Group Hug

Well, I just purchased my new camera today! It's a Sony VX-2000, the exact kind I wanted. It's coming with a phenominal amount of sound equipment, and the guy I bought it from is really nice. He just bought a brand new 4,000 Cannon, so this one became expendable. I can't wait to have a camera again. I didn't realized how naked I felt without one until it happened. I usually don't care this much about material goods, but I put a lot of energy into my last camera. I took it everywhere with me, and it became an extension of myself when I used it.

About two months ago, I found this site called Group Hug. ( http://grouphug.us/ ) The point of the site is that you can confess anything you want to the entire world. All you have to do is post whatever you like, and it'll come up anonymous so anyone who wants to can read it. I have never posted there, but reading through the posts has become addictive. I don't know why I do it so much. Maybe I just like reading other peoples stories. These ones usually aren't self-censored, and have no bullshit. I feel like some of these stories are deep inner feelings, told in exasperation because they have no one in the entire world to turn to. Many many times I have sat there, stunned, just wishing I could reach out to someone on that site. I feel like I understand so many of them so well...

Perhaps some of it is just because many of the stories are funny. I mean, how can you not laugh at gems like: The First day I got my drivers license I ran into a house. ??

But I think it's probably my first guess.


- posted by Chas @ 10:02 PM

 
Unobtainium

My one great creative goal in life is to tell a true love story on film.

I don't know if it's ever really been done. Certainly not recently, which is amazing considering how many 'romantic' films come out each week. Perhaps thinking anyone working within the Hollywood system will create something true and beautiful and real is naive, but I keep hoping that it will happen someday. I want to be the one to make it happen. Maybe there have been true love stories and I just can't relate to them, or perhaps it's different for everyone. No one loves the same way, so perhaps there can be no love story that can reach everyone. If that's true, then I just want to tell one that's true for me. I want to share my own story with the world. If I can touch even one person with it, then it is a success.

Every movie these days is a blockbuster based off of a known franchise. It's a sequel, or a genre picture, or something based off of a best-selling novel. John Grisham's books don't even translate well to the screen, but he sells the movie rights before he finishes the first draft of all his novels. Shrek 2. Matrix 2 and 3. The Mask....number 4? I've lost count. Every preview is for a film coming this summer, the latest from Jerry Bruckheimer and his ilk. I'm supposed to go out and buy popcorn for it tomororow. Only 6 more months until "The Core!" (oh wait, that was last year. I mean, er, Spiderman 2)

When's the last time you've gone and seen a Hollywood movie without a love story in it? It's sickening sometimes that an entire character is introduced to a film solely to add 'a love angle' to a story when the story doesn't need one - it isn't about love. Even worse is when a story is about love and it is still bereft of emotion. Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman, Catherine Zeta-Jones...it doesn't matter who it is or how beautiful they are or how good an actress they are. I see right through it all. I look through their acting and I see nothing that's real. It makes me shiver to see someone in a film professing their undying love to someone when there is absoultely none in their hearts.

If true love was more like Hollywood love, then everyone would stay alone (or with some horrendous spouse) until they turned 23 with perfect skin and hair, and then they would promptly fall in love with their maid or perhaps their waitress or even their worst enemy. They would hate the other person at first, but through a series of zany madcap adventures and tension-building scenes they would grow to fall deeply in love forever and have children and live in the suburbs. Oh, and it all happens in 90 minutes. Three hours if you're in an epic. If you're really lucky, you end up in space or in a submarine or haunted house with a crew where there is only one member of the opposite sex. As all of your colleagues and crewmembers die one at a time, you'll know exactly who to fall in love with! If you happen to die, then you obviously weren't the main character so you don't deserve love. You're just a 'supporting cast member'.

I say screw that. I know there are independent films that try to tell good love stories. Hell, I even know a few Hollywood films that have beautifully real emotions. I just hope that one day someone will look at something I've made, something I've poured my soul into, and feel in their heart that they understand more about their own love.

It's going to take a while.



- posted by Chas @ 7:51 PM

 
A Lesson I Should've Learned in Kidnergarten

She's not entirely mine anymore. She never was, of course, not really. I've never even looked into her eyes. I've never gazed apon her while she slept, never held her in my arms. I don't know her touch, her embrace, or her kiss. I've never run my hands through her hair, and I've never dried her tears with my shirtsleeve.

Yet, she was mine. It wasn't that I wanted to put her in my pocket and keep her there, it wasn't about power or dominance. It was just that I always knew that when she needed comfort or reassurance or a hug, she would come to me. always. She was a part of me that just happened to inhabit a different body, living far beyond my reach. But she was a part of me nonetheless. And I was a part of her. I wanted to be hers just as she was mine.

That was not a power that she wanted, no, she wasn't ready for that. She didn't want me as her own, it scared her more than anything. She pulled away. It also wasn't right that she should be mine if I wasn't hers. She is not mine anymore. She never was, I suppose, outside of my brain. That is the realization that hurts me so much.

I must learn to share.

- posted by Chas @ 2:12 AM

 
The Nightfly

On second thought, I should have slept through the entire damn day and just stayed up all night. I love night. For some reason, it feels like you're closer to your own emotions when it's dark outside. In the daytime you have this distance that you keep from yourself, a facade that you stick up for the sun to shine down on. "See! I am a respectable human in my jeans and woolen sweater! The world can see me and I am an okay guy!" At night, your true self comes out. Darkness will hide you, and you are left up to your own devices. I am more honest with myself at night, and I'm more open with everyone else. I don't have a facade to maintain. It seems like everything that happened during the day is irrelivant. That person wasn't me - he was just a shadow of a stranger. This is me, raw and filtered only through my ability to communicate through a language that no one has truly mastered since William Shakespeare. If you were here, you could look into my eyes and see down into my soul. At night, my fears define me instead of hinder me. I use them toward my own relentless goal of pure self expression. I project myself out over whatever means of transferring energy I have at my fingertips. Look deep enough into these words and you will see me.

- posted by Chas @ 2:14 AM

 
For Lack of Anything Better To Do

I'm in a pretty bad mood right now, and I don't really know why. If this were a few years ago, I would have chalked it up to post-Christmas blues, but I don't think it's that. Today just feels like an extension of yesterday anyway; a blur of flipping through my MP3 playlist, eating candy, and just generally doing nothing of any sort of importance. As much as I wish for these lazy days during the hectic mess of school, I can't live this way for long. I feel impatient, guilty, dependant. I should be doing something, anything, running, typing, writing...well, that's exactly why I'm writing this now. Perhaps if I get all of this down I can feel like I've accomplished something today.

Things I have discovered today:

Worms Blast is one of the worst computer games ever made. Remember Snood? Remember Worms? This is a game where worms play snood. In little boats. With bazookas and lazers. Yeah, it sounds like it should be funny. But it's just terrible instead.

My Type 1.5 Goblin deck (in Magic: The Gathering) beats my Type 2 Affinity deck every time. Hooray for the fact that I'm going to play Affinity in the free tournament on Sunday. (If you didn't understand a word of that, you're probably better off for it. If you did, then you're welcome to email me with suggestions on how to fix my deck)

You can indeed sleep until noon and be more tired than if you woke up at the crack of dawn. I knew this before today, but it bears repeating.

Staples doesn't sell good quality CD-Rs. They only sell the cheap Taiwan kind. Don't even bother looking.

The fact that I may have a print of a watercolor of a beautiful angel on my wall now doesn't compensate for being lonely. Curses.

There is probably a way to fly the little airplane in Grand Theft Auto 3, yet while I have figured out how to fly the army tank, it remains a mystery to me.

My dad may work at a computer company, but that doesn't mean he knows how to install a hard drive. It's taken him two hours, and he still hasn't gotten it. I'm glad it's in his computer and not mine.

That I probably like lists more than any of you do.




- posted by Chas @ 4:57 PM

 
Angelic Page

Well, I got one unexpected and wonderful gift this Christmas from my mother. It actually shouldn't have been unexpected; back in August, I told her I wanted it. I forgot though, and it was a beautiful surprise.

Now hanging over my desk, I have a print of the painting "Angelic Page" by Rebecca Guay (check it out here: http://www.rebeccaguay.com/mtg_page1.html ) who is one of my favorite artists. It's of a beautiful woman, an angel, crouching on the top of a mountain. The mountaintop is bathed in orange and red light, and the background is done in vivid sunset colors. It reminds me of the grand canyon at sunset, or perhaps one of those alien planets in the Spaceman Spiff cartoons. In the top right corner, clouds and stars spill into the harsh landscape. The angel, wings shimmering, is forever frozen looking out at my desk. Her gaze is beckoning me to come fly with her, showing me that all I need to do is remove the glass picture frame seperating our worlds and all the magic and wonder inside will be revealed. It reminds me why I love fantasy so much.

I wish I could escape with her into that world of muted watercolor sunsets.

- posted by Chas @ 3:49 PM

 
Ho Ho Ho and A Bottle of Crabmeat


I amazes me, now that it's Christmas Eve, just how little Christmas matters to me now compared to when I was younger. I wasn't raised Christian, so it never mattered to me the way it matters to some people, but as a day to look forward to - for most of my life, there wasn't a better day in the entire year. The anticipation would start on Thanksgiving. My parents had a rule that we weren't allowed to talk about Christmas or ask for anything until AFTER you saw Santa Claus go by at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. My sister and I would get up seven in the morning, and watch the entire parade hoping a balloon would blow away. Then, once Santa rode by in a blizzard of ho ho ho's, I would beg my father to get the Christmas stuff down from the attic. That weekend, we would pile into the car and drive up to New Hampshire to look for a 'sincere' Christmas tree lot. We would have to cut it down ourselves - no precut tree would do. Every weekend after that, we would devote hours to hanging ornaments. We even had those hallmark ones with the Milennium Falcon, Buzz Aldrin, Barbie, and bumper cars. By the end of the day, the tree looked like something out of Lucasfilm- a nightmare of light and motion.

We got 'family' presents on Christmas Eve, but not until it turned dark. My sister and I would wait and wait, every hour asking if it was dark enough for presents yet. When it finally was, we would run to the Christmas tree and take turns opening up presents from each other and assorted relatives. Then, we would have to be ushered upstairs to wait for Santa Claus. Even after we stopped believing in him (a story for another day), we pretended just out of tradition and fun that he was real. I still wish he was. After butterflies in my stomach and twists and turns in my bed, I would awake at the crack of dawn. At the foot of my bed would be a stocking full of candy and small fun things. I wouldn't be allowed to look at it until my parents woke up, so my sister and I would creep into their room to wake them. By seven thirty, the stockings were open and we were anticipating the loot under the tree. We weren't allowed to even look in the room until after breakfast - which we finished in all possible haste - and then we bolted toward the tree. We got great presents, and always did. It was a glorious day, spent in our pyjamas under the tree playing with toys and reading books and forgetting about everything else.

This year, we got our tree in a lot five minutes from my house three weeks after thanksgiving. I had a physics lab to write, and I didn't even go pick it out. My dad put lights on it, but the ornaments never really got around to going up. Finally my sister, trying to preserve the spirit of christmas, did it herself over the period of a week and a half. The highlight of my Christmas Eve was laughing at the fact that my grandmother gave us a can of crabmeat as one of the gifts. For christmas, I'm getting some money towards a new camera. Not really the best image under a tree.

Am I just nostalgic for the past? am I too old for Christmas? Or maybe I've just fallen out of love with the commercialist glitter that made it so special for me when I was too young to understand. Things don't matter to me as much any more I suppose; not as much as people do.

So hooray for my friends, I wish you all a Merry Christmas! (or whatever you want to celebrate. Just be happy it's not February and below zero) May you get better than crabmeat in your stockings!



- posted by Chas @ 9:13 PM

 
2003: A Musical Retrospective

Today I made a mix CD to represent the arc my life has taken this past year. It's based off of saved conversations, memories, away messages, mix CDs, and guesswork. Yes, I have far too much time on my hands, but it beats working on a college application, eh?

The school just said they'd give me $1000 towards a new camera. Hooray! It's time to go shopping, I hope I'll have one soon.

The mean lady who keeps calling my cell phone with her robot fax machine better stop. She's getting on my nerves. I think if I hear "William Tell Overture" one more time, I'll scream. Man, I really need to figure out how to make that phone play the mexican hat dance...

THE CD:

01 - Walk Unafraid - REM
02- Carriage - Counting Crows
03 - Harder to Breathe - Marroon 5
04 - I Had A Good Time - Boston
05 - When You're On Top - Wallflowers
06 - Waiting - Delvins
07 - Only in Dreams - Weezer
08 - Honey and the Moon - Joseph Arthur
09 - I'd Give It All For You - Jason Robert Brown
10 - Philosophy - Ben Folds Five
11 - Chalkdust Torture - Phish (live)
12 - Novocaine for the Soul - Eels
13 - I Melt with You - Modern English
14 - A Case of You - Joni Mitchell
15 - Wandering - Ben Folds
16 - Comfortably Numb - Pink Floyd (live)

So yeah, it's been quite a year. Plenty of ups and downs. Lots of good friends, lots of wonderful love. Lots of heartbreak and lonliness too. I'm glad it all happened - I am a much more real person now than I was a year ago. And that's what we're all striving for, right? Right.



- posted by Chas @ 5:02 PM

 
A Roll of the Dice

Max stared up at the shimmering orb. The blue-green light it gave off bathed the otherwise darkened room as it rotated like a disco ball suspended in mid air. It was the Earth, of course; the vibrant Earth of years past. Max wrenched his gaze away from the hologram and toward the window. The real Earth, a muddy blue and brown marble, lay suspended in space. It was motionless, held at the brink of destruction by an invisible force. In one moment, enough nuclear warheads to wipe out life a hundred times over would detonate, spelling the end of mankind. Yet that instant would never come; not if Max had anything to say about it.

Slowly, he approached the table over which shone the holographic sphere. A dozen figures sat in a circle around it in large, high-backed chairs. They weren't quite humanoid, but that was hard to tell - the room was very nearly pitch black. "It is time" a voice spoke, suddenly cutting through the silence.

"And...and if I win, you'll restore my planet back to its former beauty? and leave us alone?" Max replied, wanting to make sure there were no loopholes in the deal.

"Yes." boomed the voice, which now appeared to be coming from the largest figure at the head of the table. "and if you lose, the Earth will become our property now and forever along all axes of space and time. You knew the terms when you summoned us. You knew this was your only chance to save your speces from destroying themselves."

Max, sweating now, nodded and picked up the die from the table in front of him. He rolled it around in his hands a few times, running his fingers over the fine black dimples on the ivory cube. It was, in fact, a die made on Earth a century prior in a factory in Ohio. Max carried it with him ever since he found it lying in a gutter outside his Manhattan appartment the day he met Amy. It brought him luck.

He knew it was time. With a strong flick of the wrist, Max sent the die sailing through the air. It passed through the holographic planet, and arced back toward the table. He bent all his energy at the die, willing it to land in his favor. It bounced once, twice, three times, four times....and then stopped dead. Only one black dimple was facing upwards. Something inside of Max turned to ice. He slumped to his knees, stopped for a moment, and then swayed forward. His head hit the cold metallic floor and his eyes shut.

A round of laughter slowly rose from the table and filled the room. Down on Earth, ten billion hearts suddenly started beating again, and in an instant -

- posted by Chas @ 1:08 PM

 
Chariots of Fire

Last night, I had a dream that I was to run in a cross-country race for my school. Since I have never run a race in my life, this would normally have seemed odd. Yet, since it immediately followed the "I won't let the Nazgul get The One Ring by hiding it my bathroom" dream, the logic of it all seemed fine.

Anyway, the race started and I ran with all the speed I had. It didn't take long for me to leave all the other runners in the dust, save one. She was an athletic girl, the kind that is used to winning every single race she enters. I ran up next to her, and asked her if she was going to win the race. She said nothing. I told her not to worry, that if we ran together I would let her win at the very end. She agreed to this, and helped me find my way on the twisty cobblestone passages that made up the track. She said it was a very complecated track, and very long. I kept going though, but I soon became tired and weak. Letting her get ahead of me was not an option. I had to keep going. I stumbled, and cried out to her in my failing voice, "help me! I need you!" I looked into her eyes as she turned around to help me up. We ran the rest of the way together, finding our way through the mess of passages that got worse and worse until we finally emerged at the end from the mouth of a cave. We were going to cross the finish line together, when we saw that everyone else in the race had already made it. There was a shortcut, apparently, that cut everything off if you knew a lot about the area. We had finished last. I didn't care, but she seemed devastated. She left me, and walked over to her friends. Within five minutes, they were talking about good seats for fireworks at the esplanade, laughing as always. I sat on an old concrete wall, still as stone, while the world moved around me.




- posted by Chas @ 10:23 AM

 
Cellar Door

She feels sorry for me because I say she completed me. I told her that when she left me, a part of me went with her. I told her that I am never whole, never a full being without another person. She was sorry for me because she knows that other people never last.

One day someone will.

- posted by Chas @ 1:35 AM

 
A New Beginning

So apparently I have this thing now, in which I am supposed to express my feelings and thoughts in
words for the entire internet to read. Some robot will undoubtedly archive these pages, and save them forever on a giant hard drive on some corporate server. Or maybe I just think I'm important enough for that to happen. Whichever - I am an open book.

It's only a few days until Christmas, and I'm already feeling it. It's not going to be a white christmas this year. It's supposed to rain, actually. The energy in the air is frantic, and I've already been to one mall more than I should have liked to visit. I was making some crack about chain stores when my mom said I was born in the wrong generation. Perhaps I was. I just can't get goosebumps and butterflies in my stomach at the fact that someone put a Barnes and Noble RIGHT NEXT to a TJ Maxx. I don't need a coffee table book about cows, nor do I need acid-washed jeans with Fat Albert on them. Maybe I was born in the wrong generation. But then I wouldn't have the internet. Eh, it doesn't matter. I guess the "I can't deal with being alone" thing hits hardest this time of year.

Wow, something about having this online journal is turning me into an angsty-teen stereotype. I'll have to explore this phenomenon at a later date...


- posted by Chas @ 6:01 PM