(no subject)
I'm shavin' my shoulders...
So, Kung Fu soon. Should get ready for that. Ayup.
Fall makes me so happy. I love rain, and I love overcast, and I love seeing leaves falling from trees and leaves still on the trees turning bright, bright red. Darla and I did the Mill windows the other day (the two at the back) in fall colors - she did one window I did the other. Hers were all candy-reds and fake-oranges and flat, uninteresting yellows. Mine was deep, saturated reds and oranges, shifting pinks and textured browns and bright, lifting golds, and inky blacks and a poster of Bob Marley just because I could. And everything had texture - flat colors are boring. Suffice it to say that my display was better.
In other news, you know how sometimes you write something just because you want to write something and you think it's crap until you read it later? Well, here's a little something much like that...
*
There are only a few people in the world who are allowed to truly express themselves. There are plenty of people who express what other people want to express. There are more than enough who pretend to express themselves but only make fools of themselves, and that’s even worse. And there are too many people who just never even pretend, which, while sad, is perhaps the more honorable route.
There are a few people, however, who find themselves struck with an urge. Some call it a muse. Some call it divine inspiration. Some people find themselves struck with an irrepresible urge to show the world who they are, because they simply can’t hold it inside. These are usually the people who’s true selves will get them in trouble.
These urges can be suppressed, as the thousands of other people teach us. You can tell when someone’s suppressing something. They give the impression of someone wearing clothes that don’t fit right. They may not live very long, and if they do they’re often miserable.
But a man who fits his skin is exactly who he says he is. If he says he’s a man who loves his wife and his kids and dog and football, he probably is. But the man who says of course he loves his wife and kids and dog and football, why wouldn’t he, why wouldn’t he be perfect in his perfect life? He’s the one who you’ll find on the end of a noose, or face downin his bathtub, or with his wrists slashed to the elbows or sharing a bed with an empty bottle of sleeping pills never to wake again.
But once in a while you find yourself seated on a bus next to a gem, the genuine article. You see the man with the flower on his ear? You see the man with the sparkle in his eyes and entirely too much make up? He’s the one who allows himself to Be. And that, my friends, is the only thing that truly matters.
~
Thirteen years had not made James DeHothen a sports star. Nor had they made him a devout religous man destined for preisthood. They’d hardly made him a great artist or an amazing musician or even something like an actor. But they had made him a dreamer, a poet, and an honest man, as Cervantes was rumored to have been accused of.
De’Jamie, as his friends usually called him, had only once been drunk. It hadn’t suited him. He entered himself in a contest in eighth grade, a writing contest. His best friend had slipped him a flask of bourbon before he’d had to read a short narrative about his life in front of the school and most of the town, a narrative describing in detail the perversions of his mind. That flask of bourbon had saved his sanity and perhaps his life that night, but now the queasy sensation of drunkeness brought back to his mind the cries of shock and shame that had echoed through the cloud, the smudgy bit of brownie that had stuck to his forehead, and the man who pulled the microphone away from his stupidly grinning face as he staggared off the stage. Still drunk, De’Jamie had burnt his story that night, and to this day couldn’t remember a word of what he’d revealed to the public in that fog. If he’d not had that flask, who knows what might have happened. Maybe he’d not have slurred his words so badly and he might have been successful. Or maybe he just would have been allowed to feel his shame more clearly and probably burnt himself that night instead of his story. We may never know.
The only useful thing he remembered about that night was his outfit. He’d worn a pair of black jeans ripped up to the crotch in both inseams, and other rips placed artfully around at irregular intervals. His T-shirt didn’t hold the visage of Marylin Manson or any other such dead giveaway. Instead it bore a few strange, incomprehensible latin words that only De’Jamie knew to read “Self, Vision, Ostricised” carved directly out of the fabric. His arms were draped with clever black fabric that highlighted the sinuey muscles of his arms and flowed out behind them like the wings in Edgar Allen Poe’s epic poem. He’d dyed his hair black a month before, and let the roots grow out, giving the illusion of a black fog, like a sickness, floating above a sea of baby-blonde. It was magical to him. It wasn’t what he usually wanted to wear, but it was what he wore that night. If he’d worn his usual at-home garb, he’d have been lynched.
For the town of Oakville South Carolina had no love of transvestites.
*
Yeah, just a blurb. Rick (druggie hippie guy from the show who gives me rides) liked it a lot. Tell me what you think! Good points, bad points, constructive criticism, etc. Please?
So, Kung Fu soon. Should get ready for that. Ayup.
Fall makes me so happy. I love rain, and I love overcast, and I love seeing leaves falling from trees and leaves still on the trees turning bright, bright red. Darla and I did the Mill windows the other day (the two at the back) in fall colors - she did one window I did the other. Hers were all candy-reds and fake-oranges and flat, uninteresting yellows. Mine was deep, saturated reds and oranges, shifting pinks and textured browns and bright, lifting golds, and inky blacks and a poster of Bob Marley just because I could. And everything had texture - flat colors are boring. Suffice it to say that my display was better.
In other news, you know how sometimes you write something just because you want to write something and you think it's crap until you read it later? Well, here's a little something much like that...
*
There are only a few people in the world who are allowed to truly express themselves. There are plenty of people who express what other people want to express. There are more than enough who pretend to express themselves but only make fools of themselves, and that’s even worse. And there are too many people who just never even pretend, which, while sad, is perhaps the more honorable route.
There are a few people, however, who find themselves struck with an urge. Some call it a muse. Some call it divine inspiration. Some people find themselves struck with an irrepresible urge to show the world who they are, because they simply can’t hold it inside. These are usually the people who’s true selves will get them in trouble.
These urges can be suppressed, as the thousands of other people teach us. You can tell when someone’s suppressing something. They give the impression of someone wearing clothes that don’t fit right. They may not live very long, and if they do they’re often miserable.
But a man who fits his skin is exactly who he says he is. If he says he’s a man who loves his wife and his kids and dog and football, he probably is. But the man who says of course he loves his wife and kids and dog and football, why wouldn’t he, why wouldn’t he be perfect in his perfect life? He’s the one who you’ll find on the end of a noose, or face downin his bathtub, or with his wrists slashed to the elbows or sharing a bed with an empty bottle of sleeping pills never to wake again.
But once in a while you find yourself seated on a bus next to a gem, the genuine article. You see the man with the flower on his ear? You see the man with the sparkle in his eyes and entirely too much make up? He’s the one who allows himself to Be. And that, my friends, is the only thing that truly matters.
~
Thirteen years had not made James DeHothen a sports star. Nor had they made him a devout religous man destined for preisthood. They’d hardly made him a great artist or an amazing musician or even something like an actor. But they had made him a dreamer, a poet, and an honest man, as Cervantes was rumored to have been accused of.
De’Jamie, as his friends usually called him, had only once been drunk. It hadn’t suited him. He entered himself in a contest in eighth grade, a writing contest. His best friend had slipped him a flask of bourbon before he’d had to read a short narrative about his life in front of the school and most of the town, a narrative describing in detail the perversions of his mind. That flask of bourbon had saved his sanity and perhaps his life that night, but now the queasy sensation of drunkeness brought back to his mind the cries of shock and shame that had echoed through the cloud, the smudgy bit of brownie that had stuck to his forehead, and the man who pulled the microphone away from his stupidly grinning face as he staggared off the stage. Still drunk, De’Jamie had burnt his story that night, and to this day couldn’t remember a word of what he’d revealed to the public in that fog. If he’d not had that flask, who knows what might have happened. Maybe he’d not have slurred his words so badly and he might have been successful. Or maybe he just would have been allowed to feel his shame more clearly and probably burnt himself that night instead of his story. We may never know.
The only useful thing he remembered about that night was his outfit. He’d worn a pair of black jeans ripped up to the crotch in both inseams, and other rips placed artfully around at irregular intervals. His T-shirt didn’t hold the visage of Marylin Manson or any other such dead giveaway. Instead it bore a few strange, incomprehensible latin words that only De’Jamie knew to read “Self, Vision, Ostricised” carved directly out of the fabric. His arms were draped with clever black fabric that highlighted the sinuey muscles of his arms and flowed out behind them like the wings in Edgar Allen Poe’s epic poem. He’d dyed his hair black a month before, and let the roots grow out, giving the illusion of a black fog, like a sickness, floating above a sea of baby-blonde. It was magical to him. It wasn’t what he usually wanted to wear, but it was what he wore that night. If he’d worn his usual at-home garb, he’d have been lynched.
For the town of Oakville South Carolina had no love of transvestites.
*
Yeah, just a blurb. Rick (druggie hippie guy from the show who gives me rides) liked it a lot. Tell me what you think! Good points, bad points, constructive criticism, etc. Please?