There is a pleasure sure
In being mad which none but madmen know.
~John Dryden, The Spanish Friar, 1681
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It's snowing! Just in time to double my commute to school...
Here's a question that no one will probably answer, but I beg of you to:
"Is everything that happens caused?"
A happening is an event. A cause is an event that results in another event, i.e. a consequence.
Well, I was going to see The Devil Inside this evening...but a friend called me at 1 in the morning to tell me how awful it was. And by 'awful' I mean 'not worth $10.'
This is Brett. He's a Marine. He taught me my first arm bar. He is my hero.
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Clunky sentences aside, I have a photoshoot with a recently married couple tomorrow. Because of debilitating circumstances, I can't stand to bet alone with young happy bubbly puppy loving adorable couples. I really don't know why..I'm probably jealous, or something.
Incidentally, this kid named Montana (he's sixteen) is crushing on my sister Jill and asked me for advice on how to ask her out. Over a series of man-talks, the last of which consisted of me pinning him to the floor in an arm triangle, I impressed upon him how Jill at her age does not like guys at all (she's sixteen). She also plans to go into music in college, and therefore needs a masters degree. She's busy for the next eight years, and if he wants her he's gotta slow down...and wait. Incidentally she finds him incredibly annoying.
"Why do you like my sister?" (tighten choke hold)
"*Sputters* because she's pretty and she makes me feel good."
"I have a dog. Same thing"
"But she's different."
"How?"
"Because she's pretty and she makes me feel good."
"*Sigh*....Those are really bad answers, bro."
I think the entire conversation flew right over his head. He just texted me and asked if he should write her a song to tell her his feelings. He loves country music. Did I mention Jill hates country music?
That awkward moment when your mom tries to hook you up up with a girl at a funeral. Right after she breaks up with her boyfriend. And insists on taking pictures of the both of you striking funny poses.
Why can't I just stick to picking chicks up at bars, mum? Pretty please?
“There is no use trying,” said Alice; “one can’t believe impossible things.”
“I dare say you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “when I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
~Lewis Carrol (Alice In Wonderland)
We stand in hallways, lie on carpets, pace corridors late at night, sit motionless by the walking trails, trace keys silently at the baby piano, look wonderless at skies speckled in stars. We find a vague comfort in our perception that the stars themselves are throbbing - until we remember they seemed to twinkle months back when we were praying in hope - and then we start to wonder if, all along, they have simply been laughing. We gaze at flickering candles and feel known by their flutter for oxygen. The compassionate around us ask what is wrong - as if we could respond - or how they can help - if only we knew - or try to help us "move on" - but the reason for our motionlessness is our own breathlessness, and how will moving help that? Our desperation is contagious. The compassionate finally gasp themselves, to survive - they laugh, they cry in frustration, they say something they think should console or resolve - and we are relieved that they finally leave us, frozen, alone, where they found us.
Breathless.
We want it to end, the suspended glaze-eyed magnified moment. We are frozen in the shatter and the fall and the aftermath of our only shocked gasp. When the trusted betrays and the certain sways or maybe the ice simply cracks with the truth of impending spring. We stand faint outside another's oblivious world-ending smile. We walk helpless under stars that mean something utterly different to someone else. We want to know who does this to us. We want to know what in Heaven, what on earth, drops a smiling baby. We want to know how the hands that cradle are the hands that choke.
"But it was not your fault but mine, and it was your heart on the line.
I really fucked it up this time...Didn't I, my dear?"~Mumford and Sons
Photobombing on my family's Christmas photos. Oh yeah..
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Shameless self promotion! I finally got around to starting up a facebook page featuring my work, which you can find at
