Last night I had a dream I was traveling to Tallahassee. Jessica Sage came up to me and asked how I was getting there, after I told her I really wasn't sure she said "HOW ABOUT TAKING A MOORISH CASTLE?" As it turns out one was being transported (like older houses sometimes are) across the state (instead of a few miles). I was all for it and suggested we ride in the turrets. So we rode this giant moving castle across Florida. It was really one of the best dreams I've ever had.

The only thing worse than having money taken from your bedroom is having to suspect someone that you know and trust of having taken money from your bedroom. And since people don't usually admit thievery, I, in turn, get to somewhat more cynical of everyone that comes into my apartment. I mean, there's nowhere to directly place the blame so what choice to I have but to heighten my awareness and divide the trust I would have lost for one person into tiny fractions amoungst several?

I saw Animal Collective last night. Some pros and cons:

Cons:
-The sound quality was significantly low. This may have been due to the fact that we were in the loft, but still, venues should have control of this.
-Besides "Fireworks" and "Comfy in Nautica" (a Panda Bear song), only songs from their latest album were played. This isn't to say I don't enjoy the new album, I listen to it all the time, but I wanted to hear the songs that made me fall in love with them. Their repertoire of music is so vast and diverse that virtually playing only one album doesn't make sense. I know they're promoting what's new, but let's hear some Sung Tongs.
-Crowded as fuck. So many people, one of the most uncomfortably crowded shows I've seen. Firestone needs to re-evaluate their capacity, at least for concerts.

Pros:
-I spent the evening in the company of choice people and got to see my favie band preform live.


Okay, so maybe I just wanted to throw those cons out there more than anything else, but I don't mean to sound like I didn't have a good time. The show was great, they played well and with so much energy. I enjoyed watching them and what they played I received with upmost gratification. Aside from the rather unsurprising setlist and a couple venue conditions, it was a completely worthwhile night.

I'd be lying if I said that every time someone mentions Cape Town I didn't envision a city where everyone wears capes. All the time.

I'm pretty sure the rat, which I thought had left my apartment, is still living there. I began to think this when I saw it JUMP OUT THE WINDOW AND RUN ACROSS MY LAP.

The past week or so Amadeus and I have been spotting a small animal in and around our kitchen. We decided it was a mouse after one night it ran by Sarah and she told us it was definitely probably a mouse. At this point I "constructed" a trap which consisted of a rather large jar, a post-it note with peanut butter it on the bottom, and a cutting board ramp. I thought the mouse might climb up the cutting board, try to get at the PB, would falling and be waiting for me nonchalantly so I could take it outside and let it go. Apparently the mouse was too smart for that, he didn't even TRY to eat the peanut butter.

The next day, while preparing to make a sandwich, I discovered the mouse had started nibbling at our bread supply. There were only a few slices left, so it wasn't a big deal, but that creature ruined my lunch. At this point I started to invest a little more time into capturing the mouse.

Anyway, I went out and bought some small glue traps for it. I figured those were more humane and it wouldn't leave me with a mutilated body. I opted for the smaller mouse traps because they were cheaper and honestly I thought they were large enough. They weren't. I woke up the next morning and the trap AND the animal were missing. This means the trap kind of worked but kind of didn't work and left me feeling a little anxious because if the animal could have walked away with he trap attached to itself it means it's probably a rat.

So I spent about a good amount of time yesterday looking for a time capsule I buried in my back yard when I was 11 years old. Before I continue, I'll let you know it wasn't found. It's still in the ground somewhere. There were a couple things that made the search a little difficult, I'll list them in this list right here.

1. It could have been located anywhere within a 10 foot radius of the point from where I started digging. I only remembered the general location.
2. I forgot how deep I buried it.
3. The yard was burning my feet.
4. It was hot. Real hot.
3. DIGGING HOLES IS HARD. Have you ever tried to dig a big hole? Not fun. Even little holes can be difficult.

Maybe I'll muster up the energy to try again when it's cool out, but until then that time capsule can go fuck itself.

#5

A couple years ago I learned that my great grandmother died from burn wounds after her Mexican sun dress caught fire on a stove when she was cooking. Now and then I catch myself daydreaming, trying to imagine what it would have been like to have been in that kitchen. Half the time I create this memory which is kind of black and white with splotches of color and hazy (as memories (even if fabricated) often are). Everything moves in slow motion and has some kind of mesmerizing atheistic. Like a foreign film. And then the dream snaps to what it actually probably looked like, which must have been absolutely horrifying. Anyway, these romanticized and realistic versions both coexist stimutaneously in my mind and switch back and forth as if someone were flipping a switch in my brain. I don't really know what to think of it, but for the most part it gives me this sense of peace and tranquility which is odd considering I'm thinking of someone burning alive.

I neglect any and all online journals I have. That's just the way it is. I'll be back some time soon.

Oh, last night I had a dream about mental institutions for babies. Insane babies.

4

Recently someone asked me what I would I do if I knew I could never fail at it.

At first I spend a good amount of time trying to think of some kind of activity or hobby or profession I've always been interested in but never had the guts to attempt , but I couldn't come up with anything. After a good few months went by, almost forgetting the question entirely, I came up with an answer almost involentarily: I would do exactly what I've always done with no change. After thinking about that I reasoned that this is because failure is not something I consider when I set out to do something. Of course the possibility always exists, but it shouldn't deter you from attempting something you want to do. You should do what you want and forget about failure. If someone isn't doing something they want to do because they think they'll fail, they should try and beef up their self-esteem because nothing is more disabling than projecting your own failure.

Trying my best not to sound egotistical, I can't really think of a more logical answer than my own. If someone were to say "Oh? And I could never fail?! I would be a pilot." Than what's stopping them from being a pilot?*


*Excluding, of course, physical and financial limitations, but we're not discussing those here.

3

Since life first appeared on this earth billions of years ago, there has never once been a gap, an interruption, in the transferal of life. Organisms create new organisms before dying, animals give birth to their own kind before passing on. In this sense, every living thing today is connected to the very origin of life. From prehistoric bacteria to the tips of my fingers. There has only ever been one glowing ball of life spanning hundreds of millions of centuries, creating and expanding before it has the chance to burn out. One day it will blink out of existence of course, it's inevitable, but until then every living thing remains connected through this one entity.

Almost as if life is a huge metaphorical wave spanning through time. Everything is presently living. I guess you could imagine life as related to the ripple effect. There's the formation of life, and from there everything branches out and expands and grows. And, of course, there are millions of dead ends with every second that passes, but at the same time there are just as many organisms reproducing and creating the next generation of life which will continue the aforementioned pulse of life.

Thinking in this grandiose way always makes everything I've ever imagined as important seemingly trivial, but in a way, everything really is. Nothing matters, but in the same breath I can say that everything matters. All is relevant. Everything and everybody will disappear one day, and that will be the end of existence as we know it, but until that actually happens, we all have everything and there's not really much more to the say than that.

2

For the past year or so I've had Robert Frost's poem "Nothing Gold Can Stay" in the back of my mind. I wrote down the poem sometime last year and but often find myself returning to it. I know the poem, it's only 7 or 8 lines long, but for some reason seeing the words written on paper gives them another dimension and feel like it helps to actually see them. It's a good poem to reference simply because it makes you feel better once things you care about are gone. Not to say that I'm always losing the good things, but every now and then some thing slips away and I have to let it go with some level of understanding.

Of course sometimes that "level of understanding" is rather low, but existent nonetheless. It becomes easier to look back on things when you can say to yourself "you know what? Those things were wonderful, but they were never meant to last." It's a romantic approach, I know, but sometimes you just have to be easy on yourself. I give myself shit all the time and it's nice to let myself off the hook every once awhile and shake off the situation as an act of fate. Basically, it makes me feel better and it's good to feel better.

1

I don't want to be any kind of writer, really. When I hear "writer" you think of some great cliche, like there's this self-pride and arrogance surrounding the whole pastime. I have to believe that there are an overwhelming amount of people who enjoy writing about their lives and their experiences without labeling themselves as something they aren't. I'd like to be thought of as such: someone who likes putting thoughts and ideas down on paper without really thinking of anything else. In essence I guess that's really what a writer could be defined as, but like I said before, it' not something I take seriously enough to give myself that title.

It's difficult for me not to write down things that pass through my mind recently. This is part of the reason I started keeping journals a couple years ago, to record things I find interesting and informational. If I don't keep these logs I feel like I'm letting something pass through my fingers and pass fade into oblivion. Once you become aware of yourself and the things you think everyday it almost seems necessary to write it all down. I can't tell you how many brainchildren I've been able to put on paper over the past 24 months. Not that I'm even writing them down for any particular purpose, to have something to go back and reference when your mind is feeling rather sluggish is reason enough for me to take out a pen a couple times a days and jot down a line or two.

To those who don't write or keep some kind of journal: think of all of the great ideas and quotes and theories you've come across over the course of your lifetime that you can not recall now, simply because your brain doesn't have the capacity to remember them. It's discouraging when you realize how much you're forgotten. If you can purchase a notepad, I advise you do. If not because you want to remember that worth remembering then because life is too short to continue living in a way where everything passes by you. The more things I write down, the more I think and challenge ideas and formulate hypothesis. Every thought is a stroke of the brush to the vast white canvas you are when you're first born.

I find it funny and somewhat ironic that I started this article trying to separate myself from the writer cliche, only continuing to lecture on how writing is an important part of life. Then again, maybe that's the point. Writing is vitial to growing as a person and establishing character. Writing is thinking with permanence, a tangible script of that which runs through your mind. This is the very reason I enjoy writing; not because I want to be associated with the "writer" type, but because it's so crucial to my own development. Again, that's probably what most writers would say when asked why they write. Fuck it, I guess I'm a writer. A modest, humble, level-headed writer.

I'm thinking I'm going to start writing more and more, especially on the computer, since it's so easy and doesn't take such a physical toll on my delicate, delicate fingers. It's nice to be be able to write at great lengths. I don't usually do so, for the most part I write no more than a paragraph, but with the introduction of the computer to my life, I'm thinking it'll be real simple. I'll give the passages numbers, because numbers have this inexplicable order to them that just makes them ideal for keeping things organized.

Coney Island.



I'll be going to Michigan for new years. The first I've ever spent outside of Orlando? It'll be top of the pops, I'm excited.

It's been awhile, but a lot has been accomplished.

Moon Soup is finished and packaged. Each spiral bound copy comes with a can of "Moon Soup" (chicken and stars). Everything panned out nicely, I'm happy with how it all turned out. I only made 22 of them all together, but it's not like I planned on mass producing them anyway. I'm selling some at Park Ave, some at Loose Screws, and handing the rest out.

I have a lot of ideas for new pieces and future projects. I've made quite a few things for the sake of making things, they don't really belong anywhere or have any place to go, but they're nice to look at.

I've made some more posters for WOV and designer Thomas Scott who is coming to speak at Flagler in January.

I've been doing things. I'll try to upload recent things to design:related, they should be up sometime relatively soon.

HOKAY.

Things are still going well. I've been juggling work and school and my personal life, but I feel as though everything is still somewhat laid back and unstressful. I'm drawing a detailed picture of my house, thinking about Moon Soup a little bit, doing some other things, and doing some other other things. I'm doing very well and I feel great. Tonight I'm absconding to the tree fort hostel in Georgia, and then I'll get back into the thick of it. Hopefully I'll have something to show here soon, I feel like I've been talking everything up a lot without actually producing something. That'll change soon...

Remember: Sometimes it's better to just walk place, even if you could get there much faster by biking or riding in a car. If you speed through the world, the world will speed by you.

Things are going well in all creative facets. Moon Soup #2 is four pages away from being completed, I'm thinking it will be done sometime in the next month. Then it's time for production! I'm thinking about making 50 issues, keeping 15 or so to give to friends and giving the rest to Loose Screws to sell in their DIY rack. Everything is going well. Sorry this is starting to collect dust, I don't have internet at home and I'm spending more time doing than writing about doing. So it goes.

!!!

I've been working on the zine, I've made some adjustments and am in the process of another page. I want to have one page of text, though I have no idea what I want to put there. I spent a couple hours working on it tonight, it's looking good. I'm excited.

In other news, I'm going to develop film from Ireland/NYC in a couple days, make prints and whatnot. I'm even more excited about that.

I have a lot of energy as of late. Part of me wants to say it's my unbridled passion for the arts though another wants to say it's the hydrocodine running through my system.

Everything is on hold right now. The past 15 and future 20 days consist souly of traveling, moving, and settling in. I wouldn't say that nothing is being accomplished, but certainly not enough to warrant an update. There will be something soon.

Three things that have happened since the last post:

1. Found an amazing oriental rug, practically new, in my neighbor's trash.
2. Got featured in a real blog.

3. Finished two pages of my zine (title page and introduction page).