*No, this is all too much

I am having some cognitive dissonance right now. I can't be the bad person that I'm made out to be. I'm inherently good, but my mouth is so large, and so gaping, that no doubt some dreary, judgmental things will fall out, unbeknownst to me.

(At this point in the writing process, I tried to drink my tea that I had spilled on the ground minutes before, but it was too hot to drink, far too hot. It spilled out of my mouth and onto my designer jeans. At least I bought these on an outrageous sale.)

People still have lapses of sense-making. I've encountered some big egos bulging past some skulls. Last night was a blowout. Also, I can't speak for the life of me to people who are from different cultures. I'm too open. I'm too honest. I'm too forward.

I'm too much*, I've found.

I feel so old.

The city is gorgeous, though. I will go to the High Line and read for awhile, I think.

Or outside.

I'll go outside.

My pants are still wet from the tea, but there is some shine.

I enjoy work, at least. Hell, when I take a step back, I enjoy all of it.

I'll be able to write better standup after this.

That was uncalled for (to be)

I am walking down the street with a 14" by 28" poster of Laurence Fishburne dressed as Thurgood Marshall because the former is playing the latter in a new off-Broadway show (16 WEEKS ONLY!). It was free at work, so I nabbed it, grabbed it and advertised, nearly a sandwichboard, down 8th avenue. I received many looks and stares of all sorts, but only two verbal recognitions. One was friendly. Thanks Khonsu. The other was:

"What's this?"

"Thurgood Marshall. It's new."

Realizing, "Oh! Clarence Thomas doesn't observe that hideous fucking Communist idiology."

The last sentence was for clarity's sake, apparently. It was like he had planned out a sentence about Marshall for weeks, but didn't know where to place it, or he learned this somewhere and was simply repeating it. He was angry, too.

And then he was gone.

¡Lo encontré! (Suddenly I see)

I saw some ugly people on the street today. I thought they were both attractive, but I realized I was looking between them. See, one of them had a jagged, squat face and the other had a overly long face, just shy of horse. I thought, maybe if they had children, the problem would be solved,

but no, of course not. The baby would get features of both sides in all the wrong places.

So, I smile at ugly people, I mean I smile at attractive people, too, but I make sure to smile at ugly people, and I usually receive coy grin in return. Perfect!

Or sometimes, probably, they were thinking, "I'm going to smile at this ugly young man walking towards me. He deserves it." I think I'm the originator when the ugly people already had me marked.

We're all ugly, aren't we?

On the related note, I like to pick up on one or two pieces of minutia about someone's personality or features and make a nickname out of it. Peter, Max and I used the Irish setup, most often.

Look at the Mousey McMouserson or Loudy McHairysmith.

We tried to use the German arrangement, but Smellsy Von Bigarmsheim just lacked the rhythm.

The Village used to be cool. It has pockets of truth, of opportunity for any and every dream, but there are just too many people looking for what was, what could've been. I want everyone to smile back when I walk home.

I'll make an effort.

Pero tengo drogas, Señora...

Es un chiste. Nunca puedo tener drogas, Señora.

There are too many pretty faces in this city. I can't make my mark and sow my seeds with just one! That is like only eating one kind of chocolate, or marrying only one woman, for one's whole life.

Ridiculous, right?

I learned much about the Village this weekend.

The place is full of assumptions, most of them positive.

Por ejemplo:

- If one wears a suit, one must be an adult.

- If one has facial hair, one must be an adult (This is the same in England, I've learned).

- If one is walking, one must enjoy comedy (That's really just a lesson of comedy clubs in general, put forth strongest by Times Square).

- If one doesn't drink, then there must be something wrong.

And you can say anything to pretty much anyone and it doesn't matter whether it's true or not.

There are so many people in this city that it is unlikely that you will see them again unless they frequent your work or home. Facebook and a phone and a pad of paper can only do so much.

I should be researching and taking notes, but here I am, again, old friend.

Shouldn't we always be more productive than we are?

"NO! False assumption! You've spent too much time in the Village, thinking, Joel."

Well, I would say (hablaría), It's already tomorrow and the day is done, so we can just give up on giving up and work for the sun.

Es Pablo,

I saw Justine again.
I saw her earlier this week, but I didn't have time to say anything. I had forgotten her name, so I just let her pass and it was like watching sand drop in an hourglass. Today I talked to her, she had forgotten my name, and in all honesty, I only remembered because I wrote it down, thinking she was going to be an important figure.

It meant less today. It means less. She is another person.
I have decided that for a couple years it's just handshakes and earnest conversation.
The more the merrier.

Cafe Esperanto had tasty food. I recommend it. I need to be in the Village more.

The longer I stay, the more I know that I can get anything I want here. If I want to smoke, if I want to drink, if I want to snort, to eat, to thrive, to die, to be a face in the crowd, or boost my ego, I can have it all,
except for sense of belonging.

I'll keep looking.

Wallfllowers no pueden ayudar

Walking down the street, trying to see through the eyes of the passing people, I was distracted. I didn't have time to warm my waffles. It was a day like that, you know.

I round the corner of Rite Aid, strolling back to my apartment complex (simplex), I spot a woman ambling in my direction. I don't feel special, I know whe isn't walking towards me. She is struggling, though. The closer I get, the more obvious this struggle becomes. She is walking slower than a mile an hour, with a cane in one hand, and another hand searching, searching for something to hold.

I should help her, I think. I should lead her somewhere, or at least offer my help, but here I am, again, stuck in a city of judgemental glances and helpless people. What do I do? What can I do? What could I do?
Nothing. I did nothing.

After I passed her, I held the door for one of my friends. He keeps glancing and can't decide either. On the elevator, we agree that we wanted to help the woman, but,

"But," my friend said in the elevator, "you don't know about her." He laughed, lost somewhere.
I agreed.

From Point A to 6 in Two Hours (Why are downloaded songs all lowercase?)

Joel Arken
Fellow Joseph Plourde
Freshman Seminar
5 October 2009
The New School Reader: The Vices and 1964
Post-Modernism is dead. It started off dead and here we are, 2009. It’s still dead. Erich Fromm’s “Our Way of Life Makes Us Miserable” was a quick, concise accusation of modern man. It echoes Walter Benjamin’s theses of distraction from “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Representation.” We are a diverted, disturbed people. Fromm’s piece was written in the beginning of an overhaul of commodity and consumerism. He weathered the ‘50s, but if he only knew what was to come.
That is to say, Fromm didn’t know how right he was. He wrote that “our present way of life leads to increasing anxiety, helplessness and, eventually, to the disintegration of our culture.” Most negative aspects that plagued “This Modern Era” of the sixties, the overabundance, the use and abuse of toxic intoxicants, and the alienation of man through technology, have all grown to newfound, extraordinary versions of their previous selves.
We have become the fattest and most grotesque nation because of the overabundance of food, and poverty has stricken the poorest of us with the least healthy food, leading to obesity in the ones who can fight it least. We have an abundance of medicine, but only those working, and Not even All of those, have access. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, over 30,000 suicides occurred in 2006. I myself bore witness to two in my high school, within a year. We have abundance of therapy, self-help books, life coaches, but the amount of those identified with neuroses and disorders is growing.
Physical abuse is still common. Drug abuse is more prevalent than it has ever been. Meth has replaced heroin in the war on drugs. Pharmaceuticals have replaced cocaine as the drug of the affluent. Marijuana and alcohol begin to be abused in middle elementary schools. Culture-bound syndromes of eating disorders, shopping disorders, attention disorders and the like are finding their place in the American lexicon.

Anything can be found online. Books can be sold, bought, downloaded, ripped, stored, stolen, and read all without thinking about stepping near a library. Information is everywhere. Where the internet was a military operation, it is now a poorly-sourced book of all information one could ever need. Advertisements are on every medium, save public broadcasting.
Machines that once were used and implemented by man have made some jobs, careers, futures obsolete. Computers buy, sell, steal, or give. Automation is the new feature in supermarkets, in theatres, in workplaces for security. Everything is faster; everything is more efficient.
Maybe it’s that nothing has changed that bothers us nostalgic types. The symptoms are worse, the diagnosis, more severe, but if I know one thing, it’s that cynicism is dead, too. Hope is the new black. We are the new “I.” Community is coming back in a new way. Thousands want to dedicate themselves to enrichment of life, to art, to ‘super-lienation.’ We are becoming constant and perpetual machines of interest, of power, of influence and interest. Testimony is the invention of this new century. I’m no Buddhist, but there is balance out there, it’s the duty to find it, share it (for free, of course), exploit it, gain it, and become it.

We have inherited death and dying and internalized it, externalizing hate and greed and doubt, but so self-consciously. We are the new dead, but we don’t know otherwise.

Just a comparison, Don't fret, Don't panic

I was running to work this morning.
I apologized when I was in the way of someone.
Knowing that everyone else's time is worth just as much as mine, I try to not stop anyone from going on with their business.

A car was stuck in the middle of an intersection, many started to cross, and he honked and sped into the street. I gave him a sarcastic thumbs up, thinking that he was taking away from my time and all of the time of these other people, but
I FORGOT,
his time is just as worthy.

It's hard to be self-aware and be right at the same time.

Everything needs a clever title

I'm struggling here, God.
I was praying earlier. That's new for me. I felt like I had to. I directed toward one omniscient, invisible being rather than mumbling and grumbling and laughing to myself like I usually do.

I really want to be fully monk. I want to be suprahuman. I want to transcend and care only with empathy, but WOW do I get mad.
I get SO mad. I get disgusted, I get hateful, I get bitter. I want to work past this.

There are always people that inspire this. They will hunt you out, if you aren't aware of them. They become apparent. Life is an off-white background with a lot of shady characters making indents.
There is this one small guy with a growing adolescent moustache and long, unkempt hair. He makes me mad. He scrounges like a rat and wears a backpack and a jacket when it isn't cold. I want to disagree with him. I want to hate him.
I was at an open-mic and he read some stuff and it was a funny, sick book and I saw where from where he came and I understood him, a little. I was settled with that. My blood didn't boil. I just was.

There's this girl in my dorm. She's funny and pretty and enjoyable, but she doesn't like me when she's sober. I was walking late and I ran into her (and twelve others that had fought sobriety and won). I said something like "You've got shit on your teeth,"
When I meant, "Your teeth look blue in this light."
Now she won't like me when she's drunk, either.
I can only laugh sometimes. That's the only answer.

There's also a guy that lives VERY close to me that reminds me of my friends from years ago, from when I was angry with ignorance, condescension and immaturity. He embodies that. I call him a child sometimes and I stoop low, and that solves nothing. He isn't recycling. I told him it bothered me and it was irresponsible. "Okay Joel," he said. "Bye bye now, Joel."

Christ, I know you have a plan and all, but right now, I'm struggling.