reasonable

so, i go to the yearbook signing party, and i realize

that actually, no, i hadn't paid my yearbook cost, and

yes, i would have to spend eighty of my last one

hundred and twenty dollars on one. the ATM only lets me

withdraw between fifty and a hundred, and i have to

choose the hundred. i buy a yearbook and keep the extra

twenty in my wallet, with forty remaining in my

account. i lose my yearbook. then i find that my

wallet's gone, and with it, the twenty inside, as well

as my charge card, which includes access to the other

forty. sixty dollars gone plus the eighty for a

yearbook. i freak out, i cry a little, i wonder what's

wrong with me, then i remember that there's a reason

for everything and that God has a plan and in the grand

scheme of life, fifty dollars isn't anything. i ask my

parents what i should do, and they say to cancel the

charge card and go to blaine's house like i was

originally going to. they give me five dollars with

which to play poker. eight or so hands in, i've dropped

from an initial chip value of 2100 to a single black

chip worth five hundred. i pause. i think. i pray a

small prayer, and i don't remember what i said. but of

the next nine hands, i played seven and folded two. i

won seven. i go on to win the game that night, and

someone had put an extra twenty into the pot, bringing

first place's winnings to exactly sixty dollars, which

is almost exactly what i'd lost that night. i get a

text saying that a friend found my yearbook. and i

think for a second and come to the conclusion that i'm

incredibly grateful He has a reason for everything. i

needed the humility. and i needed the faith. and i need Him.

that's all.

ka-ra-tay.

yes, well, I intend to add the capacity for incapacitating violence to my reportoire this summer. just to have it. I feel like I'm going to need that capacity in reserve in college at some point. not that I want to use it. like I said, I don't like the idea of violence as a means of directing situations. but it's precisely this distaste for it that is impelling me to acquire the capacity to defend myself adequately if placed in a situation requiring significant physical... tact.

today

this is my day.

the burble of a mustang V8 and the drop-bounce twist and dip

of a boomslang hipshot groove, wait

til the rhythm hits your stomach, feel the pulse, late

cause we lay back in the pocket

texas style

and y'all can't come within a country mile

of the flow

'cause y'all don't /know/ how to kick it.

wicked southern swing
country tele sting brings
the funk and the one drop dancefloor spring

fill

let it it overflow, heartbeat, start street, finish line, dark sweet thing, that's mine.

no questions asked, she got a touch of class,

i don't need no other love when she can sing like that.

osprey

eyes like an osprey

it's the future i'm seeing

but not tethered yet

metaflow pt. 3

she said:

"i'm a one artist army, no weapon can harm me."

i said:

invincible? effect an affect, evince the truth from my mind and make me believe your rhyme, sister.

i was responding in kind. i would have her know these:

that no army, no matter how strong, will remain a unit long if its unable to hold strong in that most pertinent of the many prospective tours of duty it holds in its even more innumerable prospective futures: practice. having said this, i will desist in my metaflow, in patient wait of a better flow from your allegedly militant mind. let me hear you rhyme.

metaflow pt. 2

the conversation facilitating the flow is lovely, but i'd be greedy to try and take more and feel needy for keeping the chore of said facilitation on your shoulders. oh, and the need to do that work will slowly smoulder in my conscience 'til morrow. and you're free to laugh if and when you catch wind of my future sorrow, as it's steadily becoming clearer that there are many insignificant things that i inexplicably hold dearer to me here than my grades.

metaflow

i need to write more poetry. the flow, you know, is the way to go when it comes time to express my thoughts in verse.

but it seems my words are cursed of late. these rhythms and lyrics only procreate when the silence in my mind abates. and as the time goes by and by, the few triumphs i do lay claim to start to fall behind. and thus, my need for release is always great.

in short:

i can't flow, you see, unless i first conversate.

welcome

I'm the giving type. Wasn't sure that the phrase had a meaning, a distinct way to delineate the boundary between the people like me, if they indeed exist and the rest of the world. But the crux on which my method of differentiation rests is this: I actually feel like I can say "you're welcome" and mean it. welcome. what does welcome mean? in days of old, they would say welcome when a guest arrived at their door. "you are well come." I think that also might have been something to say at goodbyes. it works, cause it lets the guest know that they can come again, because they've earned the goodwill of the household. it's a way to let the guest know that what was given will be freely given in good faith the next time it's needed. yeah, i think I can say that. friend of mine, when you say "thank you", it is more than likely that whatever you think I've done for you will be freely given in good faith the next time it's needed. truth.


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flow/chemical river

one day, i'm tellin' you

my rhymes will go viral

i know fame, success and fortune are enough to make your head spiral

really, though

what it is that makes those things vital to a poet like me?

it's nothing

debauchery, flaunting the epitome of freedom

doesn't work its way way back to your livin' real easy

cause flowing like a river will supply you quite well

til it gets you in, can't break you out of your new jail cell

brothers, listen, i speak clearly

a bit quickly, but you'll pay dearly

if you don't pay up now, heed my word

the chains on your mind will become chains on your slurred

slow

dying

crippled

verse

don't get caught in the chemical stream.

Re: iPhone

Four weeks ago, my aunt bought me an iPhone. I didn't really have the income necessary to support the requisite data plan, but we bought it anyway, because, in my opinion, the cell phone market is even worse than the pharmaceutical market at giving consumers what they need at a fair price. With almost every other phone in the store, I experienced an unbelievable amount of frustration. Bad interface after bad interface making waste of technological feats that would have been very impressive otherwise. I didn't /want/ a phone that tried to do everything for me. I wasn't sure how much I'd like it, or whether I would believe I'd bought something worthwhile in the end. But, right now, I can happily say that I hold in my hands one of the most inspiring devices I've ever heard of, and, in my honest opinion, it's worth every penny of the ridiculous $30 monthly charge. I'm listening to Kind of Blue in a crowded cafeteria at an academic competition, with my drummers' isolation headphones over Apple's earbuds. I can hear the voices of the five laptop-toting friends at my table, but beyond that, it feels like we're an empty room, with the only faint burble of sound from beyond the walls hinting at the life all around us. I'm connected to the entire world and completely at peace at the same time. Sounds almost religious, doesn't it? I don't know why this situation is so compelling, but every time I pick this thing up, the gears in my head start ticking with an eye towards the future, the things I thought I'd never see realized outside of my mind's eye. Put one of these on your wrist, and you're Buzz Lightyear. It's a better GameBoy, a better mp3 player, even a better universal remote. This is technology that feels genuinely self-actualizing. Like I said, worth every penny.

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haha :)

Location:UIL competition

teachers

In communication, it is the messenger's responsibility to ensure that the intended recipient hears the message being conveyed.

However, when called upon to make a value judgement between ensuring that the message is heard as intended vs. understood as intended, many messengers, with very noble messages in their trust, fail to choose the latter.

The black box that transforms what we hear into what we know is the final arbiter of perceived truth.

At the altar of futile nobility lies many an endeavor; burnt offerings to the love of form over function.

If the intended recipient of a message does not receive it, does the delivery of said message warrant any merit in and of itself?

Is it virtue to simply consign our thoughts to their intended destinations and hope veritas will speak for itself?

brushfire

i just got back from seeing avatar, and it's insane to see the parallels between the movie's symbolism and my thoughts from the past two weeks. in my head, i've been revisiting the culture of the native americans and their approach to interaction with nature, thinking about building infrastructure that's forward-compatible and what really makes a society "advanced". got home, and my mom asked me to read a chapter from a book called "talent is overrated". more developmental insights. as a result, my brain was absolutely on fire for about forty-five minutes; however, i was asked to clean up upstairs and wasn't allowed to let my thoughts out properly. the fire is gone, now. i wonder: does that means they've been resolved, or lost?

the biggest loser

yesterday was the first time in my entire life that i've used "proper channels" to try and accomplish something in a bureaucracy. amazingly enough, it's also the first time i'll have succeeded. pretty big milestone, i think. just some unorthodox tactics* and direct human-to-human communication helped a lot, because it allowed the administrator in question to get a steady stream of highly relevant information in a short, convenient span of time. time, as it turns out, is really the biggest issue here.

i read somewhere that the most significant problem inherent to bureaucracies is their need to describe people, reductively, with numbers, because there's so much information required for each individual person's component of every decision a given bureaucracy will make. upon reading that, what struck me next was a little surprising: the sheer descriptive power of numbers is amazing! if a picture's worth a thousand words, how much more is a good set of numbers worth?

the government seems to quickly earn the ire of a large portion of the general public, because of all the administrative quicksand that remains in its systems. however, no one seems to suggest the idea that economics and statistics be given more priority in school. as a democracy, for our voters to make informed decisions without sacrificing an inordinate amount of their time, they must understand statistics and the principles of economic thought. otherwise, the only citizens that'll have a shot at becoming informed political participants will be those who make "becoming informed" their full-time occupation.

i have a dream: that one day, our government will decide to go on an information diet. and that at some later date, we can look around us at the rest of the world and say, hey, would you look at that. our government's the biggest loser.

*making an appointment with the principal's secretary, despite the fact that the principal is always up and about the school, ostensibly available for comments or concerns.

do you want a...

there are people who believe they can change the world. i've met a few. they're all very passionate.

some almost to a fault. you know you've got a problem when stepping back to see the big picture requires losing sight of even the important details.

"revolutionary":

milk for the bones and blood for the banners

honey for the tongue, oh, sing me an anthem, baby

i'm gonna break your world in two

set it spinning like a top til it all falls down on you

revolution after turn, watch the incense burn

the bourgeosie's smoking second-grade potpourri

oh, baby, i'm a revolutionary

2010

no cider or soda, so we improvised. watched a steve reich documentary instead of watching the ball drop. i think i got the better end of the deal.

2008 was the year i discovered music, people, and what it feels like to grow. 2009 is the year i went too far with both, and figured out what i want to do with my life. ostensibly, 2010 is the year i start doing what i want to do with my life.
good stuff.
we'll see how this goes.