I love what I see when my eyes are closed. It's perfect. Everything has meaning. Everything has color. Everyone smiles. When my eyes are open...sometimes...it's not that far off.

So I was raised republican and mormon. I grew up in a small town in a large empty state. I was a happy child. I no longer consider myself republican, mormon, or a child. I am in a large town in a small state. I often as myself what decisions did I make in my life to get me where I am today. I'm overpaid to work a job I'm not qualified for, and no one seems to care. The quality of work doesn't matter, just so long as there is someone there to do it. I don't make a dime to do what I'm good at, and what I love to do. That's all right...I'm not in it for the money. I grew up with friends. I have friends now, but none of the same ones. Every day of my life I grow closer to one person and farther away from another. It's never, ever the same two people in that equation. God, fate, or providence...whatever, provide for me new people weekly. I am always irreversably changed by each new face that I encounter. There are many people I don't ever want to lose. I will. Loss is unavoidable...the question is not how to keep a person in my life...just how to keep them for a few seconds longer than I should. I miss those I'm not in contact with. Not, however, enough to make contact. I love all of you...and a whole hell of a lot more of you than will read this. I grew up, but the child inside still cries in his sleep. Not for fear...just for understanding that the world will change around him. Safe from harm...just not from change. I'm not afraid of pain. I'm afraid of the future pain. Yet...though it all...nothing is more exhillerating than knowing that tomorrow...I'll be alive. Change or not...pain or not...I get to breathe in the morning. I love all of you.

Is there order in the chaos? I have to ask this only because inside my brain there seems to be no order. Does it matter? Why do we seek order? What reward does it offer? I live in a constant state of chaos clutter and flux...yet I get by every day. I have what I need. I do what I love. I love who I can. All of you. Sometimes the wheel seems a little flat. I have to push a little harder to go the same distance. This has been one of those weeks. Motivation is at an all time low. I question. I dance. I sleep, but that feels like such a waste of time, yet on the other hand it feels so good. I don't pay my wife enough attention, yet she doesn't complain. I love her. I don't give her enough, and she still chooses me. Again the scales are unbalanced. I'm selfish, fat, bald, and have changed my religion on her. She still chooses me. When I look in the mirror, I realize...I would choose me too. God bless her. God bless all of you. Goodnight. You are why my heart bleeds. Thank you.

I want to see you naked.

I just erased an entire blog. It was four paragraphs and you'll never read it. That's all right. There is a reason I erased it. IT WAS RETARDED. My mind is a dark alley...you should never go in there alone. However much like a dark alley...once you shed some light on it you discover that there isn't much too it at all. Tonight I hate intellectuals. I don't understand why they all have to be so goddamned stupid. I don't understand the nature of the man who's smarter than everybody...and whose life goal is to prove it. I'd rather keep my mouth shut and let everyone think me a fool...than to open it and remove all doubt. Thanks for that one Oscar. I wish that the people who really deserved goodness, and kindness, and hope, and light...actually got it. I wish that money didn't buy happiness. Don't kid yourselves on that one...It wasn't untill after the beatles were all millionaires that they sang about not caring much for money...before they were big...yes...they sang about it...needing it, wanting it, and not having it. Tangents suck. Of course you can't go off on a tangent if you never had a point to begin with. Rambling scattered thoughts with no coherent throughline...my blogs are like a goddamn Beckett play. Well...Beckett's a genius...an intellectual. I know this because I've been told and I don't understand him. Why do the things we want elude us? Is chasing better than getting? I know I've said that before...but...just a thought. We can only chase what we don't have...I'm chasing sleep. I love all of you.

If I had a gopher that sat on my shoulder and it spoke to me...I think that would be creepy. David Berkowitz in New York 1977 had a next door neighbor that owned a dog named sam. Sam told David to kill, so David did. That is also creepy. I'm glad I don't own a gopher.

Tonight my brain is tired and empty. Paul McCartney apparently died in 1966 and was replaced by an imposter. That's okay I guess. John died in 1980 and proved himself absolutely irreplaceable. No surprise there. George Harrison died in 2002 and nobody noticed, and Ringo is trying desperately to convince the world that he's not dead yet. Maybe it is better to burn out than to fade away. James Dean died young and left a beautiful corpse...of course it was mangled beyond compare and buried away anyway. A boy I know wears his dead grandfather around his neck. I carry my dead grandfather in my brain, and a good friend of mine carries her dead brother in her heart. The egyptians mummified, the Romans crucified. There is no such thing as immortality. Even in memory we are lost. All the stories are untrue. We leave edited ghosts, and even the ghosts soon become more fiction that fact. Universal reflections. Images in a mirror. Light bounced around the campfire, reflected off the faces of strangers and lost in a second. We are dead before we wake. It's everybody's tragic ending. Why fear it. The inevitable is only frightening when it's anticipated. Some have courage, some have strength, some have hope. Some are bored. I'm not bored. Tonight, my brain is tired and empty.

So...some maintain that there is a global conspiracy. A plot to take over the world. I say...so what. Let em have it, they want it so bad. As long as I got a big mac, a playstation, some music, a treadmill...and...ah screw it. So Europe is moving toward unification, Tony Blair is a puppet, and not even a cute one at that. The CIA paid Osama to knock over a couple large buildings and it worked, because the USA got everything it wanted out of it. And we all talk about the great recovery of our great nation. PEOPLE DIED. Lots of people died for what??? So we could ask our leaders to take away just a few of our freedoms. All right I didn't want em anyway. Still haven't figured out the whole Iraq thing. All I know is people died. None of the right ones either. It's impossible for me to believe that our government is that inept. In the history of our nation...we have only gotten one...that's right ONE tyrant that we have gone after. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Qadafi...still in power. Saddam...unaccounted for. Osama...still on dialysis. Castro...over seventy years old and still smokin...practically in our backyard. Either our military is completely disfunctional...or all of these people still serve a purpose and are better for us alive than dead. Hhhmmm. We need our villians. I think we just need to figure out who those villians are. Just remember...a vote for Joseph Leiberman is a vote for big brother. A vote for George W. is a vote for Big Brother's big brother. It doesn't matter, don't you see. The only way to win...is to never...ever...be afraid. Of anything. If a terrorist blows up the Superbowl..say NO...WE DO NOT WANT A HOMELAND SECURITY ACT. NO, WE DO NOT WANT A TERROR ALERT SYSTEM. NO...WE DO NOT WANT DONALD RUMSFIELD ON OUR T.V...GIVE US HOMER SIMPSON BY GOD AND GET OFF MY CABLE T.V. The government cannot protect you. They have never been able to. Don't for one minute believe that they can. They feed off of our insecurity. Our fear is their power. I AM NOT AFRAID.

Why is everyone so concerned with reality? With sanity? With being crazy. Ohh look at me I'm crazy...I'm insane...I'm extreme. I'm... screw you. You aren't crazy or insane. You are a human being with human emotions with human fears. You are not special. You are not a unique or beautiful snowflake. Why do people all have to dress the same, listen to the same music, get the same tatoos, and read the same books to express their individuality? Being individual doesn't mean being different, or being the same. All it means is being unapologetically, perfectly, fully, you. Don't pretend. Don't act. Don't try to understand or condemn. Just be. If you like something...like it...if you don't, don't. No excuses. Reality is just another reason for people to give up. It's an automatic excuse for not living. For not giving. For not taking. Reality is only about limits...and there are no limits. Ever. For any reason. If it can be thought, reasoned, imagined, hoped...or dreamt. It can be done. Do it. Only if you want it. Only if you can't exist without it. Know it.

Why does insomnia always happen at the least convenient times? Any other night this entire past week wouldn't have mattered...but the night before I go back to work and I'm wired. My heart is unexplicably racing...I'm sweating like a racehorse...I don't feel sick, just anxious. I started thinking about the scheduling hell that will become my life soon, and well...here I am. The tables have turned...My wife who is usually up until the sun comes up has just said goodnight and I'm on some weird schedule. It will manifest itself at the worst times tomorrow. I need a new job. Me and a hundred million other americans. I wish I could get paid to offer up smart quippy one line observations about strangers. That would be a good job. Just find a new location every day...watch some people for a while...and talk about how...terrible, goofy, ugly, beautiful, homeless, retarded, or otherwise worse than me they really are. I'd start at an old folks home. Easy target I know...but first day on the job got to make a good impression. Hey you old bag of skin...I may hate my job, but at least in the morning I'll still be alive...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Of course the tide will change. Someday I'll be old. My skin will be falling off my body because the ground is a more enticing place to be than my bones. My teeth will be rotten because no matter how hard I try...they will disintigrate with time. I'll stink, because old people just do...and I'll look at the smartass kid looking at me pointing and laughing and say yeah kid...tomorrow I'll die. But happy. And you can't take that away.

What if I'm not as smart as I think I am? What if I'm not as talented? Well then, by God...at least I've got my looks. Even if that doesn't make you laugh...I'm rollin. And to me, that's all that matters. Sometimes I have a million thoughts, that strike me as major breakthroughs in something and I can't be coherent about them. I try to formulate a sentence and everything just comes out words. Words. Words. You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal...except my life, except my life...except my life. Falling in love is easy. Focus dear boy focus for there are thing both in heaven and earth not dreamt of in our philosophy. Television theme songs run in my head and mozart rots in an unmarked grave. Fuck you mozart, your silly tune taught me the symbols by which I write this drivel. I don't understand where my anger comes from...or where it goes. For that matter I don't understand logic or love...the heart can't love...it's a vessel for circulating 5 quarts of blood. The brain...thinks...sort of...but then why does it feel that all of my thoughts come from outside of myself...explain that Dr. Freud. You too are rotting, but your grave has an incredibly pretentious marker. You'd probably like it, but you'll never see it. A dog I know will soon be glass. Not a diamond though. That would take too long. We're burning up our dead dinasaurs at an incredible rate. When they're gone, then we'll have to find a new reason to blow up small countries. Free the women and children first...there aren't enough boats for everybody. When kitty dies...I won't turn him into glass...somehow I think he would find that demoralizing. Of course that's projection, but that's what free thinking logical reasoning humans do. Project our own feelings onto everything around us...so goodnight moon. My heart pumps blood for all of you.

I wish all the insignificant people would dissapear. Of course I guess to most of the rest of the world I would be included on that list. My idea of heaven is reincarnation. I honestly want to do it all again...and again...and again. My karma is so stacked against me now that i would probably come back as Rodney Dangerfield's jock strap. I think I need to put more good out there...balance out my yin and my yang. I can't fathom liking any type of afterlife as much as i like the before death. I can't understand not wanting to be here. I wish I could talk to animals. I would ask kitty why he's such an evil little bastard. I would also ask an Elephant to charge the whitehouse. And the mgm lions to eat one of the trainers. That would be funny. Of course I would rack up more bad Karma...but...I wish we could still work on a system of bartering. I hate money. I hate that I need it. I wish I could trade sexual favors for goods and services. Of course with my sexual talents I'd still be just as poor as I am now. I wish I wasn't fat...but at least I have both arms. I only have the sight equal to that of a one eyed man...but at least with two I get depth perception. I don't understand why my computer has more pop-ups than I do. I don't understand why everybody (including myself) is really rude in some way to at least one other person every single day...in either thought...word...or action. Again with the bad karma. I think I make God cry...but he makes so many others cry...maybe it balances out. My sister lost three baby's. It's true...three, that were born alive and dead within an hour. God didn't see fit to give those babies any soft tissue. No kidney's lungs...or anything. He gives baby's to women who leave there kids in hot cars and microwaves instead. Bitter much??? Yeah probably. The funny thing is...my sister has probably come to terms easier than I have. So its a bummer this thing called life. People cry...people die...people say goodbye. Love falls apart, and there is no replacement. People are alone...no homes...no christmas trees...no food...and through all that...there is nothing greater. There is no where I'd rather be. There is no one I'd rather be. Through it all the easiest lesson for me to learn, was that happiness is a choice. there is nothing that can ever take that from me. Nothing hurts completely...nothing destroys completely. There is always hope. There is always someone...somewhere...who misses me. I love all of you. I do.

Good evening, and welcome home to me. Yes I've been away for a few days but I make my less than triumphant return to the land of sand and alcohol. Glad to be home. Seattle was nice however. The company was mostly nice. The weather was almost entirely perfect. Erica and I spent four days together and avoided the topic like the plague. It was a pretty good four days. We went for a wedding. My brother in law was wed, in a beautiful ceremony to a beautiful girl, with beautiful music in the background, with a beautiful setting and bare feet on glorious green grass. The pastor liked to give God the thumbs up when he prayed. This is the universal sign for "yeah we're buddies and everything's cool." He said beautiful words and the brides father cried. Then the bridesmaid's cried, then the groom cried. There were tears and camera flashes. God said...I do...amen...let's eat. Then the dancing...then the honeymoon. And I thought to myself why? Not the pessimistic, cynical, negative why...but the actual why. Where did this come from. It occured to me, that despite religious or cultural tradition...every society from the beginning of time...has practiced some form of marriage. A ceremonial binding of a man to a woman. I understand this in a Christian tradition...which is essentially only 2000 years old...even a Judeo-Christian tradition (More relevant to Western religious culture for the past few centuries) which could date back to Adam...if he existed. But what about a Chinese...or Hindu culture. What about African...Australian Aborigine...American Indian? Where did the Tradition begin. Why. I understand the idea of the first Cavemen coming out into sunlight and organizing society with laws and rules...but what authority was given to initiate the ceremony. Regardless of Race or Culture...some Holy Man always presides over a religious/societal program in which a man and woman are joined by law and recognized as a structural unit. Where and how did this begin? I can't even fathom the full social/religious implications of this question. We lament now the fall of this structural unit. The disintigration of marriage...and oddly enough...religion has nothing to do with it. (That's right all my mormon friends out there...catholic alike...The Rate of Divorce in the Mormon (and any other church) is almost equal to that of the National average) But is this a negative. I know that pain is inherantly involved. It has to be. But pain is involved in everything. Pain is necessary to the Life experience of any Human Being. Pain aside...what if the marriage isn't progressive? Can two people be in love and be bad for each other? Should people defy the Gods and logic and follow strictly their own hearts, passions, and desires? What is love? What is it that makes people desire monogomy...or not. What is the full consequence of absolute sexual anarchy? Are we inherantly lonely? Can we be happy? Together? Alone? The pastor at the wedding in Seattle said beautiful words, prayed with a thumbs up to God and gave fantastic advice. The officiator at my wedding forgot the words to the ceremony three seperate times...had to leave the room to remember them, and the only advice we got was to stay out of debt, which we promptly ignored. But I hear the Ceremony was beautiful. All I truly remember was looking at the beautiful face of a beautiful woman who I respect, admire, and still love deeply, and wondered, as the officiator left the room to find the words the third time around...if this was some sort of sign. Kitty was very happy to see us after four days gone. Thumbs up to all ya'all.

Everybody wrote today but me. I didn't because I can't. Erica's in pain. Her back hurts, but pain goes deeper. I'm in pain. Communication takes place on digital airwaves and buried internet cables. Eye to eye...what? I want...I need...I had...I am...what?...Memories are sweeter than honey, but where does the honey go when you swallow. What's left. The only eternal is why.

It's getting increasingly difficult to find time to write. Of course that will change soon. Soon my rehearsal schedule will change and calm down and my nights will be much more free. Life changes so often that it becomes the norm. Some things stay exactly the same, and others are constantly different. I come to realizations on a daily basis about so many things that by the end of the day I've forgotten all of them. I sleep. My dreams don't make any sense and then I wake up. I fear death. Not because of the unknown, or any type of afterlife punishment, which I'm sure I deserve, and I know I'll get. I'm okay with that. I am willing to take consequences. I fear death because I like life so much. No idea of heaven sounds as good to me as what I've got now. Even with the pain, the loss, the anguish, the confusion, the struggles. I can't imagine a place where we aren't supposed to have these things anymore...i.e. heaven...as being as wonderful as this place with all these things. I wish it could be realized that happiness is within our grasp here, and now. It's not a phantom to be chased...it's not a mystery to be solved. It's just a decision. To have it...or not. In spite of all the things that make us unhappy...perhaps they to are a link to the very cause of our happiness. It's all part of the great adventure. I love that Frank's phone is a coke can. I love that Erica has discovered a source of her questions about her own personality. I love that Joel and Deanne found each other. Whether it lasts or doesn't isn't important. Who cares. They have each other now. Maybe everything isn't supposed to last forever. Maybe it is. Who konws...or cares. I love Mark White's singing voice. I love Kyle's openness. I love Sarah's quietness. I love Katrina's laughter...and everything that causes it. I love that Alexia is going to New York even though I will miss her terribly. I could go on forever...but the point is...I love everything...I love all of you. The one's I mentioned, and the ones I didn't. I love loving you. It can't, It won't, and indeed, maybe it shouldn't last forever...but it is here now. It is who I am. You are all who I am. Good night. Sleep well. Even if you aren't in my dreams. You are in my heart. Good night Kitty. You evil little bastard.