I'm glad Sparks are gone.
I miss Naoko

and mass bike rides

and maybe even going to shows where I don't know any of the bands but all my friends do.

My knee is busted lately, but I rest it up just enough so I can ride it for a few days and be okay. I want to go on bike adventures with friends that don't live here anymore. I could try to rally folks but that would mean having a purpose and a place in mind, I think.

Facebook is loathsome. Why did it become a place where any and all of the people from ALL of the social spheres in your life feel welcome to befriend you? Voyeurism between like-minded peers was all right to me (myspace), but I do not like spending time setting up careful friend groups and privacy permissions in order for me to feel "okay" in uploading narcissistic pictures of myself..

This week is Thanksgiving. I feel like I'm forgetting someone, some lone drifter I meant to bring to my Lawncrest-area family function. Do I really just show up with no hassle? Is there a friends only potluck later?

I see a big lasso swirling down encompassing. I pull it taut with all the things I've been yearning for to happen.

"All I see is what's in front of me."

Does one grow out of something like that?

At any rate, I gave myself a haircut I'm pretty fond of.





( I burned those letters too... )

Current mental state is !! :D :D :D :D !!!!! :~D <3_<3;;;!!!

Sort of like that.

Mixtapes and bruises.
It's a beautiful autumn.

Somebody give me a prompt. A funny/interesting situational thing to write out, sort of fan-fic'ish, but not anime (cause I'm so out of the loop nowadays). Possibly some movie or book or something.

Get at me!?

18:08 Alexis: http://www.twoyoutubevideosandamotherfuckingcrossfader.com/#8-28SOWEWts/OsayCi8DDIs
18:10 自分: AHHHH!!!!
this is BLOWING MY MIND
ALEXIS!
post this on nori's facebook!
18:11 Alexis: doing it
18:12 自分: thank you
5 分間
18:17 自分: http://www.twoyoutubevideosandamotherfuckingcrossfader.com/#dYjWCvVDaKc/zyEHQTVNnkc
18:18 kinda doesnt go. mostly wanted you to hear the other song
Alexis: this machine is crazy
18:19 自分: seriously
i like that you call it a machine

I'm going to make a conscious decision to erase the memories of my past.

For all this time I've been holding on to letters and pictures from high school and past that, of me and Roberto. I'll say his name just that one time, that motherfucker.

I've tried to do that thing where I hold on to them until they have some sort of ... nostalgic meaning somehow. But that still hasn't happened, and I only feel furious every time I look at them or read them. I think the discovery and preservation of my poetry from that era is evidence enough to my mental and emotional state of that time. I will do away with the pictures and letters. Burn them in a pit and scatter the ashes.

It's still so difficult to make that decision and I don't know why! What will happen after they're burned away, I wonder...

To tomorrow.

HEY CHECK OUT MY WEBSITE

This past few weeks some extremely emotionally charged shit happened. Now, saying that, I don't mean it in a positive or negative way, as to insinuate I'm in some state ... But this is just an intro - bear with me.

I ended up staying up an entire night, and subsequent nights very late, to write this CRAZY story. I remember in Catholic school and high school, I would have a pen in my pocket and a notebook at all times, cause I was writing poetry all the damn time. As time passes, I guess it's changed to me writing smut every now and again, half on a computer...

So anyway, I started writing this crazy thing. I put it off for a few days now so I can have a fairly clear mind to go back and edit it to make sense. In the middle of doing this, I also redid the layout at cyborg memoirs. (There is STILL some shitty float issue going on with the nabigation! >.< leaving the typo).

I also went and looked for all this archived poetry of mine to see if anything good could be found from the years of my insane teenage angst/love affair bullshit. 80% of it is awful, I think. It's all about that motherfucker whose name I won't even mention.

But I did find some. And I recorded audio for a few. I think I had three or four audio tracks on my site before? Now it's up to eight! So check that out, will ya? There's new poetry there, in that section. Short weird stuff that I'm still fond of. Purged of all the dumbass "oh i'm so in love!!!" shit that used to be there like seven years ago.

I found poetry from 1998!!!!

Life is crazy. I own the notebooks still that this poetry is in... but I had already typed it up into this mass compendium html file around 2002, I think. Just nuts.

I always forget that at any time, anyone can google either my real name or my handle and come back with a wealth of information. At the same time, I make the conscious decision to keep it all public. (This journal only has one private post on it in all the years.) Then sometimes I question if I need to keep any of my broadcast channels (read: websites/networking profiles) public anymore, since there is so much information out there. The net used to be small? The net used to be more quiet, when public broadcasting of yourself just wouldn't reach as many people.

Hey Ripley, check it out:



Then, imomus, whose LJ I read using Google Reader (not my own LJ friendslist, for whatever reason), posts this? And I find out about it from a friend who knows who Momus is, also reads his LJ, and sends me a reply via Twitter about the hilarity of this situation.

I will make the step towards direct connection/commenting! どうしようかな〜

あんた大嫌いな。。。
でも。。。あるいはうちのことを大嫌いになってる。どっちか分からない。
彼女と別れたって私に言うたら、どういう意味ねん？
共通の友達がレコードを混ぜているハーローウィンの夜、私が酔っぱらって前の悩みを全くかまわなかって、前の楽しいところのように一緒に遊んだ。本当に、うちは何してるねんってよく考えたのに。あなた大嫌いから。あなたは私に「ヒミツの前の彼女」にしたから。あなたの人生から私のことを全く削除したみたいから。そんなことを単純に忘れられないで！

だって。。。

今、あのやろうと遊ぶかと考えている。なんでのかな。。。あんたに酷いことについてまだわばを待っているな。待っています。酷く待ったいます。

だって。。。

あんた臆病者だ！！と何度も言っても、私も同じものじゃないやろう？　たんにあなたの嫌な行動を説明してあやまってくれたら、許すから。なんでか分からない。人間は心弱いものやな。。。

分かる点は何のもない。

I'm thinking about getting dressed up one more time and going to the woods for some slightly better pictures ... Billy Blake.

Right in this very moment,

I really just wanna move back to Osaka. With my bike. And spend my free days taking my bike on the train to nice places, and riding it all over. After, a coffee, a sandwich, at some cafe where everything is beautiful and the atmosphere is well-kept.

I ride the narrow streets of Philadelphia, keeping to the very left-edge of the bike lane, fearing a door or pedestrian. The Osaka streets, stretched on in wide empty swaths from all ends of the city. Wind blowing, thigh muscles burning, no helmet.

I started a conversation club at school, meeting three times a week. It's been all right so far. As expected, I put a lot of effort into getting people conversing at all - asking them questions and talking about myself. Someday, a fabled Japanese person or language superior will arrive.

I study JLPT preparatory texts seven days of the week. Not that time consuming, but another addition to the schedule.

A friend of mine accused me of having time once not long ago, the proof of which could be seen through my Internet status updates and images... It's been extremely poor of me not to say anything back since the accusation, but, I still find the accusation unnecessarily extreme.

I went to New York City last weekend, finally, to go see my homegirls... But they were tired and sick, and primarily busy, and we didn't really do the kind of hanging out I would've liked. We ran around to parties, and they invited their other friends along, and the time was never just for the three of us. But that's their lives in New York, and I am a visitor. And when they come to Philly, they'll have to deal with my running around and other social circles.

I saw my friends that live two blocks away twice last week. We ate dinner together. I saw my friend that lives one block away from me once this week. We watched a movie. Other than that, no contact.

I stay up late into the night. I read for my classes. I study my Japanese. I ride to and from school. My friend that lives near Cecil B Moore and 3rd streets ... Hell, I've only been to his house once. We don't hang out that often. A few times we ate lunch at Temple.

My friend that lives near 11th and Spring Garden, I see him a few times every few weeks. Cause it's on the way home. Cause he calls me, like a reminder of his proximity, implores I stop by, if only for a short bit. We'll watch a movie, or listen to music, and talk about our persisting problems. If I stop at his house, it's only a twenty minute ride back home in the dark, at the end of a long day.

And everyone else that I know in this city... They live in South Philly or North Philly. And yeah, to be honest, I don't think I have the time to go those ways if they're not on the way home, at this stage in my life, this fall of 2009, autumn of looking for direction in no direction.

Someone I used to see every day and hang out with all the time, since I got back from Japan, I've seen once. One Saturday, my housemate had told me about a good coffee shop near South Street, so I rode there to study and write my weekly essay in Japanese. And by chance, that friend sent to Twitter his location nearby. I rode over. We caught up. And when I will see him next, I'm not sure. But it was good that one time.

( There are no promises. )

From the walk around nowhere today. Now it's 11. What have I done with my time ...

The other night I watched The Piano with Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel. I did so for a school assignment, for my film midterm, thinking it might be sort of corny or some drawn-out period drama. Holly Hunter cannot speak, or chooses not to, and is married off to some wretched idiot living in Australia. Harvey Keitel's character, Baines, is the go-between man for her husband, an Englishman with Maori tattoos on his face who cannot read. He watches her play.

Baines, some thug. Some sensuous gentlemanly thug. He's not a thug. Boy, sometimes am I ever in the mood for a certain type of movie, and The Piano was it the other night.

Watch it sometime. Caressing of arms and shoulders and gripping the back of the neck, and all his gentle sounds. All that muscle and longing.

Meanwhile, I remain disappointed in myself for staying up so late every night, not caring about the work of my days at school, and feeling anxious for not properly studying Japanese... I began taking birth control again for the main purpose of clearing up my skin, second purpose to regulate my periods ... But they made me gain all this mysterious weight around my midsection and breasts. I don't want it. I also realize that my periods were perfectly fine. Indeed, my skin is not that much better anyway... To hell with the hormones. Maybe they are also contributing to this strange breed of pathetic melancholy. To hell with them.



As autumn intensifies, I find myself wanting a late-night companion, a sensual friend. But I don't think I really need that. I just need to get out of my room, and get my time back to be productive. And once I do that, then I can flirt with wine and flesh.

Fuck man, it's gonna seriously bust me up if I am able to watch yet another person I care about court someone else via the Net.

Yeah, you know BK, what you did, I still think it was fucking cold.

Bought a ticket to Osaka for winter break. It's round trip. Just a visit. I wasn't prepared anyway, but I missed the deadline to register for the JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency) test this December. I took some crummy JLPT practice test and it gave me 52%, pointing out something I already knew, which is my kanji game is busted. I'm trying, struggling every day to figure out a balance of studying Japanese as seriously as I was in Middlebury, while also doing regular school work and life shit.

Meaning, my visit to Osaka, when all my friends over there will be working, should be some interesting personal time.

I'm making a NO ENGLISH Japanese conversation club at school. But it's going to be full of first and second year Genki textbook users who have had almost no speaking practice before... I think back to myself at that level and wonder how serious the people who will show up to the first meeting will be.

Japanese is the only thing I can remember throwing myself into. I want to learn Japanese. I want to be there looking at things and doing stuff. I need to pass that JLPT 2 test. But since I missed the deadline for this year, I was thinking of just aiming for JLPT level 1, the test for which won't be until December 2010. It's the highest level. I keep being like, oh man that's tough! But that's a whole other year away. That's a good chunk of time to be getting down with memorization, reading, writing practice ... all that.

And then after I pass JLPT level 1, what? Get a job doing something funny over there. I keep thinking I will flesh out my academic interests in the second half of my undergrad time, so that by the time I graduate, I will have some interesting shit to push over into Japan.

What will my skillsets be other than Japanese? I want to stay away from computers because my body cannot take the strain, but all my interests are closely connected to the machine. I'll take photographs. Document things. Talk to people. But not be a journalist or sociologist or whatever. Activist for the power and need of local media...

I need direction, but to talk to professors about where to go next, I need to figure out just even a little something...

Although I gravitate towards it, I find the role of a researcher somewhat loathsome. Research is cool but seems so tied up endless reading and staying inside. And I think I am by nature, too selfish to develop into any consequential activist type.

Why is the fear of making choices that lead to set-back so debilitating for me?

I still need to visit the south and southwest, and take my aunt up on her offer to live near San Francisco for a summer or something. But time, time, I don't have it... I haven't even had the time to make it up to New York City on a bus to see my homegirls. But they know what's going on, we all got crazy shit busting our heads right now.