Heh.
It would seem that this whole life thing is building to something. Not sure what it is yet, but it feels like it's getting in some order. That or I just have stopped caring that much. Or maybe not. Maybe it's time to get annoyed and worked up and protest something, throw red paint on beauty queens and lie down, dead, in front of the Pfizer building.

Nah.

THere's a nice empty lot near that building. It's a sandy patch, near a fishery. A burnt smell lingers in the air constantly as boats come too and fro out of the harbor yard. A large "No Trespassing" sign wards off all those who do not fish. My friend and I ignore it. We go around it to look at the sight. Beautiful view of the decaying city across the water. We're looking for a place to shoot a scene, where my friend Tim gets beated to death. Two goons, corporate folks, do the deed. THey wear ski masks and sunglasses, suits too. I may be one of them.

I really want to get a good shot of that Pfizer building for the movie (not my movie, other Chris'). It would just be perfect. Two goons beating a man to death in front of a well known supplier of hard on pills. Great stuff.

We found a better location though, on the wrong side of the tracks, on the waterfront. There we can look at the bay, at the ships and whatnot, at the water, and at the city. WE can run past a police station. We can look at the post industrial city and all its asbestos, and we can make the viewer think, "Hey, maybe it's not so bad that it's all blowing up." That's what the ultimate goal is, to wipe away the old and make something new. Evolution in a can, dropped from a plane. Same old same old.

But Empires never last as long as tribes, they say, and the city seems to prove that, though there is a stark beauty in its fall. The city, New London, is a gem of industry gone bad, gone sour; trade gone awry. The old buildings are full of character, and the larger than life murals make one feel as though they are walking through a town that is not Athens or a Vegas knockoff, but something sub-Reno.

This city is the perfect place to make art, music, film, anything. It's perfect. I just realized this, 3.5 years too late, but better late than never.

Oddly though, there is an abundance of indian food. Cheap, too.

-ccm

to me, i've turned into a madman, snickering at lights, and alarms abounding

love people are there, the smell of love, it's everywhere
why must you be sensitive and good
why don't you want to be understood?

thinking. A girl said that she is a cliche while looking at a job, and that just stuck with me. I stare now, with a grin on my face, wondering why it has. I think that we are all really just cliches. We have at least a thousand people just like us going for the same job, so why try? I say, why not? We have nothing to lose, at all. We have only things to gain, so trying is not really a risk, but a formality. Rejection, I have learned, is a part of life, and something that we all must live and love with, and get over. It should not bother us much, but let us learn about life, and what we have to look forward to. What do I mean? I mean we can look forward to NOT being rejected, in any mean.

Maybe, I'll grab them. I meant that about some cds, originally, but now maybe I mean it about life. What have I to lose? WHat have we all to lose. Nothing. I am amazed now, how I pound away at this keyboard, out of my mind on things that one should not injecst (nothing illegal mom), but wanting to go for it all. The future, it holds so much. Why not? WHY NOT?

So go for it.

Really, as I type I am like a man laughing at nothing. I grin at the letters appearing as they come. each one holds a world of possibility, of change, within itself. I look to them for surprise and hope, wondering where they will take me. I look to that, to the mispelled and misplaced word or letter, and wonder why it's there. I will type the next sentence without revision. Why do the people in my life seem to come in go and my mind? Why do they love and leave so recklessly? Why do they play with each other, and why to play games? My grammare and spelling have lost steps, but my feeling is true. I worry about hte games that people play with each other. I want to just come out and be clear about everything that I have ever felt, but life does not let you do such things, to live with such luxuries. IT's a cruel game that we play, living in lies, wandring in lusts that may lead to love. We don't know where anything will take us, but we go, and we try, and we fail, or suceed. We must try, for we have nothing left to lose.

SO read this, know that it is coming from a failed poet of life, know that it is coming from my heart, or very near it, and live with that, and think that YOU have NOTHING AT ALL to lose in your life when you try anything. Always fight that way. You can't lose if you think you have things of not in your corner. GO WITH IT!

Travel, love, leave, try to love, lose, hate, it's all the same. It's life, it's a story, and if you don't try, then you've lost. It takes a person of great character to try, to stop caring about the self, and you must! You must try that, and this, and risk, nothing or all, whatever you feel it is! JUST DO SOMETHING! Do not stagnate, do not sit! We are young and we can try anything that we want, when we don't have to think about the reprocussions we can live without worry and try and reach those that we think we may love, or try that thing that we may hate. It's all in us. The magic of life is in you. There is no other magic than what we bring. Make it up, and go with it, but that is beauty, and that is the thing that we all must strive towards, that we all must try to get. Beauty, love, life.

Live it. Love it. Be happy, sad, but live, that's all that I ask of you, live, and let me know how it works out, how your life goes. Love who you love, who you want. Love, in my mind, is the thing to live for, only for it, and to find it is the finest thing that one can do, can live. To be inlove, to be with a person you love, is greater than anything else that one my feel, than pain, than hate, than death itself. It lifts you up like nothing else, and slams you like only it can. It is the single most powerful weapon on earth, and oh how I chase it.

To love, to live, is diving, live to love, love to live, and live in this time, for you, for everyone, and live to live life, without worry of what you may or may not miss or do...just live.

-ccm

drinking since 7.30
bowled while drinking more
the people we bowled with were quite nice.
I write this now, slack jawed and dumb, wondering about the true nature of love and life, and wondering if true love has anything to do with the sligh case of indigestion that i am experiencing.
My mouth is dry
the words of an indecipherable beat poet run through my head, but the poet was on SNL, so not real, but does it matter in the long run?
The truths that flow from the mouths of my friends are quite funny in retrospect, and really, have nothing to do with what i am thinking now.
I have a mission for tomorrow
I smile stupidly at an Im i get that i incorrectly respond to.
My spelling is abhorrent.
but i persist in this state
i am careful about the typing i do now
i gaze at the screen like a madman, wanting something to come from it, but knowing that ultimately nothing will
i know deep down inside that i am typing apart from my corporal being, and what i write right now has something to do with that lovely part of my brain that is pure and untouched by the taint of alcohol, by the tobacco, by anything and everything at all, and that deep down in this portion of me, there is the truth about everything at all, and as my fingers glide gently over my keyboard, clittery clattery, I uncover that part of me.
but i like secrets
i like keeping them from you
i like having mystery
I will tell you someday.
take care, and to you, I will talk in the morn, full of joy over the previous night
or a killer hangover
of which i know nothing
but hope
to
find
nothing out

-ccm

Carebears. Whoah, Carebears.
And an Easter Tree.
That's all I've got to say.

What do you say to a ghost?
What do you do when you randomly are confronted by someone you were very close with, but haven't seen in a year?
What?

I stood there, my mouth agape. I couldn't believe that Bridget had been driving behind me for oh so many miles, and that not only that, but she stopped where I stopped. I wanted to talk to her for hours, to hang out with her like we used to. No chance though.

She had to go to a funeral.
I have great timing.

I feel really badly for the man who died. He was their father's father, and a good man, from what I could gather. He had been sick, as of last year, and his condition never really improved. He began his slow slide, and finally reached the bottom. I feel badly for his family, for his wife.

I sent my condolences with Bridget as she hopped into her Ford Focus and sped away. I felt really lost then. When she left, I felt dislocated from time. Suddenly the past and the present met. Bridget met my friend Saraswati from school, and my two worlds meshed. I started thinking, after Bridget left, about how much I missed her, and being around her. She was a really good friend, the sister of my ex, and a person who I haven't seen for a year. It was only a year, but when someone is about 16ish, that's a lifetime. Since I last saw her, she turned into a womanly figure, tall and mature looking. You could see it in her eyes. She finally figured out how to deal with the bullshit some, and just radiated confidence.

Maybe I'm reaching. But I fell out of my present when she left. I just couldn't make any sense of anything around me, and frankly, I didn't care to. I felt an emptiness over the information I didn't know, about how her life was and whatnot. I wonder if I can rectify this?

That was the cap to a good day, I think. A day out with a friend and a meeting with an old one.

As for me? Right now I'm sitting here, bored, writing. I have a beer and 4 walnuts to keep me company, and I am really wondering just how to go on with this, how to get back in touch with people, succesfully. I'll tell myself I'll do it tomorrow, but I won't. I'll be too scared to actually go through with it. 3 walnuts, less beer now. It's Pete's Wicked Ale, which I am enjoying. I want to build bridges from my island, bridges to the past and the future, all around, make myself into a hub for international trade.

It's going to be a long night, one filled with thoughts of the things that were, and the things that I should do, but ultimately, won't.

-ccm

The movie Yojimbo is just so awesome.
Mifune plays these two gangs against each other, and the movie is the epitome of the western, in my mind. I mean, not in that Sergio Leone sort of way, but in the gold old fashion way. A stranger rolls into town and just starts raising hell. He's too cool for any of the gangs to even lay a finger on, but of course they rough him up at some point. This only makes him mad, and makes us want to see him kill everyone just that little bit more.
Of course, he does.

Now I've been thinking about this lately, how movies can do such violent things, and we all just giggle at them. Actually I realized this while playing a boxing video game. In this game you can realistically beat a man so badly that his face cuts and swells appropriately. I found myself just toying with people during fights, seeing if perhaps i could close their eyes up, or just how badly I could cut them. I really found this disturbing, after a point.

So then we get to movies, wrestling, tv, video games...it's all made us just so, I don't even know. Well, there's that sort of video game violence, but I think we all get a little uncomfortable when we see real people get killed. There is that disturbing trend amongst the kids our age to watch people getting killed or injured on the internet. Just seeing how far we can go, what we can see. It's really sick. It's funny to see a guy who thinks he's the shit fall on his ass, but I don't think it's cool or funny to see guys getting gunned down by a helicopter, or to see a kid have his leg shattered, or to see a fat woman fall down and moan in pain. That's not funny. That's sick.

But I digress.

There's this news story going on right now, about this woman who's in a vegetative state. She's been like this for a few years, and is living on a feeding tube. Her state was due to a medical accident, so her husband has a lot of money from it. Now, he's trying to end her life. What's the method of termination? Removing the feeding tube, which leads to dehydration and starvation. Give that a few weeks, and she's dead.

Now, this is coming from a kid who's "pro-death" in regards to the death penalty, abortion, and euthenasia...but let the woman live. For fucks sake. Her parents are alive and willing to care for her, and the guy could just divorce her. He says he can kill her because she told him. Did she sign anything? If not, this is just a case of his word versus her's, but oh wait, she can't talk. He wants the cash, and he wants to split. I mean, this thing is going to get so blown up, it's ridiculous. Instead of being about patriarchal control in marraige, or about human decency, it's going to become about religion in courts, euthenasia in general. The republicans are going to run with this, saying how liberals are allowing this man to murder his wife, how liberals murder babies, and how god is angry. Well fuck god man. This is just about a woman who can't represent herself and a husband with an ass of cash. Give her to her parents.

I couldn't imagine a worse thing in the world than a mother and a father having to watch their daughter, already as helpless as an infant, starve, and be told by the government that there is nothing that they can do, because her ass of an husband wanted her to die. If she had signed something in the past, she should've been killed, humanely. We show more mercy to our dogs than we are to this woman.

Have mercy. If it has to be done, do it quickly, and preserve what dignity she has left. Don't make this a big issue in the house, don't let it set policy. Just don't.

-ccm

So here's a funny experience.
I drive a friend to the airport. She desperately needs to get out of state, though she admits to me that she loves the state we're in. There is snow, which may delay her flight, and there is worry on her part that the trip might not go well. I assure her it would. We get to the airport, amid flurries, and she gets her stuff and leaves.
I get back into the car.
"Blue eyed devil" is what the song says to me. Then I think of her, but then I start to think, wait, did she have blue eyes? Crap. This'll be bugging me for weeks. 2 weeks, actually, but still, it's funny how you get stuck on a little detail. In my pondering about eye colour, and applying it to the last woman I saw, I realized that the song sort of can apply to her, not in the "I'm on smack" sense, but in this other one:"The devil lapsed out in a pool of sun". So to that tall blonde lady that went to the airport, I hope you have a good trip, and fun, too.

-ccm

I heard a thump in the night.
Was it the drunk man next door?
Was it something outside?
Did that precarious pile of papers fall finally?

I ignored the thump and decided to type instead.
The gold cuts your throat so the alcohol hits you harder. The punch tasted like punch, but with somethign special within it.
Without it, this night would have been like any other.
Good head, so they say, about one.
The secret is out on that one.
Mr. Goodbar?
Are you tired of being burdened by things of the material world?
There is no problem that Jack Daniels can't solve, so it would seem, tonight.
I don't drink whiskey, anymore, really, so I'm going to be troubled for a long time.

Broomball is over.
A girl named Megan played tonight.
She went into the net, hitting her leg on the post of the goal.
That hurts.
She got up like nothing happened at all, and got back into the game.
I asked her if it hurt, she said it hit her thigh.
I admired her drive.
Game's over though, possibly forever.

Thanks a lot for coming you guys, this has been totally the best one.
I'm your only friend, I'm not your only friend, but I'm a little glowing friend.
Chris is a smooth whiskey.
That's one of the best compliments I've ever received.
From a man who likes whiskey.
Who is next store.
Whe may have thumped on the wall.
But I kept typing.

-ccm

fuck.
i really really want to hit the road right now, but i'm not sure where i want to go. i just feel like i need to do something. it's 1.10 am, and i want to live, but there is nothing out there; the world is dead. i cannot skirt responsibility so suddenly.

i find myself in this situation a lot, and i know not what to do with myself. I need to calm down, and sleep, but i am wired. i find myself thinking of all sorts of things i can't change, and knowing that the answer is time, yet not wanting to wait. hence i decide to do something, something unnamed, and unknown to me yet, but something will be done.

have you ever felt like a caged rat, only then you realize that the cage is of your own construction, and that the only thing that you need to do is open the door? Yeah, that's what i'm feeling right now. i look at my door, my plain white door, and i think. i think about whether it would really be that bad to take off, even just for a day, suddenly. i think then of what people would say, and how odd it would seem. i'm not one to do that regurlarly. i want to do it though.

i think though, that in all honesty, i'm just too scared.

fear seems to be the theme of the week.
fuck it, i'm living this the way that i want to, and i'll live with that.
i'm good now.
thanks for listening.
i remember why i write now.

-ccm

I found a piece of paper, it didn't sound like glass.

I took the laces out of my boots. I can get in and out of them more quickly, but my socks get pulled down and my toes squish.
I kicked a piece of ice all the way across campus, down the hill, but I abandoned it on Rt. 32 because I got scared.
I heard a few kids screaming as I crossed the road. They were drunk, and I knew one of them by face. The larger male shouted, "Show me your titties."
I mocked opening my jacket.
"What's up playboy?", he said as we passed. We slapped our hands together and he went shreiking off into the night.
As I walked the street to my apartment I would tense up and his calls, expecting at any second to be attacked from behind, paranoid at what I could not control.
I walk the suburban jungle.
I walk it alone.
The cold is comforting, in a way. It gets to you, and you shiver, but then realize that you are not cold enough to die, so you will be fine until you get home.
The cold and the drunk made me think about what it is to be who I am.
Am I my brother, to a degree?
I sure felt like him tonight, when I saw that crowd.
I felt like him and I'm not sure why, but I did, and in a way it made me realize who I am, and that thile I am chris mastellone on this campus, I am chris mastellone, son and brother, everywhere else.
I miss having an established identity that I don't have to work for.
I miss family.
Maybe that's why I stole that orange hat tonight, with the bird on it.
Maybe I'll give it away as a joke.
I don't want to get up tomorrow, just want to sleep.
And write.

-ccm