." -Max Beckmann

Jean Baudrillard RIP

Today, we are everywhere surrounded by the remarkable conspicuousness of consumption and affluence, established by the multiplication of objects, services, and material goods. This now constitutes a fundamental mutation in the ecology of the human species. Strictly speaking, men of wealth are no longer surrounded by other human beings, as they have been in the past, but by objects. Their daily exchange is no longer with their fellows, but rather, statistically as a function of an ascending curve, with the acquisition and manipulation of goods and messages: from the rather complex domestic organization with its dozens of technical slaves to the “urban estate” with all the material machinery of communication and professional activity, and the permanent festive celebration of objects in advertising with the hundred daily mass media messages; from the proliferation of somewhat obsessional objects to the symbolic psychodrama which fuels the nocturnal objects which come to haunt us even in our dreams. The concepts of “environment” and “ambiance” have undoubtedly become fashionable only since we have come to live in less proximity to other human beings, in their presence and discourse, that of our stupefied power, of our potential affluence and our absence from one another.
-Jean Baudrillard from Consumer Society

In memorium

Jim's comment made me realize that Me and Rachel have lost that lovin' feelin'. I hate it when she does that. Choice for new #1 chick is being deliberated on as we speak, in my head.

which gets me to thinkin...

Democrat vs Republican is spectator sport. We love to watch, trash-talk, hype. But we forget the men who own the teams and the sport, the men behind the curtain.

right on brah

Poetry publicizes the hearth. The fictional public sphere disregards the intimacy of personal place. Our habits of thought and our small acts of attention are treated with utter indifference by a market invested only in its ability to generate more wealth for those with the most. The rest of us stand slack-jaw as the wealthy continue the fiction and we react with despair or rage or consent. But back home, by the hearth, children arrive. Plants pop out each spring. We live and die with a complex need to define private space against the encroachments of the social welfare state. Poetry argues for the privacy of our thoughts, obsessions, and desires. It publicizes our dreams and our common predicaments as individuals at odds with social institutions. LINK via Equanimity

wow I was way off

"...For although memories, of a season, for example,
Melt into a single snapshot,one cannot guard, treasure,
That stalled moment. It is too flowing, fleeting;
It is a picture of flowing, scenery, though living, mortal,
Over which an abstract action is laid out in blunt,
Harsh strokes. And to ask more than this
Is to become the tossing reeds of the slow,
Powerful stream, the trailing grasses
Playfully tugged at, but to participate in the action
No more than this." John Ashbery

T.M.P

Mom took a look at my blog earlier and made some clarifications (i.e. revisions) to my previous post.
1. It is true that in vermont we suffered a mild earth quake but she did not take me outside as I remember but took me into her room. Apparently she thought it was a good idea to stay inside the house. I was three.
2. The story about the tape measure is incorrect. I didnt steal a tape measure but longed for one. Knowing that the guy down the street, behind Flow's house she says, had one I decided to go into the woods and ask if i could have my own tape measure. This was in vermont as well when I was three and not later in connecticut as I had first assumed. And I am amazed at how my memories are swirled together with my imaginings and re-dreamings.
3. One thing I know for certain is that behind our house there was a large red tractor that was really scary.

Its raining out and I decided not to go to class today. Even though im doing well in school now I dont think ill ever out-grow my laziness. Its genetic. Im certain. I think ill become a geneticist just to prove the fact. ill never really prove it or prove it in a half-assed way because, of course, im lazy. But i love taking antomy and phys. because while im at he the hospital drawing blood im picking up on more and more things when I see patients. For example, many patients exhibit edema in their arms from excess fluid. Before I never knew the cause. But now I know it is the plasma osmolality. This is when the blood reaches the capillary level it has diffused much of its substance such as ions like sodium and potassium. Blood, which is really mostly water, wants to travel from areas of low concentration to areas of high concentration. The body naturally counter acts this effect but re-introducing elements into the blood. But when this fails, plasma keeps diffusing into cells and causing them to swell with fluid. This is edema. Enough of this though. I have ten mins left.

Another interesting fact though. Phantom limb pain is a neurological phenomenon. When a person loses an arm, they may occasionally still fell pain in that limb, or phantom limb, when no limb actually exists. A neurologist, the name i forget, found that if you put a mirror in the middle of that person's face and have them close th eye that is on the limb-less side, say the right side, the other eye will perceive two left limbs, and for that matter two painless limbs. Amazing.

4 min. from memory:

"for memories, of a season perhaps, melt into a single snapshot, one cannot gaurd, treasure, that stalled moment. It is flowing, fleeting, a picture of flowing onto which movement is painted in blunt harsh strokes. And to ask for more than this is to become "the grass by the river?', the reeds playfully tugged at, and to participate in the action no more than this." John Ashbery