Knoxville, Je Te Deteste

I don't know what to say or what to think.
I have been travelling a lot because it's summer again, and when it's summer I go places, even though I didn't get to go to England again like I dreamed about so many times in my sleep over the school year. I went to Virginia three times and I fell in love with it. I came back to Knoxville two nights ago and since then I have resumed my old habit of hating myself.

Knoxville, I hate you. Je te deteste. That's French. I learned it at school.
School, je te deteste aussi.

But mostly, it's Knoxville that I cannot stand. I hate this place, with every fiber of my being. It sucks me dry. It waters me down until I'm soggy and sorry and useless. It hard-boils me until the liquid of my hopes, the juice of my dreams, has gelatinized into an impossible mass. It swells my skull like yolk swells in an egg shell, and I trash in the boiling water which surrounds me.

Actually, in all reality, the water is really more lukewarm than anything else. Knoxville is lukewarm. Infantastic, unremarkable, uninteresting, uncultured, uneducated, unreliable, unlovable. Mediocre. Knoxvegas. I writhe in it like a worm combating bad soil. It does not compute with my system. More accurately, I do not compute with its. We make each other ill.

Knoxville is the south's bumhole.

The people, apart from the few very good friends I've gathered, simply suck. They simply are either rotten fools, or angry bitches, or stupid beyond compare, or they believe that they are sent from God above to improve upon the world.
What's worse, they make me feel as though I have to prove myself as worth something.
In Virginia, in Blacksburg, I was just myself, and that was all there was to it. They could take me or leave me.
In Knoxville, I must mold. I must be squashed. I must slide around until I fit the requirements. If I fail to do so, there's simply no hope for me. I MUST be squashed.

I HATE THIS PLACE. I MUST GET OUT. It brings out the worst in me. It makes me sick within myself. The moment I force myself to sleep in my bed, where I kick and toss and turn and irreversibly tangle myself in the sheets, to the moment I rise and slump into existence, to the moment I realize that it's another day in southern suburbia (and aren't the flies lovely?), a small fragment of my hope dies.

This is no longer a game where I look on fearfully for my aspirations. This has become the real thing. My future has become endangered. Knoxville's complete lack of options, of choices, of possibility... it frightens me. I am utterly stranded within myself, and I have no hope for opportunity, no hope to escape my sure and unavoidable future which extends as a monotonous existence beneath the pressure and cracking bland concrete that is Knoxville society.

I BEG of you, DO NOT move here. Don't be fooled by its offers of comfort and hospitality. Oh, it's a comfortable life, all right. So comfortable that it won't allow you to get up and stand on your feet. As once mentioned, Knoxville is a couch, a couch of the soul-eating variety, which slowly devours your posterior, and then eventually your dreams.

Don't Tell Mother, But I Ate All Your Bacon

.

About Lolita
I can't think about it without feeling ill.
We've all be there.
The perfect puce vomit, lust-laced.
Moderately long fingernails colored an interesting shade
of bright cherry crimson...
Death by Sharpie.
I am a blueberry Froot Loop with a bright red mouth.
I like the way it looks when my neon nails graze skin.
Death by trembling.
Stanley Kubrick's was better, say critics.
It's not suppose to be funny.
It wasn't funny.
But I laughed,
in Lyne's version,
I laughed really hard when She leaned over with the tray
and said,
Don't tell mother, but...
I ate all your bacon.

Wedge of Orange

I haven't written (coherently) in a long while. Mostly just letters and weirdness and brainstorming for stories. Right now I'm at a friend's house, and he and my other good buddy are on the red suade sofa playing video games. There aren't three contollers, so I'm just over here on his laptop. I figured I would write in my blog, since I gave up my position on the controller. I'm no good at video games anyway. I like writing more, as dorky as that sounds. Haha! I'm hopeless. <3

Things have changed a lot since the summer. I'm in school, and doing okay. Not as spectacularly as I would like, but just okay. It's just the beginning of the year, anyway. I have plenty of time to warm up to things. Teehee. High school is interesting! Somehow not as horrid as they say it is. It's bound to get worse, my brother tells me. My brother is not the studious type. He doesn't believe in studying. He believes in dumb luck -- and he gets a lot. He has much potential; I wish he would apply work to his talent. He could be incredible if he wanted.

I'm in some serious need of tea right now! Iced green tea, with a little wedge of orange. A little burst of caffeine. That would be perfect.

Letter: October 4

Dear Mr. Ineffable Baritone,

I figured I could consult you on this. I have a huge problem. It can be described simply through this:



What should I do?

I miss my past. I'm writhing for it with every part of me. I'm in danger of getting sickly nostalgic every hour or so. It's gotten so bad that I can't breathe when I think that all of it is over. That it will never happen again. My heart refuses to let it slip into simple memories... no, I am living in the past. My mind is there and I can't drag it out. This would not be so petrifying if I actually wanted to embrace my future, but I don't want to do that either. In fact, I'm petrified. I hate what's looming ahead of me. I wish I could stab it with a knife and dispose of all deathly possibility. I didn't want things to happen this way.

In the process of struggling between my past and future, I have completely lost contact with my present. I'm lost. Snared. I'm breaking, Mr. IB. I can feel the brittle parts of my heart slowly, slowly fracturing.

We both need help now.

Yvette

All right, I've got the first official list of "character" (?! ...Yeah, I don't get it either) names. Here we go, in no particular order.

+ Dr. Alexander Wood
+ Gretchen Althea Elyshevitz
+ Daniel Crisp
+ Cecil Swank
+ Yvette Jarecke
+ Ms. Sarai Shakir
+ Chinatown clerk, Miss An Yi


And now for the locations!

+ Oxford
+ London (particularly Paddington)
+ Countryside
+ Chinatown
+ Dr. Wood's flat
+ Gretch's friend's apartment
+ Town transmit station
+ Philadelphia

Grammys, Anyone?

Insanity!
I really am going insane!

I'm in its clutches. I'm not on any drugs. I haven't had caff since yesterday morning, and these aren't withdrawl symptoms. I just feel like... what the hell?! GOOD! My eyes are burning and the back of my throat is closing up, but I feel good. Excellent. Ace. Wicked. Skippy. What?

Just got back from Flecktones gig. ZOH_MAI_GAWD!!
Is it just me, or does the room sort of... explode when they get on stange? It's like there's too much talent for the place to contain, so it starts to simmer under the pressure. Oh yes, I could feel the pressure. Just like Hayley Williams (what? Bad joke about mainstream band?! Blasphemy! But I do have a TWLOHA shirt, even though that technically should have nothing to do with it).

Band member evaluation:
Bela Fleck = Okay. Words are useless here. Man's a megamusic god. (If Edgar Meyer were have to shown up on stage, the entire theater would probably spontaneously combust. Just saying.) Plus, he's cute. So screams the female/homo portion of the already very excited audience. Am I sick? Yes. Okay. Moving on.
Victor Wooten = PHAT SOUND. EXTREMELY AMAZING DAZLIOUS COSMIC BASS POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!! He's my hero! He sa gwyne save thah WURLD!
Jeff Coffin = That man has a SERIOUS set of pipes! LORDY! He knows how to blat. I mean, I wasn't a big sax fan before I walked into the theator, but I've been officially converted. And I love the goatee.
Futureman (RoyEl) = LOVE THIS GUY!!! He's a bloody freakin' genius! I had no idea he INVENTED the drumitar. I juat thought it was cool enough that be played one. He's gonna reinvent the world! Watch out for the pirate man! Pyongg!

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones + me = orgasm.
The end.

Letter: September 10

Dear Mr. Ineffable Baritone,

We sat in the bed of a pick-up truck and opened the doors of the cabin wide open, and turned up the music so that even the moon could have heard it. We looked at the stars. It was strange to see them after the rain. You hummed Mozart along with the stereo, Symphony in G minor K. 183, in astounding depth. You and I just lying there, and talking. We talked about many things. You asked me many questions about my ordinary life in America. You asked me about Red Shirt Man. Your tone was peculiar and you fiddled with your shirt collar.

"How old is he?" you asked me.

"Twenty-one," I said.

Then you started buttoning and unbuttoning the cuff of your sleeve. I was suddenly thankful for the nighttime darkness and the isolation of the countryside, and only the stars watching us with silent, bright eyes.

"That's only seven years," you said. "Only a seven-year difference."

"Yeah," I agreed. The woodwinds were chirruping out of the pickup speakers and drowning out the crickets. "But it's not like that."

You stopped unbuttoning your cuff and let it hang open. The other one was still closed. You were making a decision in your head. I tried to talk more, to keep myself from knowing more. I was almost afraid of what you might settle on. Perhpas I like self-suspention. So impulsively I kept speaking.

"It could never be like that. He's married to his music."

Turning to me now, now with both cuffs unbuttoned and rolling up your sleeves, that twisted delicious gut-wrenching little smile suddenly visible in the pale light. Innately I knew that at this moment I was supposed to feel afraid. But I didn't. Not at all. If you were dangerous, then you did a fabulous job of fooling me otherwise. I had never felt so at home; safe and happy; lying in the bed of a pickup next to an old Shakespearean stage actor, curled up in his baggy London Fog sweater, hearing him mimic the melodies to near perfection. That's how it was for me. That's how it felt. I was set adrift.

"Only seven years," you murmured again, mostly to yourself. "That is not so terrible. Are you afraid of it?"

"No. I don't want it. So there is nothing to fear."

"You don't want... him?"

"No. If I did, seven years would be nothing. Absolutely nothing com -- "

I halted before what I was about to say.

"Compared to..?" Your eyes closed and you didn't finish, knowing you didn't have to. I think you were trying not to smile. In the speakers, the movement ended. The crickets took over for that short, fleeting pocket of natural emptiness, and slowly, exaggerated, so that you could see me doing it, I rolled up the sleeves of your London Fog sweater.

Letter: September 9

Dear Mr. Ineffable Baritone,

Ha ha! I remember in that precious twenty hours, we had breakfast, you and I. I was trying my best to be a possibly engaging person for you to spend your day with, and asked you quite impulsively whether or not people liked you? And you looked up from your tea with that face of yours, that signature expression, and you answered flatly,

"Not really."

I wanted to take a picture and stop time forever. It was too good. It was that one moment that made me realize exactly who you are. Exactly the way your thoughts stream throught that magnificent mind of yours... and oh how they do. Ha. Well, I'm sure you know what I mean. I asked you why it was and you just peered at me over your cup with your dark eyes which eased, if just for a moment, in amusement at the sound of my thoughtless inquiry. And you told me you weren't so sure yourself.

"Intimidation," I couldn't help but to squeak it, "is overwhelming. It can make people feel bitter..."

"Intimidation? You think that is the problem, do you?"

"It's likely."

You lowered your gaze and focused dutifully on watching the steaming dark liquid ripple over itself in your porcelain mug. Your expression was easygoing, contemplative, mildly exhausted. I remember it well, although you do not. You are probably reading these cluttered garbles and wondering whether or not I'm just making all of this up, but I'm not. This is how I saw it. This is how it went.

No matter how much time passed, you yourself never turned to an unpleasant phase. I looked at you, your easy and graceful stride, and I couldn't find the coldness they speak about. There was no razor-edge or strange distance they warned me about, or rudeness or adruptness or alienation. Perhaps I am blind, I thought at first. Perhaps I'm seeing only what I want to see. Was I? Were they all right in saying that you're not a kind person? Even if I was, I truly can't believe it in my heart. My brain can tell me, "You're just being blind and it's all wishful thinking. Nothing is ever what it seems." And something else inside me tells me, "He's himself. Whoever he is, it doesn't quite matter. Because he's himself." And that's how I settled on it. I can admit sadly that I don't know you well enough to come to a conclusion. But in twenty hours, you did not show me coldness. You showed me gentleness, charm and a small flame of strong conviction burning beneath your wise and weathered eyes. I would steal your eyes and lock them in some gothic rusting token box and whenever I opened it I would be reminded of how you looked when you said, "Not really."

So you believed that you are not liked?

And I believe that I am emotionally blind?

Then I watched your face twist into a bitter smirk and you gave me the rest of your lemon cookie and told me, "Let's get going. It's going to be a long day." And we slipped out of our breakfast cafe and ducked around the side of the building so you could show me the paintings and tell me the stories about them.

And I really do think it is intimidation. You make people go eiher very white or very red and they stare at their feet and mumble, or they'll ramble rampantly to you in order to compensate for their obvious lack of esteem compared to you. They become uncomfortable. Do not ever believe that it's because you are "cold". The fact is, my friend, that you are stately and well-composed and venerable. You carry yourself with the gravitas of a much older person, you voice is likethunder. You strike awe in people. You strike awe in me.

Letter: September 5

Dear Mr. Ineffable Baritone,

I know you think you don't know me. But you do. You... did. For a very short amount of time, about a day. Twenty hours to be exact. We spent the day together, doing whatever we wanted to do. It was about a week before your incident. I am going to write to you. I am going to reconstruct things I remember about who you were. You have to forgive me when I skip around. I'm struggling to put it down.

It was an oddly misplaced phenomenon to view your being, stately and groomed as it always is, in McDonald's. Like that sculpture of a Grecian hero I saw in the Uffizi, and what it would have looked like if I were to place it in the center of Wal-Mart. A tropical fish in a trout farm. Amusingly, and brazenly, clashing like some surrealist figure... And the moment you spoke your voice made a conflict with everything surrounding you. So, even, that I had to bite back mirth.

Is it possible that I was only yards away from you? I don't think it's likely. Surely you would not be at Paddington Station in the late part of May. That would be something unconditionally lucky (on my part). I must have crossed paths with so many important, authoritative people that day but you're the only one I was concerned about. I've only seen you once. And despite what people tell me, once is not enough to last me a lifetime. Once is enough to drive me mad. Well, regardless of whether or not you were home that day in Paddington Station, I wasn't able to see much beside the pidgeons and some kind of love letter from Crete written in blue pen stuck to the bottom of my shoe. (Maybe someday I'll find out who wrote the letter. It was unsigned, addressed to "Beowulf", and says that "the weather is unclement in Crete this week". Why does that sound encoded? London is filled with mysteries. Including the toilets.) Well, yes. Pidgeons and a piece of paper stuck to my Merrills. What am I to do?

They say you're a cold kind of guy. I don't think so. I think you just know what you want and what you like and you probably don't bother with the rest. You could, but you don't. That's what I like about you. Your mind works in complicated intrevals and thought is oriented around soul. You want to know why I know that? So do I. It's driving me nuts.

Mr. IB, I know everything about you. I know how you think and why you think it. I can erad your actions moments beofre they even happen. My mind is tied to yours at the core like a correspondance system. Somehow I can never doubt what you're saying to me. And when you tell a fib or a lie about something, to sidestep a complicated subject, or to conceal some component of your life, I know it immediately. I may not know the truth behind your mild fabrications, but I do know that there is something brilliant lurking behind your eyes. There is something precious which you must not let out.

As I was saying, some people claim that you are cold. Distant and difficult to reach. I claim that you are startlingly warm. Like pulling a favorite sweater out of the dryer and feeling it bless your skin with its freshness. Something familiar and embracing. How could you be cold? You are no colder than a brick baking in the sun. You are not colder than a herald angel's voice. No more distant than a heart to beating. I feel every contour of yor thought processes as though I could run my fingertips over them. And, although on my part this is somewhat difficult to admit to you who are sitting reading and utter unremembering victim to my observations of you, I must imagine what sensations I could conjure if I were to run my fingertips over your physical form and be as equally so involved with this area of observation as I am with your mind. I would feel your palms and the work your hands have done. But I cannot.

So often you are incomplete to me, just as my own incomplete letters to you will never be signed with my name.

Do you ever wonder what my palms feel like too?

Letter: August 17

Dear Mr. Ineffable Baritone,

We've established many things about each other over the last month or so, and I feel it is safe to share these truths which I did not hold to be self-evident, because it actually took a lot of time to investigate. Twenty hours is not a long time to get to know someone, i now realize with a sad heart. But no matter.

+ You were a stage actor, mostly for Shakepearean plays, in which you graced Hamlet in cloth and earth-shatteringly deep theater voice.

+ You do not need to eat. Not if you don't want to. Not anything. I have tried and failed to bribe you out of the closet with food, but apparently you do not accept leverage. Of any kind.

+ You would probably look very nice and suave and cleaned-up if you decided to shave-and-suit one day. Although I must say, the turtlenecks and battered blue jeans are kind of eye-catching.

+ You probably could get away with anything if you wanted to. The baritone, after all, is ineffable, and can convince nearly any person who isn't deaf to do anything or believe any words you wanted them to. (Then again, even a deaf person would be intimidated by the deeply-resounding vibrations you voice makes in the concrete.)If you told me that you were going to grind up power tools in a blender and drink them as an energy shake, I would totally go for it and set you loose in my dad's workshop and garage. I shit you not.

+ If I ever asked you to set me loose in your garage, you'd raise your eyebrows and tell me that I must be feeling frisky today.