Hello from Phoenix

Recently I purchased On Avery Island, Neutral Milk Hotel’s first album. The songs “Baby for Pree” and “Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone” stream through my head all day, and I occasionally sneak back to the bedroom to listen. Curling up on this sofa-bed with big headphones on recalls Phoenix visits from long ago. On Christmas of eighth grade or so, my sister got me CDs by Dashboard Confessional (wah) and Creed (wah wah), and on the off chance I hear one of either of their songs, my brain immediately jumps back to being in this room with lights off and certain songs on repeat.

The way I listen to music has changed so much. When I was younger, there was no music in my house and all I ever heard was bubblegummy Radio Disney in the car, so in middle school, when I started to hear anything else for the first time, I think I was charmed by anything emotional. I remember really liking the intricate(-sounding to a beginning guitarist) finger-picking on “One Last Breath” and being immediately grabbed by the one weird modulation in the first chorus amid an otherwise very simple chord progression, and the level of devotion and tiny bits of wordplay in “Hands Down”.

I think I used to be drawn to songs about things I desired. “One Last Breath” for guitar skills and “Hands Down” for devoted (mutual) love. A year or so later I was obsessed with “Far Away Boys” by Flogging Molly because of my fascination with Ireland. I never found or listened to songs that I felt described a part of my own situation.

Maybe this is associated with the general sense of identity-less-ness that defines my younger self. I remember eighth-grade-me coming up with nifty guitar bits and feeling like I could write songs if I had anything to write about. A year or so prior, I remember wanting a pair of skatery shoes instead of the dorky athletic shoes my mom always bought for me but being too embarrassed to bring it up. Elementary school me was not particularly interested in video games like my friends but played them anyway because I had no idea what could replace them. I grew up without any idea what I liked in music, fashion, humor, stories, food, anything. Being here now and listening to things that are very meaningful to me feels like repayment for all of the years that I was sort of transparent. Instead of being affirming and relieving, it makes me feel like I missed out on childhood and have only just begun to be some sort of human being. So many things that I feel define ME are recent additions.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, but it felt like something worth sending into cyber-space.

Ain't it funny how you feel, when you're findin' out it's real

Dream:

Sarah and I are driving down to Monterey to play a show with Skyler. As we drive, the US map zooms out and we drive through a number of cities in Arizona and New York. As we drive we practice the song "Sugar Mountain" by Neil Young or whoever. In the dream, I wrote it.

When we get there, we are dismayed to see only Skyler's friends in attendance and no other Levines. Sarah and I are worried that our set won't be child friendly and we consider adding "Inch by Inch" to the end but I feel stupid. I try to make jokes, but they're terrible.

Last night/this morning's dream had something to do with being at an enormous shopping mall with my family, so enormous that it some of it had to be kept outside, and since it was so rainy and muddy, I decided it would be best to take my shoes off and not get them dirty. We eventually got where we were going, which was an escalator up to a giant movie theater. Because of how pristine the steps of the escalator and the radiant people riding it were, I decided to put my shoes on but they were nowhere to be found! I retraced our steps and eventually made it to a hillside where a very nice couple were making out surrounded by orange sandals. All of the sandals looked like mine, and the couple tried to be helpful, but every time I got close, some detail was wrong and none of them fit.

A journal excerpt from a few days ago reads: "My dream entries are embarrassingly scant lately." The tables are turning.

My cat just peed in my bed and I feel like crying because it's late and I'm tired and/or a girl.

I was a secret admiree!

I was (figuratively) thumbing through old emails and came upon this... sent to me from my own email address, 12/13/06

"dear kevin

you used a laptop during 6th period today, didnt you?

well, crazy you, you decided to forget to sign out of gmail.

therefore i have officially hacked your gmail account!!!

dont worry, i didnt do anything but write this email :):)

<3 your secret admirer"

My first reaction was charmed. My second was pretty weirded out. My ultimate was...

Who the fuck could that have been??

desirs impossibles

In astronomy today we learned about white dwarves, where a star in the same range of mass as the sun dies and is compressed down to the size of two Earths. If you were able to stand on one without burning to a crisp, the force of its gravity would make short work of your skeleton and compress you into a puddle of protoplasm. Mr. Fraknoi shared this as a joke, I guess, but the image was harrowing to me. Buckling bones is kind of disgusting, but more so the idea of gravity (or anything) holding you down with such force that you weren’t free to move anymore gave me this sickly feeling all over. Never before have I so appreciated our Earthly ability to stand up straight and run and jump.

I feel sometimes like I am in danger of implosion. When I am in a crowd of people I retract limbs and squeeze sideways to avoid contact. When acted on by outside forces I would rather lessen myself in accordance with them than push back and abolish them. We are creatures of appetite—for breath, for food, for sleep, for love, for sex, for friendship, for vindication, for stories and understanding, for blankets and fire when it’s cold, and cool water when it’s hot—and when anyone’s desires, or perceived desires, or even just established modes of existence make themselves known, I am usually the first to remove my appetites from the situation. I don’t eat meat because of half-formed moral implications, I don’t initiate friendships on my own because I don’t want to bother people who may not be interested, I don’t share things with my parents because I don’t want to shatter their perception of me. My few attempts at just-for-fun romance have ended tangled and ugly. I feel a kind of responsibility toward most people. I want to be what people want me to be, but at the same time I don’t like to feel like I’m doing something just to appease the beast. Desire and responsibility get muddled to the point that I don’t really know what it is that I want, and end up stagnant.

Lately I look at vaporous things with envy. It seems so easy to be something with no permanent shape or desires. Ties are never formed and can never be broken. Even gravity’s influence is lessened, and clouds just billow and float, unattached and free.

But at the same time, gaseous matter can never bite into a juicy apple, or drift to sleep aglow in a lover’s arms, or enjoy any kind of worldly pleasure. Maybe my desires would be less infuriating if I gave into them more often, but I don’t know how to wield that kind of freedom and feel okay with it.

Wut.

My hair is fixed! I went to the beauty school on El Camino, where they cut for super cheap and shampoo your head for dozens of minutes. Funny how beauty school cost me seven dollars to fix what Supercuts cost me twenty to ruin. My hairdresser was a gal named Gloria who sounded like she was practicing conversational English phrases she learned from a tape and she made my head look

SO















MUCH














BETTER















Despite being a tad Bieber-esque, I'm happy with it.

And fear not, loyal reader! The lesbian-permahelmet of yore lives on in photographs!















and














and, because sometimes I'm ridiculous...





























Yup.

Outcast eyes in an angular face reflect the drizzly drops collectively illumined by street lamp light. The clouds, bodiless and careless open their mouths like a choir. Relief rains onto perpetually parched soil, splashes with a laugh, gives what is needed without a thought. Earthly thank yous search for ears.

What powers wield the clouds, and with what nonchalance. Outcast eyes narrow. Like roots and other gnarled, needy things, bones and flesh extend in long-squelched longing toward the uncaring, the untouchable, the amorphous, but never escape their stagnant station amongst the muck.

Ugly eyes avert, inescapably bound and bodily. Desires flare and run amock. Confidence crumbles.

There's something about this sweatshirt - the thinness of the fabric or the cut of the sleeves - that is distinctly feminine and oh god, it's intoxicating. A soft and slender arm to drape across one's shoulders at will.

It hearkens back to evenings, nights, wee morning hours a few Octobers ago. Entangled, enfolded, adrift. Chaste, yet breathtakingly electric. A scent so sweet as to pang, dark and almost painful betwixt trembling ribs.

Could you fold me up with your other clothes to swim, awash in your scent and buoyed by the feel of your fabrics? For all my flighty irreverence, I'd be your most willing prisoner.

Daydreams swirl, amorphous specters around my head. Oh, that I could grab them with my hands and spin them into something solid to gift you. A string of silk spinning forth from pursed lips.

Here are the threads. Spin away.

Just saying hi

because I haven't been around much lately(/ever). I will occasionally have a grand master-plan of a blog-post pop into my head then put it off and put it off until I need to go to bed anyway. These ideas usually dissipate by morning. Maybe I would write more if everyone I like talking to read this. My dream is to assemble all of my close or semi-close friends onto *gasp* a single blogging client! Convenience is lovely.

Lately, I've been an expert at putting off work. I'm only occasionally guilty about that. Warm weather, especially in the early evening, coaxes me outside for no reason and I dare not deny myself the unique-to-summer pleasure of warm concrete on bare feet.

Little seasonal joys fill me up and, despite regular daytime life-woes, I go to sleep content almost every night.







------

Another Edna St. Vincent Millay poem I adore:

Assault

I.
I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road

II.
I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
O, savage Beauty suffer me to pass
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!

THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED GUYS

Actor: "...Line."
Director: "Um, I'm not on book."
Actor: "Why isn't someone on book???"

Kevkev: "...Because it's final dress."




Brown bag!

Ah! Un soupir...

(Still working on some parts, but felt like recording it anyway.)


A Sigh


claw-marks etched over a white wisp of skin
draw out drops, trace a trail red as wine thick as sin
from my lips stretch a sigh, long as day and as wide as the world

I know not but somewhere I relinquished my hands,
tongue, and ears, but my breath in my body still stands
ivory-eyed soldier-ghost stately stands a post, frenzied-frozen

weighted down, body bent by a hallowed intent racous-whispered

when, when, when, O wistful and wayward one will you be mine?
then, O thou, let thaw throbbing thoughts into tears of I am thine

claw-marks with ease, jeweled blood draw me in
breathe a bridge to my body and lessen the din

Une chanson nouvelle!

fold the anger
up for later
and hold her again 'cause you can
you don't understand
hidden under your furls
how fragile the glass girl can be

trade her
for a neighbor
if that's what you think that you want
find a new house to haunt
you're a monster a baby
impatiently waiting for

la la la love is so easy
la la la love is so kind
but you, you and I, na na no, no we don't get to think like her
you are blinded by the whiteness that you wear

don a costume
'til she's lost you
and silently yield your despair
to the audience there
climb a crescent of blue
Pierrot's more true than your smile

dreamer
or deceiver
your looks are grown heavy as stones
when will you rest your bones?
just a soft kiss or two
and you're dyed by her rubia

la la la love is so easy
la la la love is so kind
la la la love is for you and me
la la la love you could be mine
la la la life is a glimmering wave
la la la leaving the sand
la la la love is the reason
la la la love me if you can

From a lecture about pre-colonial political power in Africa:

"A woman could also bring complaints about her husband to the mikiri. If most of the women agreed that the husband was at fault, they would collectively support her. They might send spokeswomen to tell the husband to apologize and to give her a present, and, if he was recalcitrant they might "sit on" him. They might also act to protect a right of wives. Harris describes a case of women's solidarity to maintain sexual freedom:

The men ... were very angry because their wives were openly having relations with their lovers. The men ... met and passed a law to the effect that every woman . . . should renounce her lover and present a goat to her husband as a token of repentance ... The women held. . . secret meetings and, a few mornings later, they went to a neighboring (village), leaving all but suckling children behind them ... [The men] endured it for a day and a half and then they went to the women and begged their return ... [T]he men gave [the women] one goat and apologized informally and formally.

Thus through mikiri women acted to force a resolution of their individual and collective grievances."

You go, Igbo women!

frendz

me: OH MY GOD IT'S ERIC DOBBINS

I LOVE ERIC DOBBINS

Sarah: :D

3:26 AM me: no

NO

Sarah: NO

me: NO

Sarah: NO

NO

me: NO

NO

Sarah: NO

me: NO

NO

NO

NO

Sarah: you won the game!

me: NO

but yeah, i see what you mean

mrow

"People fall in love with me, and annoy me and distress me and flatter me and excite me and--all that sort of thing. But no one speaks to me. I sometimes think that no one can. Can you?"

-E. Vincent Millay

A-home.

True: I am done with Strega Nona.
False: I will be involved with that show ever again.

Oh, nuthin'...

I tried typing without thinking much. Here are some results.


One:

Ruminating over your favorites, marinating my soul in yours.

I am a mystery seeker. All paths lead

somewhere. My brain takes flight into the darkness, to where half-formed, half-seen, half-discovered realms be.

Reality dissolves into insignificance

in the face of fantasy.

Each:

Paragraph, sentence word, phoneme, motion, gesture, lift of an eyebrow
contains a nearly unending tunnel of possibilities, all awaiting my hopeful, sickly optimistic assembly.


T'other:

A sickly soft voice, shriveled and bound in love-coated malice

wraps and warps crying “Fragility!”

Each breath a shield, the exhaust of anger folded and tucked away

for future use.

Overflown, tops are skimmed off and released in exasperation.

Solutions (convictions) taunt just out of reach.

Car hum. Familiar dreary landscape.


And yet another:

“WHY?”

demands puddled marrow, seeping through splintered bone,

crushed by the dark and stifling sky.

Illusions (thin and fragile as a soap bubble on a friendly nose)

burst into a tiny chorus of condemnors--

suspicions inescapable, accusations unspeakable.

Night presses heavy on unready bones.

Remember when...

...I said I would occasionally post favorite poems? Here is Channel Crossing by Sylvia Plath.

---

On storm-struck deck, wind sirens caterwaul;
With each tilt, shock and shudder, our blunt ship
Cleaves forward into fury; dark as anger,
Waves wallop, assaulting the stubborn hull.
Flayed by spray, we take the challenge up,
Grip the rail, squint ahead, and wonder how much longer

Such force can last; but beyond, the neutral view
Shows, rank on rank, the hungry seas advancing.
Below, rocked havoc-sick, voyagers lie
Retching in bright orange basins; a refugee
Sprawls, hunched in black, among baggage, wincing
Under the strict mask of his agony.

Far from the sweet stench of that perilous air
In which our comrades are betrayed, we freeze
And marvel at the smashing nonchalance
Of nature : what better way to test taut fiber
Than against this onslaught, these casual blasts of ice
That wrestle with us like angels; the mere chance

Of making harbor through this racketing flux
Taunts us to valor. Blue sailors sang that our journey
Would be full of sun, white gulls, and water drenched
With radiance, peacock-colored; instead, bleak rocks
Jutted early to mark our going, while sky
Curded over with clouds and chalk cliffs blanched

In sullen light of the inauspicious day.
Now, free, by hazard's quirk, from the common ill
Knocking our brothers down, we strike a stance
Most mock-heroic, to cloak our waking awe
At this rare rumpus which no man can control :
Meek and proud both fall; stark violence

Lays all walls waste; private estates are torn,
Ransacked in the public eye. We forsake
Our lone luck now, compelled by bond, by blood,
To keep some unsaid pact; perhaps concern
Is helpless here, quite extra, yet we must make
The gesture, bend and hold the prone man's head.

And so we sail toward cities, streets and homes
Of other men, where statues celebrate
Brave acts played out in peace, in war; all dangers
End : green shores appear; we assume our names,
Our luggage, as docks halt our brief epic; no debt
Survives arrival; we walk the plank with strangers.

---

My favorites are the "smashing nonchalance of nature" and the "rare rumpus which no man can control". She doesn't romanticize or pretend prettiness, and I really like that there is somehow more comfort in the insignificance experienced in the face of wilderness than in the "cities, streets, and homes of other men".

Devilish

In front of our hotel is a little round-about type driveway for curbside service, separated from the rest of the parking lot by a planter-barrier, about three and half feet tall. If you're walking up from the side, it poses no problem, but if you're coming straight from the front (as I was, on my way back from Pizza Hut) you have to walk an extra fifteen or so feet to get around it. I wasn't in the mood to waste steps, so i hopped up on top and walked across.

From an onlooking tour-mate: "Oh Kevvy, only you."
"What?"
"Just... Anyone else probably would have just walked around."
"That's because anyone else is a bureaucratic retard."

Exeunt.

Spiraly, spiraly, spiraly trees....

Strega Nona has entered its final, four-week, mid-western leg. The finish line is in sight.

I’m still depressed.

I have spurts of joy, but it is the wild, careless, devilish kind of joy—grounded in rage, but with overtones of sarcasm and misanthropy. Not the silliness, contentment, and love that I feel around my handful of close friends. Not Home.

“We’ve spent so much time together, we’re like a family now!”
Au contraire, amalgamate castmate, we are co-workers who can’t escape each other.

If you didn’t know (which isn’t unlikely), I auditioned for some BFA acting programs this year. I have been accepted by SUNY Purchase’s acting conservatory, which was one of my top choices and will probably be attending in the fall. The initial excitement of just being accepted (they’re quite selective and it’s something I think I should be proud of—eighteen out of about a thousand get in) quickly gave way to weird apprehensions. I like the East Coast in general, and New York City in specific, but how long will the big city novelty last? If touring has taught me one thing, it’s that in the end, it’s not as much about where you are as who you’re with. Of course, I would actually be staying in one place at Purchase, providing more opportunity to form meaningful friendships, so that point is mostly moot. The uncertainty remains.

“New people aren’t any better than the old ones. I bet they almost never are,” says George to Emily in Our Town, as he explains why he would rather stay in Grover’s Corners with her than go off to agriculture school in the fall. My rare close friendships are so special to me. If I manage to form new, meaningful connections, might the already established ones diminish in importance, shriveling, maybe eventually crumbling?
If I manage.

The other possibility is that I would feel as isolated and mordant as I am now.



Through most of elementary school, I loved the Animorphs series. In the books, a race of slug-like alien parasites has slowly been taking over humanity, oozing into people’s ears, then flattening over their brains and taking complete control of their bodies. A small group of teenagers, who have gained the ability to morph into different animals from another, much kinder alien race, are the only people who can stop them. What struck me about these books was the idea of a few odd-ball kids trying to navigate a world where anyone could turn out to be a mindless vessel for an intergalactic colonialist slug. Our heroes and heroines referred to their adversaries not as The Yeerks, but as them. Third-person objective collective pronoun, italicized.

I did then and still do feel sometimes like there is a massive, inclusive community of people with a similar knowledge of etiquette, pop-culture, trends, fuck if I know what else, all with the ability to interact happily and believe the same lies, THAT I AM NOT A PART OF. At home I am spoiled so by people with a similar brand of cynicism and distrust for the mainstream that when I get to know others, I am often surprised by how seriously they take this petty little world of theirs. I am able to make polite conversation, and occasionally enjoy the company of Yeerk-vessels, but I wouldn’t be able to handle being surrounded by them for nine months of each of the next four years.

Isolated. Mordant.

I find satisfaction in finding very precise words to describe my moods. It’s somewhat of an indemnification for negative moods, but I would so much rather find satisfaction in the precision of: placid, lustful, vivacious, wistful, untouchable, kiddish. Anything, really.

Other words are imprecise, and can shape-shift based on usage. My cast-mates call me strange sometimes—I am a novelty, interesting to observe, but in the end made up of unfounded opinions and nonsensical actions. My friends call me strange sometimes—I am unique, surprising, out of place, but justified in thought and action. The word strange can carry an air of reverence that makes one feel as if they’ve found something nearly invisible, but truer and more meaningful than what most others find.
I like my people like I like my trees. Spiraly.

Dream:

Sarah, Alex, Lauren, Lindsay and I were accompanying my mom to see some lame musical act. I made an off-hand remark about how they were going to be performing at Coachella this year. Mom asked what Coachella was. We shuffled our feet and explained it as kind of like Strawberry Festival but different.

"Oh, I'd like to go to that," she said.
"I don't know mom. It's much more crowded and there's a lot louder music and stuff."
What I was trying to say is that parents aren't allowed.

In order to break the tension we abandoned her to perform a high-speed parking lot shuffle. We were at Ponderosa park btw. I was somehow separated from the pack. Alex took this opportunity to throw a sheet of grass at me. For a moment I thought it was cat-shit. Everyone was running except Lauren, who just kind of glided. I noticed how small she was and how her speaking voice was so cool.

I have friends.

Via txt:



Kevin:
Goongoongoongoongoongoongoongoongoongoongoongoongoongoongoongoongoongoongoongoongoongoon.

Megan:
Vooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.o.o.oooooooooooooooooooooooOooooooooo0ooooooooooooooooooooooon

Kevin:
g00nm00nsp00ngo0o0o0o0o0o0on

Megan:
Voontuneloonbloomrrrrrrroooooooooommmmmmmmm

Kevin:
Coon. I mean that as in racoon, not as in the racial slur.

Megan:
Or that dude who was in charlie brown.

Kevin:
Frillz? I thought his name was Coung or something with a ng.

Megan:
You are correct, sir.

Kevin:
GOONPWN

be the puppet

Lifeless lolling eyes,
unable even to plead (bereft of their commander),
gather dust and do not blink.
Knotted strings hang heavy like so many
poisonous desires. "If only" echoes emptily.

I will not be the puppet
longing lonelily for the familiar
menace of a manipulator.
My unused muscles are buried
not so far as to be untracable.

Farewell to pull of practiced fingers,
to choreographed responses,
to tensing, slackening,
to intermittent, useless dormancy.

I'll walk.

Big booty, numbah fo'!
Numbah fo', big booty.

Woven

Hay doods. I haven't been keeping this up lately due to a lack of alone time. But here is a poem about George and Emily in the play Our Town.




We are woven, you and I
and have been
since earliest uninvited dreams
of:
Who is this unmasked familiar?
Hold me. Keep me.
Spin me up, I will not struggle.
I long for timorous, tangled limbs
and secret somewheres.
I long for you.

The faraway calls but I can't hear
for my ear is angled obliviously to
slurp the sweet nectar pouring from your lips.

The faraway calls but I don't care
for We
are woven, you and I,
unbreakably

Together.

Big booty, numbah three!
Numbah three, big booty.

In The Womb of the Storm

Under the clouds:
rain.

Cutting through monochrome shadow-skies,
the plane presses, deliberate, into the ceiling of the clouds,
the pitter-patter of drops against the pane
a torrential reminder of the unbreakable.
Hard surfaces abound, inviting static,
crescendoing cacophony
until—


…

In the womb of the storm:
calm.

There are no shapes here, only whispers.
A puff of vapor billows to my window,
inquisitive, and dissipates to explore other prospects.
A bolt of light is little more than an idea
passed from cloud to cloud with a soft laugh.
Someone quips a muffled thunder-rumble, and
the Parisian muse steps lightly by, calling,
“C'est tellement simple, l'amour.”



Sometimes another world I feel there is
Which, waking, I am far too laden down
To reach, but with a fleeting close of eyes
Nor weight, nor skin and bone cling to my soul,
Where whim is want and want is truth and truth—
O thing elusive—is simplicity.


…

Above the clouds:
sunset;
my whims and wants personified behind a pane.

Big booty, numbah two!
Numbah two, big booty.

Giants

Under the warmth of your foreign hands
my ribcage was a candelabra--an unknown comfort
pressed away my woe and set ablaze the
guardians of my heart.

My world, (smaller then and brittle with longing)
on first report, leapt full-force into flames,
and I was carried upward on the thermals to slip,
with you, into forbidden bliss.

into each other.

O, how fast the wax can melt under so bright a blaze.

Viewed from above, we imagined, the scorched remains
would read like myths of old--
titans raged and armies clashed and
through it tangled lovers rolled and
burned.

and burned and melted.

and puddled.



Look at the stars:
we are tiny.

The bitter, black, and burnt
with time gave way to shrubs,
a whisper of the life to come,
and saplings, hopeful and trepid, tiptoeing towards the sky--
a forest soon to come but sometimes, still,
I wander through the brush, tracing out
our charcoal dusted path,
and smile

at O, what giants once we thought we were.

-------

Happy still-relatively-new-year!

Remember this time last year, when we all started our 365 blogs, intending to have a post for every day of the year? After a year of hard work, my total comes to... forty-seven. Forty-seven posts.

I still like the idea of having something structured to encourage creation, but 365 was a bit much. How about... 52? My new year's resolution is to put reasonable effort into making this a poem-a-week blog. For a while I've had an idea for a narrative cycle of sonnets that would take place over one year (my usual fixations: romance, dreams, the changing of the seasons), and this might be the place to get started on that.

Check back next Tuesday, and see if I'm serious :D