hey. hello.

it is tim. and i am here.

i just wanted to let you know that it doesnt seem to defeat me. i may be less effective, but i am still the way that i was and the way that i have been for a long time. people turn thirty-two and people turn thrity-three and people turn thirty-four and they become more plain and they begin to blend in with their parents and it doesnt seem so terrible a thing to go to the mall to them anymore, but not me, i am still fucking here. i am still the way i have been, you motherfucker. i am still weirder than ever, just not writing it down so much, so what?

jesus christ turned thrity-three and then he died he couldnt take anymore and neither could anyone else. not me. i am lost in blurs, a thousand miles beyond the pulpit. i will last until thirty-five at least.

this is just a reminder that black sheeps are still in the midst. they came of age a long time ago,. the y know the tricks. there are none that are new. i will not deny the staleness but i fucking will deny the refutation.

i am not so sure what i am supposed to do, but i am patient and i will figure it out. there are other people to cause evils. there are other people to have babiesand there are other people to fall in love. there are other people to save the planet. there are other people to make wondrous inspirations. there are other people for the tops of towers and the bottom of seas. there are other people for parades and for ditches. there are other people to squander all of their times there are other people to explore their pillows there are other people to enlighten and/or detract the wandering legions. there are all sorts of others for those sorts of things.

maybe i am destined to figure it out and then keep it to myself.

there could be something great, but i know that i will go unnoticed, and that is okay. there is every corner of a deafening and vast ocean. but i am saying that i shall remain as exactly what i have wrought, by accident and virtue, despite practice to the contrary, despite society itself. despite brown and yellow. despite white black loud quiet. despite blurs or clarity or wars or peace, i am still weird in completely intangible fashions.

nobody has ever been weird like i have been weird.

and oh, how i continue,.

I am driving an automobile at a moderate speed through a town. It is a sunny day and the economy is bad and Michael Jackson has recently passed away and the world is left with only a Beatles’ rhythm section. The automobile is a 2009 Chevrolet Cobalt, unassuming and not at all intimidating, but with a decent factory stereo and iPod functionality.

A teenager jaywalks approximately fifty yards ahead. He stares at my windshield and seems angry. He walks very slowly across the road. Very slowly, indeed. Staring all the while. It is an act of defiance. It is fresh nihilism, quiet and assured and with peppery notes, like a Cabernet Franc i had once. Or p(e)r(h)aps the teenager is fed up with the situation in Urumqi. I remove my foot from the accelerator of the automobile and apply pressure to the brake. The car slows. The intention is to avoid a collision with the teenager. When a car collides with a teenager, it is typical for the teenager to exhibit considerable wounds and abrasions, and it is typical for the driver to experience a high level of litigation and/or paperwork. These conditions are to be avoided. This avoidance is an accepted societal norm.

The act of defiance succeeds in slowing progress of the automobile and its driver towards their intended destination. The teenager reaches the opposite curb, but subsequent observation of the teenager shows no celebratory gestures, such as fist-pumping or even a smile. The teenager does not seem satisfied with the victory. The reasons for the dissatisfaction are unknown.

In the spare time i have during the event, i ponder this particular act of defiance. When did it start? From the first days of automobile / pedestrian interaction? At some later, more significant event in history where these interactions encountered an environmental change? Did it start in 1966, like all of the other aberrant behaviors? Does it occur less when larger vehicles are involved, or smaller teenagers? I feel like a scientist, and turn down my stereo to allow more questions.

What is this particular act of defiance even called? Does it have a name? I do not think that it does.

I roll down my window and ask the teenager.

“What was that called?”

“Fuck you!”

For lack of something better, i will call it ‘tarduspedestion’ for now. It is latin and has lots of syllables, so it will do, at least temporarily.

Proceeding to my destination, i envision a young Visigoth in ancient Europe. He is tarduspedestioning in front of an angry Roman senator in a chariot, on his way home with a freshly baked loaf of bread. Oh! Is it an act of defiance specifically targeting the elite?

I wish that i had a freshly baked loaf of bread.

lately, and sometimes, it is difficult to sleep. the house is little and big, and quiet and sometimes creepy. in an email to my mother i say something like “lately i am having a tough time falling asleep kind of”. my mother reminds me about how i was very little and would ask for the furnace to be turned on when i went to bed, more for the hum than the heat. it is true, my sleeping is in need of aural ambiance.

i don’t remember asking to have it energized nightly, but i do rank my parents’ furnace among one of the most pleasing sounding mechanisms ever assembled by humanity, or at least a distinct furnace manufacturer from the 1970′s, perhaps now defunct. my parents’ furnace produces a brilliant white noise, a high quality baritone whir. it is beautiful.

perhaps on my next visit to my hometown, i will conceal a recording device on my person, and i will infiltrate my parents’ house as i have done so many times before, and i will tamper with the thermostat and i will perform field recordings of the furnace in action, and i will loop the resulting tape using software, and i will manufacture a compact disc with 73 minutes and 85 seconds of furnace noise, and the sound will emanate from a small stereo beside my bed for ever and ever. perhaps there is not even a need to be so sneaky in the capturing of the furnace sound.

i will be among the ancestors of a people who google the sound of my childhood furnace for syncing to their 22nd century ipod, if people will still sleep anymore by then.

Despite the common conception, Sean Penn actually has an apparent magnitude of only 4.2, although it is true that, much like our Sun, Sean Penn will slowly evolve into a Red Giant (a process which will likely vaporize the Earth), and ultimately Sean Penn will cool and fade as a White Dwarf star over many billions of years.

Nowadays i am always in a situation where i could have had tea ten minutes ago. It’s just that the kettle doesn’t whistle anymore.

It’s almost like it wants to be a metaphor for something.

Unkempt, and with a froth, we watch our letters tumble down in flows, streaming in brooks and eddies down the mountain’s sides. At first cool and clear, the descent leaves them murky and unfathomably chained in unnatural warmth, they spurn themselves and forget those old sentences, once elevated, now phrasing into gibberish and then: Here comes the sea!

Daffodil, i have written. Some texts owe their creations to me, only. I am a partial, temporary. Friends and families do not know. I slide and blur into the foreground, slink into the background.Most do not notice if i am gone, others do not wonder.

I have earned a word. I have liked the sound.

Sometimes there is a dehydration in the head. Soul is a tired word, at least for today. SO Sometimes there is a dehydration in the head. Some people are young once, and they do not know what to do and they do not like it, and the label in fleeting moments is ‘suicidal’ even though they may never write the note.

Other people are young twice. They eat candy bars for dinner, the second time.

I eat two candy bars for dinner, even though i am in my definite thirties. I am unbelievably tired, 5:42 PM, north-eastern Florida.

I am wiser and it is a shame. There was a time when i was bright but naive and very quiet but not too awkward, and i could believe that i was in Love love with someone i had nothing in common with, and we would lay on the top of a car way out in the rurals, and there were stars falling, like meteors.This is a clue to my mood.

I Tune To The News.

Pronounce The Vowel, Colonel Mustard.

I Met A Demon, Once. It Saw Me From The Ferris Wheel.

Infinity, This Is A Non-Smoking Room.

Sorries!

I am not watching as much news, now.

-

THere are yellow dashes in the middle of the road. They are approximately two or three feet long, and maybe there are one or two feet of blank asphalt between dashes. The dashes mean that it is okay to pass slow traffic in your lane by swerving into the oncoming lane and going on by. There is a stretch of road on route #19, south of Palatka and it goes “dash – dash – dash – dash – dash – dash – dash – dash – dash” and then allofasudden the pattern explodes in a massive failure of intentional paint, a spilt bucket and all of its evidences, the colour yellow all over the southbound lane, unabashed.

I don’t know what that means.

-

I went into Orlando on Sunday. I bought records and talked about rock and roll with the shopkeepers. And i saw Tom who was no longer in Hamilton, and i saw Peter and Lourdes. They seemed happy to see me, and before that i had driven through my old neighborhood and past my apartment with the shoddy fence door, and it moved nothing inside my blood and guts.

Now it’s been a long time.

-

I was going to buy a paint. It is a special paint, applied to fingernails like nail polish, and then you bite the fingernails and wretch from the flavour. But then i remembered that i rip fingernails with other fingernails, and the teeth are only coming into the picture to trim the carnage. To wrap fossils in burlap and plaster and send them to laboratories far away, to be analyzed by the experts.

-

On Sunday night i was heading north, back to Palatka, and the moon was unbelievably large and orange. It sounded like a ghost saw, nestled into the knees of shackled divinities. All of the lights glowed in a most twinkled spirit. Enough to make a body want a home.

There was a ex hale in the at mo sphere.

-

I am on an assignment and it has been almost a month. I have not remembered myself or what i am up to. Not for a long time, now. I have a life when i am home but i do not do a great job at considering it. Everything has felt awfully impersonal, from myself to myself. It is a strange feeling. There is a portion of my head that’s no longer willing to be involved in the rest of it, and i guess that has never happened before. I like to sleep and i like to drink, and i still like to listen to the music.

I got a text message today that said “It’s snowing!” but it did not feel like deja vu, or winter either.

It would normally feel very grey, but i am not in the habit of considering it.

I have been eating a lot of fruit and drinking lots of tea. I am full of antioxidants and i am a project manager. I have fallen out of the habit of writing and i expect the trend to continue, and intensify. It is a relief and a mercy, even more than it ought to be. I feel weary lately but i like to go backpacking. I would like to find a mountain to sit on where everything is even quieter than it is right now. That is all that there is about me.

Sleep is cyclic and it will try to get you every night, usually.

Stars above Shenandoah, 18 October

Originally uploaded by amnesoid

refracted, palatka fl 7th november 2008

this week was a good week, not as much for myself or anyone that i happen to know, but i have a genuine scope and breadth of thought that is profoundly content with the political output gifted by several million citizens of a certain united states of america, on tuesday. they elected a black man with a islamic name and so did i. i have been guilty of thinking that i have very little in common with my fellow citizens, and maybe i am right or wrong.

although, now reality strikes, and we wonder if presidency is a terrible burden to be shouldered by such a talented and inspiring human being.

maybe it is one of those “now that you feel it, you don’t”. but i hope not.

-

i would knot strings to all of my fingers, and spark a remembering of reasons, in strings too.

last winter was supreme discontent, the spring was escape and toil, the summer was five thousand miles with two duffel bags, and then there was autumn. autumn was a house that i like, and no complaints. but then i might as well have been staring between the molecules of the ceiling, a line of sight with the most miniscule of gravitational waverings, past this nucleus and then another.

the entirety of my head has gone silent, and made no movement for the need to hear itself collapse or exfoliate. i guess we are all just profoundly tired. i am vowing to sleep more, participate less, and then even less. i inadvertently hone a skill for failing to remember to return phonecalls and emails and communications of viable import.

i think of a photon hitting the edge of the universe and then appearing on the other side. unscathed through malingering formulas.

i become ashamed to write that the heart shrinks, then gets big, then shrinks again.

Guide to forest animals

Originally uploaded by amnesoid

For a moment, i lose the sensation of having feet. When it returns, it becomes a very strange feeling, to have feet.

-

The weather is very nice. It is sixty-three degrees fahrenheit. I succeed only at such a climate. At no others.

-

Journal, i was supposed to write a mystery. It was to have a proper introduction of scenery and characters. It was to have a plot leading in a certain sort of direction, and then it was to alter its direction very suddenly, like a surprise. The reader was to feel a twinge, from this change in conceptual momentum. Perhaps something would go terribly wrong. There would be clues, but maybe not a hero. Heroes are for older sorts of stories.

Anyway, i have not written a mystery yet.

-

Nobody likes a quitter. But then again, nobody likes anything, these days. People are very certain. Certainty is becoming the neighborhood aberrant. Only youth is malleable, maybe.

-

I would like to quit biting my fingers into shreds. I am thirty-one, after all. I wonder if it would take a liberally-applied gel, or just a certainty that this is no longer beneficial.

I have found myself in a default. Ennui calms the reception. Raucousness is contained.

Due to delays beyond my employer’s control, I am in my hometown. I have gotten here too much. Much too much, lately. But here there is a bed that no one is in the habit of using. So i will use it. There is also a small cauldron of m&m’s to be found not far away, on the bar where my brother’s bedroom once was. The m&m’s are pushing three years of age, but they seem to have natural laws against age discrimination.

I am doing alright, thanks! Sometimes it feels like i have cobbled together a bit of a personality, following several months of effort, with lengths of twine and halves of shipwrecked birds’ nests. And hot glue guns and shellac. There is always the presence of some crisis, or the mirage of a crisis wedging itself between three or four macaroni folds inside the frontal lobe. In actuality, it is just old-fashioned and classic Me.

Today i got into the Olympic spirit. My high school has a decent track. It cost a million dollars or more, but even though its existence nullified the potential for curriculum or educational resources that could have bolstered my life and spirit, it was worth it because it looks sharp and gives me someplace to exercise when i am wandering through, romancing an old ennui.

Anyway. Clouds were drifting by very quickly. It was relatively cool for August, but there i was, running laps on a track i had helped christen with younger footfalls during a gym class in maybe 1992, maybe 1993. The track encircles the varsity soccer field. The goal frames were looking haggard. The crossbars were flaking with rust. I had scored a goal in each of them, in 1994. One was the opening tally in our first game. My achievement was made known to the school during the announcements the next morning, and everybody gave the other Tim Miller pats on the back the rest of the day, especially since he was a freshman. An unbelievable accomplishment. My other goal was a monster shot with wicked slice, engineered by the outside of my right foot, like i liked to do back then. I think that one was the sixth goal in a 7-1 rout. But anyway. Both goals were scored for the Medina Mustangs. But I decided today that i have never felt much like a Medina Mustang. And least of all now. And so i decided that i would like to rescind my contributions.

I am not completely sure how one rescinds soccer goals that happened fourteen years ago, so i decided to have a spirited virtual conversation with each of the haggard goal frames, since they were present in the then and the now. The south goal frame claimed not to remember. It shrugged its shoulders, in the way that goal frames do. However, my aura flickered with something like intensity, and the south goal frame relented. It was confused, but the south goal frame agreed that the tally no longer exists, and whatever potential for glory that that moment contained is now amalgam to my entity, again. Or for the first time.

The north goal frame had a bad attitude. It agreed fairly quickly to allow me to rescind the other goal, but it was very short with me. I never did like the north goal frame very much.

Also, i have profoundly weird and psychedelic thoughts while i exercise. I don’t know the brainscience behind why that happens, but it does.

Lee Whedon library is selling all of their books today. I think i will go, for old times’ sakes.