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saw this picture at the art museum yesterday by 3rd grader abigail b. big fan, i feel like this is kinda what i want to try to do with my color art
google maps scares me. there's so many houses!
good day in kville, back home with dog on lap. saw 3 more people i knew than i estimated i would
getting back into reading the left hand of darkness, near the end now. i like this plodding story of weird love and ice
grateful for the people in my life who give me a lot of joy, a hearty heart hands to you all
—-IDI BLASKS
saw dehd they were great, saw fellow flounderer funkengine and her friend great to see them both, saw N and L and their cute baby, saw C who now is a bouncer at a bar, saw les mis with mothbaby, treeprophet, G, & S, saw N who i forgot is a wild individual with a wild energy and soul, he’s learning roundabout on the guitar. and i sung karaoke !
rose bud thorn time
rose: les mis is good yall, and it’s funny to me how stuck it is in so many peoples minds
bud: tomorrow in kirksville and also getting back to see my dog
thorn: someone i very vaguely know is texting me hardcore forwardly and it’s making me very uncomfortable!!!!!
bout to go to my college town to see a band i last saw like the day before covid became a thing
been having a lot of dreams where my dad is disappointed in me. please stop dad
saw a good show and had good conversations there (wednesday). then (thursday) i played on the mbg softball team against the st louis city council. they won. i want to get better at softball.
the weather is making me very happy
—later—
haven’t been out of the city in a while. almost forgot about patches of wood followed by patches of field followed by patches of wood. listening to talking heads which i associate with walking around kirksville at night. remembering tripping with E and A, leaving, driving realizing i was still pretty dang high, walking beck thinking a man standing outside the wooden nickel in silhouette was some kind of god figure, going home and staring at beck (who used to like sleeping across the room in the closet), drawing much comfort from the fact that he was with me, and going to sleep.
flounder #flounder
fantastic weekend i especially loved any time i was outside especially at the park with my friends. got a camera inspired by the excellent picture taking of princess-jesus. i have already taken 1000 photos of beck (see below). my goal is to take a picture of a cryptid.
saw my grandpa and he told me his grandpa used to tell him stories about bears in the woods, then take him out in the woods and carve a squash (???) into a thing that made a terrifying noise when blown into. then he would blow into it.
my grandpa is a wild person who truly emerged from the annals of the earth and spent his childhood walking around being weird and running bookie money for the mob. then he became an alcoholic and gave my dad the shittiest childhood. then he stopped drinking and became an asshole but an asshole who cared and always stocked vess soda in his fridge and was a weirdly early adopter of the internet. then, slowly, with age, he lost the "caring" part and became just an asshole. but he can still be fun to talk to.
my family is full of weirdos. all weirdo family, and i do love them
talking on the phone to a bunch of old people makes me jealous of the amount of time these retired folks have
i love dogs
in a daze. feeling a lot of interesting, strange, somewhat new, good and bad emotions about a number of people in my life (vague!). isabel told me to go on a hike by myself this weekend. i think i'm gonna do it because i need that.
the other isobel told me to watch a youtube documentary about an internet celebrity i've never heard of. the two isoabels stand at each corner of my life, heralds of the various possible paths one can take.
finished roberto bolano's the return. here are my favorite stories from the book:
1. the return
2. clara (influenced by the fact that there's a great audiobook version of this on youtube)
3. detectives
4. snow
but really they're all pretty good and flow together into a little dream. i'm going to read more of him
the mood: like i could do fifteen consecutive forward rolls, then do fifteen more
the dungeons and dragons movie
i saw the dungeons and dragon movie with the movie stars in it
in other news, my dnd group is talking about "wrapping it up" because folks are moving out of stl. so many people are moving out of stl soon. change is hard and weird
speaking of weird, i've had a real weird feeling the last couple days. i oftentimes feel like i'm hanging from a ladder. my whole life is hanging from this ladder. sometimes i can climb up the ladder at the rate of like 1 rung every 3-4 months. sometimes i can only hang on. the real bad thing is to go down the ladder, haven't done that in a while
semi-related, in grad school i decided i had made it to "phase 2" of my life. i don't really know what that means. but sometimes i ask myself "is phase 2 over, is this phase 3" but no, definitely not. maybe when i'm like 40, that'll be phase 3
i live very slowly. this might be because there is still a large part of me that believes in immortality. that i will live forever. thus, nothing must be done with any haste. everything that has happened will happen again, if it doesn't happen this time i'll catch it the next time. there are no regrets in infinity
this kind of feeling, it's bittersweet
stuff:
1. went to the zine open mic last night for "a moment zine" which i loved. people are out in the world being amazing poets all the time it's incredible. and in such diff ways! sad poems sweet poems funny poems nature poems, all of em i love. glad duke nightboy had the privilege of reading the arch submission too :)
2. big fan of a particular dog walking route i scouted out a week or so ago. you get to walk by this weird donkey statue that looks like a creepy dog at night. but also it feels very "nestled in" to my little neighborhood that i have come to really like a lot
3. been thinking about:
-calling all liquids "lickys"
-a guy who's "so creative" he can't train his dog cuz he keeps putting innovative new spins on the commands and the dog gets confused
-u.f."you" instead of u.f.o. -- is this anything. maybe this is inspirational
tire
s
browsing the st louis tab on bandcamp in classic moldgold fashion. found a guy who does "office blues" music and it's kinda great
https://homeandoffice.bandcamp.com/album/sports-leisure
made pancakes for some pals yesterday, then hung out with some other pals at the park. the cool thing about pals is they're great. tonight is the night of the zine open mic - i'm a little nervous but i'm hoping practicing reading my poems beforehand will make me less nervous. i've picked out the order i'm gonna read em in
tomorrow i go see dungeons and dragons the film with my dnd group which i think is really funny
yesterday i had a real good jam with my friends. there was barking and coughing, spitting sneezing and throwbacks to some classic songs of old. a certified good time. big fan of my friends.
then i had /another/ good jam today with a different friend, wow what are the chances! had fun hanging too. we played a song they wrote about oranges, the lyrics were amazing and i believe i appreciate the orange more now.
then my dog met bugleague's dog. it was one of those dog meetings where they were like "oh huh" and went about their little dog businesses. i love both of those lovely dogs. i learned a bit about goblin and the ways of goblin's world
now: i am going to go food shopping before night comes
it is truly spring. i sit on a folding chair in my little backyard surveying my lot in life. my dog is eating grass. there is a sound sounding like the loudest bee ever but i can’t find it. dogs are barking, people are yelling over the sounds of lawnmowers. clanking and clunking drifting in from the fabrication plant across the street
oftentimes i feel like a jester prince slowly plotting, sitting and doing my thinking. my dog is my familiar. i write curses and praises and these have little magical effects elsewhere far away. other times i feel like a little beetle ambling along climbing over things with much care.
here i am in the little world….
location update!! i've moved locations. i'm sitting in a fancier chair on the seventh floor of the powell symphony hall backrooms. i'm here for a meeting about database systems. bela fleck is playing tonight. i can see the arch directly out the window if i look up.
floundering at a work event like it's 2022. it's weird to be working an event especially since i've been slacking off at work so much. i think 4 million percent less about work than i used to. still kinda fun to put on my pretend professional persona for a couple hours
i feel myself slowly descending into hermit mode, so i'm fighting to still go out and do things. "rowen's hole" as it's so eloquently been described ha ha, is real and can be helpful but also (shock!) dangerous!
on flounder again at the office of idi blasks
i'm going to start reading nana, which i've always been interested in reading
i've been remembering a lot more dreams lately because my sleep is different i think because of "the medication". the other night i had a dream about this enormous soccer player with square hands who was super famous and i waited in line to talk to him with my friend A who could go in and out of paper at will. the whole thing took place in a mansion-castle sort of location. the soccer player was the brother of the person who previously lived in my house. dreams!
update: nana is interesting. enjoying it. so much drama in nana! i hope the two nanas end up happy but i doubt it's gonna happen
NIGHT!
worked on my zine almost the whole night, i am very excited for when it is done. been thinking a lot tonite about shoemaker-levy 9. i put a collage about it in the zine. one of those things that feels very emotionally profound to me but i don't really know why. it was like astral ballet, hopeful and tragic and strange? something about jupiter being involved, who knows
i'm beginning to worry that my poetry isn't as direct as i want it to be. something to think about
in other news, don cherry is a very good and cool musician.
i feel incredibly whole right now, like i'm doing everything i would want to be doing. it's a good feeling!
saw the sandlot for the first time last night.
finished stephen king's night shift and pivoting focus to bliss montage. my favorite stories were:
i know what you need
sometimes they come back
children of the corn
trucks
enjoying bliss montage so far. tempted to pick up her book severance. i'm going to the bookstore today, if i see it i'll get it
going to guitar center feels like being pranked. fictional location
feeling a lot better today.
enchanted by this exchange from this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeonS_gjVEI
wow, i had the worst nightmare i’ve had in a long time. willing today to be good.
day 8 of my medically induced anxiety attack. hanging on hard to the words of every brave internet user who says it gets better after like 3 weeks
one interesting thing about my current state of mind tho: it makes me realize i really have made progress climbing out of anxiety. i used to feel like this all the time. it took me like 10 years but i managed to think my way out of feeling shitty all the time ha
lazy day. been reading "ted's caving page" off and on. i remember reading it long ago but not too much else about it. definitely one of those things that stuck in my mind tho
zoloft making me real real tired. and in other news, my dog is real cute
two days ago i went to a Reading of Poetry
one days ago i went to a cool music show at my friends' house
no days ago i am tired, still i helped someone move some stuff and worked on a moment zine
will probably go to bed early tonite
oh, and i've been shopping around the stand up comedy bit about st. louis seen in the below entry. my friend A said i should draw it out real long and we decided much of it would be dedicated to exalting the beauty of vess soda. personally, i drank vess soda for much of my childhood, did not realize that was a st louis thing. i have new respect for this city even though it was nighttime when i got off the plane
ADIEU
imagining a "office stand up guy" that goes: "i got an email the other day that my pc password's going to expire in 2 days. guess it's time to find a new job!" then everyone laughs
speaking of stand up (something i never watch but have been thinking about a lot lately?) here's an idea for a joke that i legit can't tell if it's funny. here goes: "st louis, st louis huh, yeah beautiful city beautiful place. lovely. i just flew in last night, actually. great town. but hey, except one thing. my flight got in pretty late. when i stepped out of the airport, it was night out i could barely see anything!"
well, that's all from me
update: just performed this office standup bit to my coworkers to WEAK laughter
here's what i know about zoloft. 1) i took it this morning. 2)my coworker tried it and it didn't work. she recommends lexapro. 3)my other coworker is on it and said it took her 3 months to get used to it. 4) ween made a song about it
hashtag march is meds month #marchismedsmonth
my attempt to read a bunch of short stories has quickly morphed into an attempt to read a bunch of short horror stories. recently i've enjoyed:
marghanita laski's "the tower"
poe's "the facts in the case of m. valdemar"
that guy stephen king's "i know what you need"
now i'm reading an "internet-based horror fiction piece" called "the left right game". it's like a horror story, but they put it onto the internet! you read it on the internet. i found about about it from a top 20 list on oprah's website. this is the power of web
living in the city is realizing literally everybody everywhere is an insanely good artist. which for me, a little critter who likes cool art and is desperately trying to hold on to the cliffside of Making Art with a curled and quaking finger, is both exhilarating and intimidating. the zine i work on, we get so many fantastic poets writing wonderful things, and on flounder itself you’ve got great great poemwriters writing very good stuff (i read most to all of it and i enjoy it very much :) !). this is (surely) a cool world, at times.
right now i am reading two short story collections, ling ma’s bliss montage and stephen king’s night shift. i picked them because they seemed like they were coming at making a similar thing from different directions. i’ve never read much stephen king and hold no particular love in my heart for him, but i thought it would be interesting to try.
also found some cool zines the other day called “optical prevarication” by someone named matthew koerber who takes a picture and then writes a story based on the picture. the writing is so fun and improvisational, and also devoid of a certain type of irony in a really refreshing way, i wish i could show them to you here on flounder dot online.
as for my own little art: i am having a lot of fun drawing for my upcoming zine themed around puking. i am also having a lot of fun writing poems, but what i really want is a couple good stories to put in there. i think i’m getting close. i wrote what i think is a pretty good one about a toxic throuple who get off on re-enacting moments when they lost it at their customer service jobs, but it’s missing something so i’m shelving it.
had a great time this weekend! :)
tuesday i meet with a doctor to talk about antidepressants. i think this might be good for me, tho i am worried about it. i dont even know if itll work at all! the world of the unknown is scary
a lot of unknowns in the future. determined to have maximum fun with my fun little life, this is the goal to strive toward
hi mere!
i find it a little odd that while my dog will try to eat anything from the ground i have /no/ desire to do that. surely there should be some innate instinct telling me food is food and i should eat whatever, not a huge instinct or anything but yknow, something i have to resist a lil
had a real good talk with my brother R (not my littlest brother but my second littlest brother of 23 years Age) last night. excited to go see his improv shows when those start happening. i will never not love seeing improv, it is always funny to me
realized one of the flipper's guitar folks is cornelius. both great
wildweek, had good friend times,
had a serious talk with a friend that i think went well, but it'll probably be a little awkward for a while
danced a real nice time (friday),
ate a real good cake (saturday), went to a dive bar (someone should write an essay about how touchtunes has changed dive bars), saw a guy get kicked out for being a creep, a guy bought me a drink cuz it was my birthday
still quite enjoying dnd (sunday), been like 6 months since we started playing which is wild
misread a "who rescued who" bumper sticker as "who recycled who" and that's really stickin in my head
in a very "stand up comedy" mode. humor's most liminal space
also in my head:
-my friend's concept of "it takes two to laugh", which i believe and respect
-the era where no one knew what was going on on the surface of mars and they thought there was canals and aliens up there. take me back
-miranda and steve of sex and the city
-but seriously who recycled who
cried listening to jethro tull's jack-in-the-green, really says it all
part 2 of not my birthday, the part that's still not my birthday. the big finale
i am 27 years old
part 1 of not my birthday!
this is the last year my younger brother is younger than me. he'll have 7 birthdays before i do
this is a real good poem:
https://www.newnewsinews.com/issue6/griffin
things done lately:
-put "peel and stick" wallpaper up on a wall, happy about how it turned out
-went to a local comedy show in the style of late night tv. my friend played guitar and it was real good! the format reminded me of when i was 14 and for some reason cared about late night tv, watched craig ferguson every night and got annoyed when leno came back and kicked conan out
-played catch with my son i mean fetch with my dog
-pancakes at stl legendary location gooseberries cannot be beat good pan cake
things thought lately:
-about a were-planet that turns into a big ball of fur at full moon?
-about squirrels who live an a mountain slope never knowing flatness and one day find flat land and are real freaked out by it?
-boy claires?
-the vase illusion still
the vase illusion is by far the best illusion
chilling out at work on "president day" (??)
thinking a lot about the following objects:
1) trash cans. i've had to be on the hunt for them lately because i'm walking my dog in a new part of the city. old neighborhood was full of 'em, new neighborhood, you're gonna find 'em at bars and that's about it. planning my dogwalk routes around accessible trash cans
2) phones. first of all i hate mine and want to never look at it again, but then i keep looking at it. classic. but answering the phone at work is a whole different animal, which i hate too but it's also really funny. you can adopt a fun little sense of professionalism, hold a big old receiver in your hand, slam it down in a fun way when you're done, act like you're a sex and the city banal workaholic side character - do it all.
stl and my new place has got me in object mode. house mode. extreme home makeover mode. i strive to be both the property brothers at once, the yin and the yang.
somehow i have managed to work out like 10 days in a row, happy about that
made an appointment with A Doctor to talk about getting on some kind of anti depressant
one of my twitter mutuals is doing a "gex week". got me thinking about gex and how he has remained a cult favorite for what i feel are shallow reasons (the absurdity of his one-liners, his magazine ads). there is more to gex. like he is kind of poised to become the symbol/metaphor for both "reference as humor" and "90s pop culture as a whole". i think his popularity will continue to grow. (personally? i could take or leave him)
probably going to call in sick from work tomorrow for mostly fake reasons
current goal: go to a coffee shop this weekend and write. the fact that i've never really done this while living in stl is ludricous
--
today is saturday — thursday i went on a hike with my dad, then friday i went on another hike with my dad. very beautiful hikes in different biomes.
definitely ready to leave. i love my family, but i could not live with them for longer than a week and a half. there is so much fear and anxiety involved in their lives in really weird ways. and it makes me see the fear and anxiety in myself. every risk is mitigated, catastrophe is around every corner. it’s reiterated to me that i have to work hard to leave that behind and do creative stuff and not stagnate.
excited to go back to stl. worried about the future, and excited. deeply appreciative of the people i have met over the course of my life. end of journal for now :)
dropped J off this morning at the bus stop. went out to the university and went to a museum and some thrift stores. picked J up from school in the afternoon, met his kindergarten teacher who seems very nice. my stepmom does volunteer work at the school, setting up a monthly art lesson and helping J's teacher out.
J and i played outside for a long time -- we invented a new form of hopscotch that allows you to increase or decrease the difficulty at will via a series of optional shortcuts and/or difficult jumps.
i think it took me until today, but i have re-perfected the kind of humor the tiny youth find funny. the last time i had honed this skill was when i taught summer camp 4 years ago. my hopscotch-related humor was on point today and i'm proud of that. mostly just saying "oh hopscotch? oh yeah, i know hopscotch. i hopscotch all the time, let's do it" and then doing hopscotch wrong in increasingly abstract ways
haven't been sleeping well :(
slow day. ended up staying in reading/doing art/napping. dropped J off at is morning bus the last two days, gonna do that all week and pick him up tomorrow.
also tomorrow, going to go look at the fancy university library building for kicks and walk around a bunch.
had a really great conversation with my stepmom, and later my stepmom and my dad. i love them both very much :)
before that i went out on "the town"
seattle vs st louis: coming from a place of pure favoritism, st louis in a heartbeat. i am a creature of the midwest. seattle is a polite, well-dressed, very cool city that cares above all else about money.
i went to two museums, and then i took a great long winding walk to a coffee shop where i got veggie toast and coffee. there was a guy outside the window working really hard on sudoku.
the amount of paul simon i have heard while in seattle is astounding. seattle loves paul simon. not even just the hits, they're serving up whole albums of paul simon.
walking to a coffee shop makes me remember i can do that back home, too. i don't do that enough. days are so long when you make time to do things in them. i spend too much of every day not doing things. it took until my senior year of college to realize i enjoyed doing things -- my life since has been spent peeling off layers of plastic wrap one at a time learning how to do things. i will continue that process.
idi blasks will continue to approach life real clumsy-like until they figure it out. paul simon sounds like vampire weekend because they both crib world music
1. my little brother J's plan today was to play minecraft for 10 hours. there would be a snack break every hour and bathroom breaks whenever if you needed to go. we played for about 1.5 hours, then i showed him a "how it's made" video on how they make legos. then we went out in the rain and played basketball, soccer, frisbee, and threw a toy plane that would do a loop-de-loop. it was fun.
2. i feel better about myself today than i did yesterday. talked to my stepmom about her recent breast cancer scare and how up-in-the-air that can make your life feel. talked on the phone to my /other/ brother R about his move to a new apartment in april. i've been feeling lightheaded lately, so i'm going to start taking iron and b12 regularly as much as i can make myself. and i think i'm going to start eating protein bars once a day. sometimes i feel very grounded into the world (like when i eat a mushroom) and other times i feel like i'm looking at what my eyes can see from very far away. this is a time in my life where i'm considering getting medicated.
anyway tomorrow J will be at school and my dad will be at work, so i'm going to go flipping and flopping all over downtown i think.
1. got into seattle last night. i love my dad, but i can feel myself getting annoyed by him. he still watches all the same videos about tiny houses and rvs and vacations without going out there and doing those things. but we’re all kinda like that sometimes — it takes a lot to take action. i feel like something needs to happen in his life that would shock him out of the rut he’s in.
he asked me about everything going on in my life, and he’s afraid someone’s going to break into my house while i’m gone. fear based in something you literally can’t control at all. there are more security devices/cams around the house than the last time i visited 1.5 years ago. folks losing trust in community.
2. things i think are cool about my dad:
a. he writes poetry now
b. he reads philosophy and is emotionally honest about his fear of death
c. he successfully quit twitter, something i have never been able to do
d. he is, in general, a great person
3. my little brother, J, is a six-year-old certified Gamer who loves minecraft, industrial electronic music, and math. we took him to gamestop for the first time in his six-year old life. gamestop nowadays is a slackers/hot topic hybrid with the aesthetics of Boy Claire’s. we then played minecraft for several hours.
4. still not really sure who i am or what life should be like going forward
writing this on an airplane to Seattle to transfer to flounder later.
1. i always forget how much i enjoy reading until i start reading again. right now i am reading The Left Hand of Darkness and enjoying it.
2. i had the longest talk i've ever had with my reserved, almost silent uncle. he rode with me to the airport so he could drive my car back when i left -- something i'm very grateful for.
a. we puzzled over why my cousin (his son) likes guns so much, an obsession that developed at an early age seemingly out of nowhere and steered my cousin toward libertarianism
b. he talked about his simultaneous reticence/desire to be in a band. the last time he was in a band was almost 30 years ago. they were a hard rock/metal group and my uncle had told them the genre was dying and that he wanted to move on. they kicked him out of the band.
c. my uncle was worried because he sees his musical taste as varied and intricate, but spotify always knows what he wants to listen to. 'people don't get me, but machines have already figured me out.' i responded that maybe this just means there's a lot of like-minded folks out there feeding the algorithm with their like-minded tastes, and he could take solace in that. dunno if true.
3. my boss at my old Truman job told me back then that the core tenant of her life was Grace. i think about that frequently and i think for now, the core tenant of my life is Gratitude. i am grateful for my life and the people in it, past and present, who are all trying very hard to live their lives in their own way. i'm grateful to keep learning things and i want to express this gratitude to myself and others. i need to learn more ways to do this.
