Uncategorized – Page 77 – the reality tunnel

boiling springs, pennsylvania. 3:30 in the am and i am the only one in the house who is awake. my brother tim is sleeping soundly in his bed, finally retiring early after a string of late nights of risk games and dvds and whatever else it is that he does with his friends in the wee hours of the morning after i get him to take me home. it is as if now that he is sleeping normally, i inherit his insomnia.

it’s that crazy kind of insomnia. the kind i get when i’ve been drinking coffee and i start getting all these ideas in my head that i think are kind of good ideas, smart ideas but not the ideas i need to be having when i should be finishing the assignment or the studying that i had put off for so long. but i haven’t had any coffee. in fact, i haven’t had coffee since i last saw ryan before i went home for the holiday. it’s been straight tea, partially because i fealt i needed to cut back on the caffeine from the late night homework binges and partially because i’ve been ill and drinking tea at least makes me feel like i’m being proactive. kind of like now as i sip cammomile (is that supposed to put you to sleep or is it good for your stomach?) and home that i can get to bed some time soon.

i spent the evening hacking through xsl:fo stylesheets before a google search for one of xsl:fo’s more obscure nuances lead me to the realization that someone had already developed a solution to convert xml formatted resumes to other formats. it would probably be easier just to convert what i have to use their dtd but i keep coding for the educational experience. it’s been a long time since i’ve done this and it feels good to remember the feeling of writing something, testing it, debugging it. i’ve also been hacking on some php code. i like it alot better than perl. at least for the web stuff. a little more consistent and the oo stuff isn’t such a kludge. ok. that’s enough of proving how much (or how little?) i know about programming. back to other things.

i spent most of this night reading twelve which i took from tim’s room as he grumpily hovered over some mage knight figures. the book was engrossing, or i really didn’t want to sleep, but i finished the book in one sitting. i didn’t want to find the book so compelling, but decided that it was a good book and that i liked it about 3/4 of the way into it when i read a chapter where the author describes the beauty of someone playing dance dance revolution. it’s like the conversation i had with ryan a while ago. things are moving faster now. people are documenting things in real time. experiences that are similar to mine are finding their way into mainstream literary consciousness even before i have them. this is what’s new about new media. it’s sort of scary. i remember when reading books used to be about nostalgia, even when i was only a teenager.

the book is good, but i find it a little frustrating. another look at teenagers being wild and reckless and getting into trouble. i guess i knew people who had a middle-class version of that, but i like to think that the general spirit of youth is not inexhorably linked to such shinanigans. just once, i’d like to read or watch something that i fealt was representative of my life. or maybe i don’t. as i read the book i lost count of the number of references to pop culture icons, to brand names. that’s the other thing that’s new about new media. the kid who wrote this book was 18 at the time. he’s younger than me, and even though it’s only a few years, there’s that culture consciousness that just isn’t there with me. maybe that’s why i find tim so weird sometimes. but the weird thing about the book is that i could imagine a slightly younger version of myself, one born in 1982 instead of 1980 reading this book and thinking, “these characters are kind of pathetic – but kind of cool.” and that’s why i know if i ever write anything, it won’t be about culture or subculture. it won’t be my version of “tales of a punk rock nothing”, because if i were to do that, some kid would either read it and think, this is cool, not so much for the ideas but for the motifs, the name drops, the allusions and another kid would think, this is weak, this is written by some imposter, for the same reasons. that’s why science fiction is cool and so underrated. that’s why i’ve grown to love paul pope’s comic books. with scifi, he can create a future that is obviously not our world but entirely familiar and create a notion that we recognize as “cool” but that is not dependent on pop culture references or brand names.

reading the book did my head in. it’s the kind of book that i think most people could read pretty lightheartedly, but that completely fucked my head. it made me think that i’m never going to be really, really punk rock. not diy or die or “build a frames in the woods” punk rock. not that that’s a huge tragedy, but for some reason it seemed like a stark realization. it’s not that i want to be the vapid, reckless ultra-wealthy sort of brat that the book is all about, though there was probably a time when i might have, it’s that i have an idea of that world. i can read the book and think of people i’ve met. i can think of the characters and wonder that maybe this is just an extreme exploitative view and that there are bound to be people who use their wealth, education, opportunity, location, and copius free time for good instead of evil. and that i’d like to know those people. that maybe if i did i could meet a girl who i liked.* and i know that i don’t really want any part of any of that, but at the same time, i think that i might always think about it. every couple of months read something or see something or hear somehting that makes me ponder and decide all over again that i’m not interested in that life. see. it doesn’t make any sense. it fucks your head. but maybe it’s just that kind of book. or maybe it’s just that kind of night. it’s been raining steadily since midnight. i had thought that the ssound of rainfall would be tranquil, for some reason i had visions of japanese pagodas with the shadows of raindrops filtering through the rice paper walls, but for some reason, the rain disturbs me. it’s just one of those nights.

maybe it’s that i’ve been spending too many late nights and waking up too close to midday. maybe it’s driving me crazy. what i really want is to wake up early tomorrow and to go for coffee at wolf’s or the carlisle diner with time. the winter morning air will be cold but a refreshing cold, not the hand your assignment in at six in the morning because you’ve been up all night finishing it cold. we’ll sit and drink coffee and laugh and then run into some old friends and have some adventurous exciting day. not bloody likely.

* i realize that since erin and i broke up, i haven’t had much contact with girls at all. i realized this suddenly, when i found myself strangely pining for the girl who was standing behind us in line at the movies when we went to see the second lord of the rings film. she was cute but sensible, but she infuriated me because i realized that she was the rare sort of girl who seemed to be genuinely happy with the relationship she was most certainly in. she talked to boys not with that i need a boy to validate my existence flirtatiousness or with the i’m bored and my current situation isn’t working out coldness, but with an ease that spelled simple contentment. but the fact is, my world is, at the moment, a boys club. i realized this also at the movie as i looked down an entire row at our entirely male group. it’s hardest when i find myself arguing with someone after they make a particularly misogynist comment and in the midst of my argument realize that it’s been a few months since i’ve been around someone who made me really “feel” the arguments i was making. i would be scared that i was just spewing out hollow feminist rhethoric to impress a girl if not for the fact that there are no girls to impress whenever i get into these sort of arguments. this is a huge mistake. writing about girls in a web journal. do you blog here often? what a cliche. and the double whammy. writing that one realizes that one’s writing is a cliche. itself a cliche. but i guess it can’t be helped. i like girls and that makes me a little crazy.

i have a new girlfriend and her name is sally lockhart. not really. that’s just what i would have titled this entry if i had written it earlier today. sally lockhart is the protagonist in a trilogy of victorian suspense novels written by phillip pullman. they’re pretty awesome. i finished reading the third one today and it was great. not only the strong female protagonist (which, increasingly i’m not sure if i like because of political reasons or because i like girls) but also socialists teamed up with gangsters and street thugs to thwart the schemes of greedy capitalists. it’s good stuff. it makes me excited and happy, but when i think about it, that’s not how life really works. it’s not a cop out. one can’t be that good or that talented because one’s father isn’t usually murdered as part of a crazy plot thrusting you into a web of intrigue and one isn’t usually confronted with a situation where good and evil are so clearly defined or where one’s righteous path is the only one that one can take. the worst evil one will probably have to content with will be oneself and the path one takes will probably seem like that of least resistance.

it is late. or early. and maybe it’s because of that, or perhasp the tea really did work, but i now find myself feeling like i can actually fall asleep. at least it fealt good to get all that out. to write things down again. well, anyway, goodnight.

Category: Uncategorized

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