HILARIOUS am i...

so after the tempest of the last post... or at least, i felt it tempestuous; i was crying for a lot of it... i am on more even footing. or something... i'm starting to come back to normal, or at least tell myself that i need to do so... i must live life. a vespa is dangerous, but i will learn to ride it as safely as i can. i will wear a helmet. and life promises no more than that. its really all you can do: read the manuals, wear the safety equipment, and just go. abstaining doesn't gain you anything. it just makes you lose out.

i need to complain about something that you will all hate me for. you will say, "you're an idiot. why is this something that unhinges you?" well, sorry. but its my blog. i get to bitch about anything i want.

i have issues with people liking me. i used to not trust people who liked me. still a bit of an issue. but i've also moved on to realizing that almost anyone likes me. ANYONE!!! i can bring anyone around to me. apparently i am charming and kind, and humorous. the issue is not to find someone who likes me, but to find someone who i like. because i've met several people since i've been here in austin, and i've eschewed them all. they're fine people, but they just don't do it for me. they don't live up to my ridiculously high standards. but i'm unwilling to compromise.

now, part of the problem is that i've met them all over the internet, and the internet is the domain of those who hold no social skills. i do hold social skills, i just also have issues... i'm not good alone at a party. i'm not good in groups. but let me get you alone, and you want to meet me. i'm that cool. forgive me. it seems to be true. i never would have thought it, but it seems to be the case.

again, i wonder... can i clone myself and date my clone? that seems like a decent compromise... contact the c.i.a. there's a project we have to work on...

IN!

so for some odd reason, i'm in the middle of warring feelings right now. perhaps its the over-consumption of both martinis and gin and juice. i stole the juice too... i owe my housemates juice. a little bit. but still, i owe them. granted, i cook for them. i make masses of food that i invite them to eat. i am the strange house mom in some ways. but lets examine things in more depth...

first and foremost, after months of waiting for any word at all, and after weeks of hanging by my teeth to the waitlist, *something grandiose should go here; like a flourish of trumpets, or a swelling of music, or a crash of thunder...* I HAVE BEEN ACCEPTED TO THE UT AUSTIN GRADUATE PROGRAM IN ARCHITECTURE!!! i found out wednesday via e-mail. i hesitated, opened it up (the title was a lovely, ambiguous "final waitlist decision" or something equally frightening...) and read the quiet little words saying i had been ACCEPTED!!! and i screamed. i screamed in my room. i screamed loud and long, the way you scream for the band on the stage who has just played your song. the way you scream after singing along with the radio for months, after buying the tickets, after watching them thrash and dance on the stage and offer up the prayer in real life. the way you scream after tears have been brought to your eyes and then coursed down your cheeks, and you sing along again, because it is how you worship, and it all suddenly feels right, and for those three minutes and change, you feel whole. you feel connected. you feel complete. you are where you need to be, and nothing else even matters.

i screamed, and screamed. i whooped. i laughed. i felt like crying. my chest felt like it was full of sky. and i texted everyone i knew who has a cell phone that accepts text messages. and i told my housemate. and i keep just laughing, and smiling, and feeling randomly happy... and now after two days of food, and congratulatory phone calls from friends, and family, and family friends who must have been told by my parents; after more love than i could imagine, and too many martinis, and marijuana that made me sick, and three rented movies in a night... i thought i would go to bed. but no. now i must come to the blog, and write it all down, lest i ever forget.

now i feel strange. the last two days, i have felt so lucky, so blessed (terrifying i should use such a word, i know... i'm not usually all godly and shit.) i feel terrified. i feel terrified like i owe some gargantuan debt. like someone suddenly has a tab for a pound of my flesh. its all piling up. the jewish guilt. the anything guilt... how is it that i have come to be a reasonably functional adult, that i have made it through childhood, and the pain of middle school and high school... that i have passed through the amazing and ridiculous tunnel of college, and survived two years at home with my parents again. that i have gotten accepted to a school that is too competitive to think about without feeling sick, and that promises to teach me all i want to know, in so many ways...

beyond that... how have i come to have a family that loves me so much, that loves the fact that i will be an hour and a half from home, and can visit at will. how did that happen? that they so desperately want me close by, and simply enjoy my company... that they just want me to be there... that somehow, i seem to make them happy, in some ineffable way that i feel unable to describe or understand? how do i have friends that get my simple text message, "i'm in!" and call me from work, that very same day, to say how happy they are for me? how did i come to deserve this?

and now i'm sniffling... because i feel like such a fuck up... i'm a procrastinator... i'm cold and aloof... i say horrible things, even if i don't quite mean them, and i don't show love like i should... i waste money. i drink too much. i smoke too much. (cigarettes, not ganja... and cigarettes are worse...) i have an expensive disease that i don't keep good enough tabs on... i'm lazy and shiftless... i'm gay, and self-righteous. i feel like i must be such a burden, on all the people in my life... i'm unstable, and all kinds of fucked up... i'm overly dramatic. and for some reason, despite all this, my life is so good... my family loves me. really loves me. they love me more than i love myself. and i have friends. friends who love me as well...

i feel completely different now. wednesday, i drove north on the MoPac freeway, on the west side of austin. you would never think you were within a major metropolitan district... it is this lovely stretch of road that curves through gentle green hills, the best of the texas hill country, which despite how much i bitch, is beautiful... all of austin is nestled among these ridges of hills... the city is hidden from itself, with neighborhoods unfolding beyond that next green crest that seems to hold the whole of the world behind it... MoPac curves through these hills, gently rolling up and down... at times, it skirts the summits; at other times, it is carved into the rock itself, layers and layers of sediment, limestone, revealed to you as you pass it by... there is a small steel bridge that arcs over a piece of river, happy in its canyon course. and i thought, how lucky am i, how fucking blessed am i, to spend another four years in this beautiful place,

and now i must live up to this ridiculous gift i've been given. i can't drink away an evening, surfing the internet, just because i don't have anything else pressing to do... i can't smoke cigarettes and erode my lungs. i have to take care of myself. i suddenly want to pack myself away in soft cotton, like a crystal figurine; like one of the carvings in tennessee williams' glass menagerie... i've been given this ridiculous succession of gifts, for no reason that i can figure out... there's no way i can be a "good" enough person to deserve these things... and i logically know that that's not how it works... but its still there; this crushing desire to become something more than i am right now, to live up to all that i have. i barely want to leave the house... driving a car seems too dangerous, and that vespa i was thinking of getting... now it just seems like a good way to get myself killed, and that risk is simply too great. i can't play games with my life that way.

i know this can't last... granted, i should smoke less, drink less, and go to the gym and yoga again. i should try to be a healthier person generally speaking. but i need to live my life, and all this fear, this uncertainty, this GUILT, for lack of a better word, will leave me at some point. i'll be back to my unholy air of entitlement soon enough, i'm sure. there will be new challenges to hold my attention, and new journeys to take. but right now, i feel like i've been given this strange happy ending, bought at some terrible price to my soul... and god knows i joke about being a bad person, about being in league with the devil, about not trusting people who are nice and good. but i want to be a good person. i want to feel worthy of all that i have been given, on a seeming silver platter. and all those jokes are only shoddy curtains to hide my own fear that i'm not a good person, that i don't deserve it, that i can never be enough...

granted, with the standards i set for myself (perfection...) i can never be enough. and i suppose that's something that i'll have to work on. that or be unhappy forever... but that is the fuck of it... i don't trust happiness. i assume that if i'm happy, i've done something wrong, or am forgetting something, and it will all come and bite me in the ass later. but perhaps that's all the more reason to enjoy it now. and, dare i say it, perhaps, beneath it all, beneath the crudeness and the addictions, and the unhealthy appetites and uncharitable thoughts... maybe i am a good person. not that that means i'm only getting my just desserts... oh no. i'm lucky as all hell. but either i must be okay, or i am the greatest actor on the face of the planet. because i have gotten such an outpouring of love and support and true happiness and kindness and oh god... and all those people can't be wrong, can they? because i'll tell you this... i couldn't tell a lie to save my life... and i can't act. i know that for sure. and i don't suffer fools (perhaps an actual "needs improvement" area of my life...)

well, god, yahweh, adonai, life-force, the strange benevolent force that seems to radiate from all life, from people and trees and dogs and mustelids... the strange and often hidden net of love that binds all people to each other... my blessed and beautiful family... my parents and siblings... my beautiful sister who hides, and my mother who always believes in me... my frriends, my friends who believe in me and love me even when i don't... who just love me... for no good reason... this whole stupid world, that i don't understand... all of it. all of you. i don't know exactly what i've done to deserve you, to have you, to know you, to have everything that i have, and that you've given me. i don't know. and i'm crying now, and my eyes burn. thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you... i love you all so much... i don't know how to express it. but i cry for you. i don't have the words, but i will cry, and say thank you thank you thank you so much... my heart breaks in me to feel such love... may god bless you and keep you all, and hold you close, and watch over you all the days of your lives. i love you all so much...

I'm Getting Over It

yes i'm lonely. yes, things are strange. yes, i'm in the middle of a cluster-fuck of uncertainty and desire. but i'm doing all right. i got peeps in the mail from a dear friend, and i have started work, so things are better than they were.

i trained for wyoming grade three reading on monday and tuesday (today)... a day and a half of training, and they'll call me in a few days when that project is scanned and ready for scoring. i don't care. i'm working! i'm excited to prove that i can wake up at six thirty in the morning and make it to work not only on time, but early. life is so much better, just by virtue of having a routine and things to do. sure, the scoring rules are completely arbitrary, but fuck, i have a job... yes, i wish it was something i approved of, but let's not get too picky...

today, after getting released early, i went to the austin vespa store. i was worried that the scooters would be all small, and i would look like a gorilla on a clown car. but they are quite substantial, those epitomes of italian design, and i will look just fine on one. and they are so, hot! god, they are sexy and not overly testicular like a motorcycle. and even my mother is down with them. she likes modes of transportation that are safe-ish, and use little gas. she's a hippie like me. and "knew" (biblically) a guy in israel who had one, and she rode on it. so even my over-protective jewish mother is alright with me getting a scooter. and i downloaded and read the texas "department of public safety" motorcycle manual today. never let it be said i am not comprehensive in my research...

i am in at houston. i'll call ut austin tomorrow. arlington is fucked up. i'm listening to "the books". (i ordered their entire cd collection when i wimped out on going to their concert...) i want to read more x-men slash, and i'm starting to think that adrien brody would be a good choice for gambit. unfortunately, the character of gambit is far too gay and sexual to ever make it to the big screen. but that's why i read slash. and hugh jackman as wolverine, BEYOND HOT!!! good god... and i have learned to smoke without removing the cigarette from my mouth to exhale. i am the shit.

my life is a complete question mark, but i'm feeling pretty all right. god knows...

i asked the asian woman at my liquor store how she came to be missing a part of a finger. i felt embarassed, but i wanted to know. and she didn't have a straight answer. her mother told her she lost it to a baby. who knows.

in other racist news, the one non-white guy in my training group (he's vietnamese) has befriended me. we talked about architecture and maya lin during a cigarette break. (he smoked marlboros, just like another asian i know...) he is a nice guy, and i feel bad, because everyone else in the group is asking him how to say and pronounce things in vietnamese... he's a center of attention for being vietnamese (and knowing french as well as vietnamese) just like i'm a center of attention for being young and a north-eastern college grad. the odd ones out are always the center of attentions... and most of my training group are retired teachers... normal for harcourt... a screw up for human interaction...

granted, i like non-white people, but is there some strange pheremone i put off that attracts them to me? i'm certainly racist in my own ways, and yet, i am the natural target for non-whites in most places i go... i certainly don't trust myself to be kind and thoughtful about racial differences. but at least i don't ask how you say "how do you do" in vietnamese... small, small victories...

anywhoo, i'm waiting on word from ut austin. i'm looking more and more seriously at a vespa, and i just had the most wonderful e-conversation with my sister. she ended it by saying "good bye my brother who is so insane he is endearing..."

motherfucker! she gets me! god, it was wonderful...

12th of 22...

i'm twelfth of twenty-two on the waitlist at UT Austin... this is irritating... alcohol has been a common denominator for dealing with this... only for the past few days... i've been pretty good recently. my job has been delayed until april seventeenth. and i skipped "the books" tonight, because i couldn't stand going to a crowded show all alone, because i couldn't find anyone to go with me... life in austin, is lonely. i'm such a pussy, it is absolutely ridiculous... i'm ashamed of myself. great...

in addition, i'm late on my insurance payments, and may no longer have coverage. which, when you have diabetes, is not a good thing... i might be totally, royally fucked... i think i am... i haven't been on my parent's plan for a while, and when you miss a payment on cobra, the unemployed plan, i think you're just fucked. i think i'm just fucked... i asked them. i'll gladly pay ANYTHING, in interest or whatever, to continue my coverage. but i think i'm fucked. because i am not fit to deal with my own shit. and they wouldn't let me do direct deposit. and i'm an irresponsible ass... i'll let you know. because you care...

i am so lonely... i went home instead of to the books, and i was so happy to sit with my housemates at the table that it almost made it worth missing an amazing band live. almost. i still feel like i'm an idiot. and i should've shelled out for parking (no spots on the streets) and gone, but it just looked so crowded, and i was all alone... that's what's fucking me... the alone part. i could have front row seats to the apocalypse, and if i don't have someone to go with, i'd miss it... because half or more of the fun is to be there with someone you love, and can talk to about it... speech, we could have gone to the books tonight, except you live in new york. c hitler, i should have asked you, except for some reason, i forgot... fuck me, but i just can't get myself together...

so i have no insurance, am beyond alone, and am so far not in school... and mostly it's my fault... but i do wish someone would say it will all work itself out... but god knows. and in the meantime, i'm just fucked beyond belief... happy holidays everyone... at least i get to go home for passover...

To Think...

to think this post would be made while i was sober... well too late now. i'm relatively drunk, so deal. i had a flash about intimate knowledge... its one thing to let yourself be fully known and understood by someone... its another to be all right with this knowledge; to be alright enough to let that perceptive person say what they will, and make you happy through their knowledge of you... as of yet, only my mother has that privilege. and maybe speeches and yam. more disturbing is max, who knows me far too well, and yet makes me profoundly uncomfortable in his knowledge... he is a painful knife of honesty, opening me to the world, but mostly myself. if ever i've placed too much trust in someone, it was with him. and yet the trust is not misplaced... it simply results in a tempest of introspection i'd rather not deal with. my housemate suggested i take breaks from him. and i do. but i always come back, as to an addiction...

i am a quiet and secretive person. and if i seem to be other, it is only because of my own illusions about what should be kept private and secret. i enjoy people who trade in secret whims and hidden desires. that is the meat and soul of a person. but there are things i would not tell others. things that i fear make me look foolish, and vulnerable. such as the fact that i am vulnerable. the fact that i want to thrilled by a kiss from someone who knows my darkest secrets, and fully accepts them as part of someone they love. that i want to be chaste until i give myself to one who truly wants me. that i want a best friend who also desires me in a way that eclipses my physical body. such are the secret wishes of a virgo. the desires for romance which dare not make themselves known...

clive barker is an addictive read. he has such skill and finesse as an author, one cannot help but be sucked in. i have changed my mind, and the title of my autobiography or biography (until now, "the story of a very lovely boy and his adorable band of ethnically representative miscreants") may well be "horror stories and comic books". i'm addicted to both. i cannot help myself. the psychological imperative to accept that which is beyond one's own mind, and the love for pictures and words as the communication of information, will be my downfall. or my salvation. i haven't figured out which yet.

architecture... oh god how i desire to evince a kinder, gentler architecture... i used to fantasize about skyscrapers, a phallic, egotistical fascination. now i realize i have little taste for such parading. i want to create structures in harmony with their surrounding neighbors and floral beds. i want to create structures that facilitate connection and interaction. office parks that disappear into their surrounding trees and neighbors. havens amidst the cold, egomaniacal structures that dominate our world today. and tall buildings that have to be should cut breathtaking, intriguing silhouettes on the sky, graceful and lovely, rather than a competition against trees and parks, natural beauty that cannot be surpassed... god, i'm such a fucking HIPPIE!!! save me from myself...

i want a cigarette so badly, and when i was sober, i didn't allow myself to pick up any... and now, that attempt at righteousness and deprivation just seems foolish... i want, a, fucking, CIGARETTE!!!

i might go get some... god save me...

Ruminations and the Orifish

what's become of joshie? where has the poor dear gone?

i'm not really sure. i've moved to austin. and have become a lethargic slug. i do have a job starting on april sixth (oh oh ohhh thank god...) which i'm sure will spur me to begin exercising again, since sitting on my ass all day scoring (tests, you sicko... scoring tests...) will make me reeeally want to move my body. and positive cash-flow, brilliant! but really, what am i doing with my life? once again, i just don't know...

i really wanted to do some writing tonight. i started to explore a theme that's been on my mind a lot, but it didn't go quite right. of course, that's to be expected after such a long hiatus. i need to get myself acclimated to writing again. it takes a little while. and i'm not sure. i'm a little stuck as far as themes. i'm not sure where i want to go, what i want to explore, and all my main characters are thinly veiled, more dysfunctional (if possible...) versions of me. me in subtly warped old mirrors, with cracks in the corners and the silver tarnishing behind the glass. which is cool, i suppose, but i just wish i didn't feel like such a one trick pony. all writing is a reflection of the self, i just don't know where to go.

on that note... i am so tired of being gay... and not in the ex-gay sense. i am not tired of "being gay..." i'm just tired of gay. when i got to austin, i engrossed myself in a glut of gay dating websites (well, website... i'm not that crazy, really) and gay blogs, and lots of gay. gay culture, gay thought, gay musings. i am sick and tired of gay. i've met two people so far off the net, and while both are good people, they are living testaments to the fact that the internet does not convey everything. people are so much easier on the internet, when you don't have to actually deal with them... and meeting people off a gay DATING site means that they probably have at least a meandering desire to DATE you. i do not want to date people. i do not want to have sex. i want my life to have meaning, which i suppose is kind of up to me (a LOT up to me) but still difficult.

gayness and gay people and gay culture do not make me feel meaningful. they do not make me happy. i've been engrossed in this glut of gay because it feels like i can finally BE gay again after a sexless and sexuality-less sojourn in san antonio. but that was never the major problem anyway. i'm still in a bit of a creative wasteland. i am trying to cure that to a degree, through cooking and writing now, and in general managing to get out of my house. but i'm still lonely. i still don't have a place i belong. and that is fucking irritating as hell. my housemates are great and all, but they aren't a group of friends i see every day. i need some form of connection. and though people seem to like me regardless of what i do, its hard to get into situations where i actually do MEET people. i'm shy and private (at least at first... sort of...) and not down with just going someplace, plunking down with coffee and a book, and striking up a conversation with any handy stranger.

i can see people getting married just to put an end to the loneliness. i can see the appeal of communal living from birth to death. i can see the way that loneliness shapes all our lives. it is the wild hound at our heels, always threatening to overtake and devour us whole. and it feels so wrong to still feel lonely here in austin... its like, "you got where you needed to go, you're surrounded by hip people who have more to offer, statistically, than san antonio people!" well, sort of. perhaps the odds of striking it rich are greater, but if i'm not willing to belly up to the table, i'm not gonna win a hand.

see, i get along with people really well, but i'm socially dysfunctional. a strange and only seeming contradiction. i don't know how to maneuver in such a wide and varied social setting... in my own way, i crave the homogeneity and safe enclosed feeling of my old college community. granted, i was on the outskirts of that community, but no matter who i walked up to, there was some common denominator, if only that we attended the same school. here, the people are crunchier and the nightlife is much better, but i'm still not sure where i fit in. i don't have a group of stand-bys. i'm still pretty alone. and i'm not sure how to heal that. where do people go who are more interested in laughing at popular hip people than being popular hip people?

and the only people on my dating site who ever want to talk to me, by the way, are thirty year olds. i'm not sure what that means, or why no one my age finds me appealing, but it seems to be the case. i'm old before my time. and funny thing, because all those thirty year olds make me feel so frickin' young... i wonder if i'll ever actually feel like an adult... i'm not even sure i would like to feel like an adult. but i do wonder...

there are so many little things i want to talk about, and that is why i should update my blog daily, because now there's too much to even manage in one post. particularly since i've spent so much space wandering around inside my skull...

lets try and run it down quickly.

1) there is a clear acrylic butt-plug that is shaped sort of like a 3-d little christian fish. and this marvel of sexy engineering is called.. wait for it... "the orifish." best, thing, ever! (also offered: heaven's doorknob, and heaven on a stick. i kid you not.)

2) speeches (the teaches of speeches) got into law school, and brother got into ithaca. hot damn! now if i just knew if I got into school, perhaps this revolting ennui would end...

3) went to the asian market with one of the aforementioned thirty year olds during our initial visit. i spent the thirty minutes jumping around and squealing as i raced from aisle to aisle. side note: if i ever see another rice cracker, it will be too soon.

4) still addicted to noodles, but it might be dying off, thank god...

that's all i can remember for now. i made soup for my housemate, who has the flu and feels like death. i want to make more. all i want to do is make soup. soup is the best thing ever. and i need to clean my room, so, badly... mother-god... its a fucking royal mess. i need to make a big ole' list of things i need to do, and then go do them. and the list is long... so much to try and get ready for... WHERE THE FUCK ARE ALL THE LETTERS FROM THE SCHOOLS I APPLIED TO!!! i blame this hiatus partially on this sick waiting game they're forcing me to play... wtf? where are they? WHERE!? and on the same note, WHERE IS THE VESPA CATALOGUE I ORDERED!? and yes, i spell catalogue british. i do that alot. get over it.

perhaps i just need to listen to more reggae... that would probably help...

oh lord... i looked at architecture books at the bookstore today... i really miss it... architecture school is a good plan. and one of the books was entitled "monumental architecture". honestly, it made me sick to look at it. monumental can be good, if its called for, but my lord... so much of this crap was disgusting... making a splash for the sake of it, to the detriment of the actual project... or at least, i feel it was ugly without cause. a boxcar is ugly, but its good at being a boxcar. buildings should be able to beautiful regardless, or at least ugly with a purpose; ugly like when the architect really grew a pair and said, "this building is going to look like a bunker, like a mass of alien slime, like what a hernia feels like..." you know, like a lot of frank gehry's work. that's cool (though at times INEXCUSABLY ugly). and technology has advanced to a point where any desired effect can be achieved. but when ugly is just to prove a point, to participate in a big dick contest, that just ain't fuckin cool...

so yeah. i am going to be the great bleeding vagina of architecture, eschewing the flashy for the oddly beautiful. or something. blah blah blah, god complex. i am jesus. yadda yadda yadda... this is degenerating. which is delightful, don't get me wrong, but perhaps i should squeeze it off. i've written more just now than in the previous month, i'm sure... so lets end it before it gets truly bad.

later gator. send love. and chocolate.

Looong hiatus...

yeah, its been a hell of a long time since i've posted. partially, i've just been in a lethargic funk. i'm sitting here in austin with nothing to do, no social engagements, no job, just food to cook and eat, and food to go out and eat.

now don't get me wrong. i'm working on meeting people and finding things to do, and i'm not ready to off myself due to the boredom, but i wish i had more going on. i should start work on monday, which should help, and i should know soon where i'm going to school, so i can begin making plans for that. whoop de doo.

meantime. i am completely addicted to noodles; specifically, vietnamese noodles with pork and eggroll chopped up on them, doused in hoissin sauce and fish sauce. good, fucking, stuff.

i am also addicted to a few terribly dance-pop songs on the radio currently. the brain says no, but the heart and booty say yes... i fold. cascada wins.

i've also had some errant thoughts about relationships and beauty, but i think i'll save those for later. but suffice it to say that, when you are feeling cut off and lonely, those feelings can override your actual thoughts about a person. your emotional reality trumps actual physical reality. an interesting little trick, i think.

also, i really can't afford to take someone liking me as this messianic opportunity that i would be crazy not to jump on. personal refresher course: lots of people like josh, many more than josh likes. i am the deciding factor here, and it wouldn't due to lose touch with what i want, desire, and deserve (to a lesser extent).

there. that ego trip out of the way, what else... i'm trying to enforce new adventures in sobriety, and i continue to make food, which my housemates continue to eat and rave about. i continue my wait for word from graduate programs, which is NOT FREAKING ME OUT AT ALL!!!

i need a consort, a posse. i need a crew, and a partner in crime. perhaps i'll find those things when i begin school, but just seems a long time to wait...