Gaia Community: Brondu's Blog

Deep Purple Night, Bright White Day

http://brondu.gaia.com — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 20:07:06 GMT

He wasn’t aware she was a virgin. When he put his hand to her belly, he wasn’t aware. He could feel her in-breath, then—he breathed as her. When he put his hand to her jeans, to the part of her jeans that were her crotch, to the front part of her crotch, he didn’t know what kind of thing was there beneath. Was waiting for him. Had been waiting for him. He didn’t know the contours of its mush, the weirdness of its beauty, the flushed hue of its responsiveness, the rushed compression of its sensitivity. He wasn’t aware she was a virgin, as he collided once—apologies apologies—with her teeth, with his teeth. Just the once. Then softer, more careful. Like to an elfin soundtrack. Like gods were watching.

There’d been three beer between them, and these they’d shared in privacy. Private from law and filial law and safe from the prehensions of any being or thing outside the two of them, their small club of two, their restricted membership—even the whispers of trees they evaded, or built in. That had been in the bushes, outside town, bushes often seen from a highway and rarely seen from within, where things like branches and insight could prick you, and when you wouldn’t care.

There’d been three beer between them, but this had not given him amnesia, had not made him forget the meek supraskin scent of bundled nerves and pink life. Or that she would whimper a little when he pressed there with the tip of a tongue searching beyond itself, for the joy of its being, for the unified ecstasy buried as birthright in its ontology—looking, the tongue, to collaborate with mystics and criminals, with Jesus and Judas, on the road to awe. A cup of liqueur as reward in an infant laborer’s mouth. Here. On an edge of whatever kind. On the very edge. Right before slipping.

There was much to which he was not privy. And much to which he was. He knew the sound of the color of the sky. He knew the privilege and downturn of his inheritance. He knew that here would be a beautiful seamless outpouring of all carried as yet inside, between two who were to become not two. He knew the hardness of the floor of this post office in the earliest verve of morning. He could hear the thin click of her misgiving and tension both, thrumming unbidden behind her lips. He registered that he could love with his fingertips, and he learned where that love was wanted.

He saw in a moment how to nothing withhold, and so doing felt in a moment a closeness to that which had always been close, the great dark, just for a second, and then another.

And when she met him there he opened his eyes the way all kids do when they experience their first intricate liquid conjoining of body with body, being with being. How wide his eyes did open.

To be human is to be divine. To be divine is to be human. To love is to be human. Here is love. Will you wait for this? And waiting, with no idleness in you, find it?

And finding it know that you’ve found all there is. And as all there is, live.

Tags: love, nonduality, virginity, romance

August 4 - A Parade For Charlize

http://brondu.gaia.com — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:04:18 GMT

A parade came by my street this morning. I wanted you to see it. There were horses, and onyx, and unicorns. They shon, those unicorns; blue, and gold, and pink. Their horns seemed the oldest part of them. Silver and twisting. I wanted you to be with me there, on the bench in front of the house, sitting beside me. I wanted to see your smile.

I imagine there are parades like this where you are. Wonderful floats, of wood and stone, rolling along at the pace you want. Out your window, you notice the parade. Here a grey ship rescued from the bottom of the ocean, gliding on hidden tracks, drifting stolidly by, haunted and forgotten. Here a troupe of monkeys unicycling. They weave a pattern you're sure looks good from overhead. The performance is impeccable, and fleeting. Here is a fashionable group of men. They wear berets and sunglasses, and they walk atop the world they own.

I imagine this, but I cannot be sure it is the case. I have ceased to hear you. I have ceased to see you, save in my mind, where you are always. It has been given to me, to love you. It is my birth-task, and I abide it with great dedication. You are the air I breathe. You lift me up on wings of eagles. These are things said to God, about God. They are things I say to you.

A parade came by my street this morning. I wanted you to see it.

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August 3 - Lest Ye Be Hobo

http://brondu.gaia.com — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:03:50 GMT

So what. So I am intended for something. Being readied, as a bride, for the enaction of this often stretching causal alignment.

My prayer, then, is to open to it. To let the opportunity of my being yield unreservantly to its culmination. Like that guy in the Fountain, floating in his bubble to the Big Light. To be swallowed and reissued, moment by moment: this is me.

So what. So I am wanting for something. Being entrusted with thirst, that I may feign enduring it, and graduate to pursuing its remedy.

My prayer, then, is to hold not to the inevitable; to cease grasping at all I am righted by birth, and let these gifts, instead, be immersed in me.

So what. So I see you wanting for something. I see you grounding the desire for incontravertible acceptance, for security without end, for the loving arms of everyone around you.

My prayer, then, is to add my arms. And impart with them their irreversible seal. Unless you are smelly, or a hobo.

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July 30 - Horses Without End

http://brondu.gaia.com — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:02:59 GMT

A day filled with fun. Yes. All kinds.

Gateway to Fun Land was invoked, again, this time in honor of Lindsey's birthday, with good friend Brendan along. We swung bats, pushed petals to metal, contemplatively nudged putters. Sipped things that tasted better than air or water in a cooled-off interior. Toured offerings of civilized society, and each other's day-to-day headspaces, by speaking.

I bought a horse book later in the day, because it's what I wanted to do.

There's something that you may not know about me. I spent a lot of time with horses. It's time that floods back on me when I'm sitting doing nothing. When there are no girls or beer in front of me. All the different times, and the different identities, on the road to as true and powerful a horsemanship I could muster. Times when I was driving with my brother, way too far, to work with tame horses for scared owners. Times when I would chase a horse around for three hours in a flimsy roundpen, fail to catch it, and go inside for a burger and a nap, and know I'd done good work, even though I'd been right pissed the whole time. Times when my horse was so far under water or snow only his wee struggling head was poking up. And there I would be, on his back or swimming beside him, giggling and concerned.

It's an odd thing, to aim your life at excellence in a specific area. To outpace your peers. To solicit the attention of the truly great in your field, on virtue of your talent and promise, your dedication and presipration, showing so clearly in your eyes and your actions. And then to let it all go for something else. In this case, writing.

And then, again, I began this business of aiming myself at excellence. Of attracting notice from the truly great, if not the truly great in my field, on virtue of my talent and promise. Of trying and failing and trying again to narratively induce a nexus of effects. Of learning and being inspired, and all that.

Where has it all gone? Conviction, dedication, straining and striving. What the fucking hell?

To answer this question, I bought a horse book. And now I'm reading it.

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July 28

http://brondu.gaia.com — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:00:34 GMT

When something clicks, when you make a discovery or a realization, the reason why it feels like you've uncovered the secret to an existence of easily renewable happiness and inner-shining (from that day forward) is because every piece of the puzzle, once it's snapped into its place, carries with it a taste of the whole puzzle. Just like every taste of Spirit carries with it a taste of Spirit's Spirit. It's sort of like they're the same as far as your tongue is concerned. Pepsi, and the God that created Pepsi, both taste like Pepsi.

Now, let's get down to business. I learned today that it is better to say, "I'm going to have beer," than, "I'm going to drink beer."

Further: I've been going to Gateway to FunLand a lot lately. It's not actually called that, but I call it that. It's got air hockey, and Dance Dance Revolution. It's got go-karts and mini-gulf and batting practice. I'll go more soon.

Lastly here are some things that I've been sitting and pondering tonight:

- What is it about Charlize Theron that makes me want to sit on a front porch and smoke a cigarette and talk about her to a deaf/mute who can't talk back or change the subject, except by walking away or making easily readable hand motions?

- What is it about Charlize Theron that causes me to build little fires in Lindsey's neighbor's backyards, and read the smoke for signs of my future? .... with Charlize Theron? I ask the flames.

- My fortune cookie at dinner tonight said, "A heavy burden will be lifted from you by a telpephone call or a letter." Adding the obligatory, "in bed," my request is: could someone phone me while I'm in bed and tell me Charlize Theron is on the other line, waiting to hear this love poem I wrote for her?

The poem goes:
Your face is like
the best thing I've ever seen
I don't even like looking at other people's faces
because yours is so much nicer

And your eyes are like
the eyes of an Egyptian serpant
whose great regal head
is coaxed out of a straw basket
and you're looking around
like, "who is mine?"
and I'm like, "me!"

And your ears
seem like they could
be sold on eBay
for the price of my heart

But I honestly want to kiss you on the cheek
and then later on the lips

I want to take it so slow with you
that by the time I am making out with
your irrepressible love box
we are both in Heaven

You are the greatest human
You make me happy to be alive
Just hearing your breath, in my mind,
from California
or wherever you are
is like when that kid
had Free Willy jump over
his fuckin arm

It's like knowing God exists
for a Christian

It's like knowing wheat will happen
for a farmer

It's like being tranqulized
for a horse

You are the best thing that ever happened to Earth;
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.

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July 29

http://brondu.gaia.com — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:02:23 GMT

Has anyone seen the 2001 film Sweet November? It's with Charlize Theron. She plays a strange lady who cuts all her relationships off at a thirty day marker because she has one of those fatal illnesses that leaves her looking and seeming totally healthy. It also stars Keanu Reeves. The movie got horribly reviewed, for reasons that become evident. The catch-word thrown out, a word that must have been symbiotically transmitted from one reviewer to another, so pervasive was its use, was 'cloying'. Yes, cloying. This movie was as unanimously disclaimed as 'cloying' as American Dream is being disclaimed as 'packaged'. So? I didn't mind. It was my first opportunity of July 29 to ponder the one, Charlize.

When I think about Charlize, I tend not to turn inward. Intro-, the way of my spection, is not. It's Charlize I'm interested in. And perhaps, subsidiarily, what about me is so h-bent on uniting with the whatever about her.

That's right! Unity!

Moving on: the second movie I watched was Monster. At first glance, you might see how watching a movie like Sweet November first was a bad idea. But at second glance, when you note the 12 beer I consumed while watching Sweet November, you are stuggling to calculate just how bad a decision it could've possibly been. Way bad. I'm one of those fellows that often chooses not to refrain from getting wildly identified and involved with the images and audios that come my way during a narrative unfolding motion-picture style. And 12 beer, if anything, exacerbates that tendency like a genie is exaggerated by lamp-rubbing. Hoky F, we are talking. But in the end, how enjoyable was it? So much so. Monster is truly an amazing movie.

After a brief interval of Drum-Circling it up, I decided to stick emotional dynamite into my most emotional place, and go for the emotional kill with Cider House Rules. (Another Theron flick, of course.)

Yep. Boom!

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July 24

http://brondu.gaia.com — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:39:29 GMT

Thursday is the new Friday. At least on Pearl Street. Lots of folks milling about, hitting the bars, donning their gay party apparel. Lots and lots of good-looking girls. People in Boulder travel in incomprehensible packs. There'll be a group of seven guys and one girl. There'll be a group of seven girls and one guy. Does this make sense to anyone?

I can't wait til I turn 21 and start going to the bars. $1 pints. $2 Corona. Beer beer beer. Girls. Music. Relief from the heat.

I got paid today and bought a $1 book at a lesbian book store (yep. And on the shelves there was a section entitled Lesbian Mystery Novels). I also bought a pair of grey jeans. When it is time for Brian David to buy jeans, he finds a good store, he walks in, he sees a pair he likes, and he buys them. He does not browse. I really like my new jeans.

Here are some new quotes I came up with:

"If it bites you, punch it."
"That which makes a fart noise is not always a fart."

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Denver Clubbing vs. Calgary Church (July 25-27)

http://brondu.gaia.com — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:40:16 GMT

I, your humble correspondant, am either a dab hand at sounding out tangible cultural differences by being both a passionate datatician and an ace analyist... or I've got weird issues. What I'm saying is that the differences between two cities' (countries') social scenes, are, to me, as transparent as kids' lies. The subtle differences, the glaring differences. They are articulated to me, you understand, in hue and form. They're as hard to ignore as elephant shit on the kitchen counter. I see things, you understand. I see people who are alive.

So, clubbing and church. These are things that I have moderate experience with in Calgary. In fact, I'd say that when it comes to clubbing (in Calgary) I have moderate to substantive experience. I go. I get in. I bob my head. I tap my toes. I do this oodles of places. Okay? And Church, too, in my five 'r six years of being a resident in that sprawling conglomerate of bubble-dwelling terrace-hoppers---I've seen a bunch of them. In Denver I've only been to one Church, and a handful of clubs. And it's those experiences, the differences between churching and clubbing in Denver and Calgary, that I want to talk about.

One of the few clubs I've been to in Denver, and the one I'll use for the purposes of this blog, just happens to be a renovated Church. A very old Church, re-done to be a party-spot for the kids. The outside still looks very Church-y. Inside there is still some religious iconography creeping about for effect. It's not difficult to intuit what the building was once used for (Lord-lauding, Lamb-praising). And now there are bright, vibrant young folk getting all hot and bothered with each other inside. All heathen, exciting.

There are several rooms, several dancefloors, in the Church. A large one upstairs where erratic/fluid break-dancers carve out a circle of bodies with their skillsets. Want-to-bes inhabit the outskirts like so much tenuous waste, orbiting tonight's avatars of their craft, denied arbitration by their pesky ambition, denied adjudication by these fill-in arbiters of their "shit". It's funny because these guys, the oops-I'm-not-good-enough-y

et crowd, are probably the most desperate looking bunch in the club. They want to experience, and have others experience with them, the fullness of kinetic glee. A diaspora of ideal bodily affect. But, yeah, I'm wasting too much time on these want-to-bes.

Upstairs there is trance music playing, and girls dance on stages or hang from the roof by two silk threads. These girls aren't wearing much, and are athletic, and acrobatic, and feminine. Some of them are good looking and one of them is incredibly fucking hot. The sort of hot that makes you want to stare at her, and stare at her, and wonder what it would take to make her fall in love with you. But yes. And downstairs there's a big hip-hop room. They play neat remixes of today's juiciest hits in the hip-hop room.

And there is also, downstairs, a very expressive group of dancers, going at it in their unique way on an alternate dancefloor. Remixed house music or something is what these lovers of kinky flow go for. And they are so cool. You can do anything on their dancefloor and get away with it. Sometimes these dancers look constipated and meditative at the same time. Some nights this floor, the one I'm describing, is reserved for goth kids who dress up as depressed masochists. Often their costumes are literally bleeding.

Did I mention there are lots more black, brown, and Asian folks in Denver? And more people in general. When you are dancing in the hip-hop room there are whole bunches of black people in there. And lots of cute girls who can manipulate the junk in their trunk with a dexterity that alarms, surprises, and is kind of joyful. It really is cause for jubilation, these precise maneuvers of the ass. It's hard to dance with them, cause you pop bone awful quick. When you're dancing with the hip-hop crowd, as long as you have a girl, and a girl has you, you're both fine. You're even eligible for random pounds and high-fives from black guys. I get a lot of these.

So the first thing I want to say is that clubbing in Denver is more fun because, and perhaps I can drag all America into this, people around here know better what they came for, and are equipped better for getting it. What I'm saying is that people are relaxed here, and free, and they have fun, and they celebrate (not resist) the hemorrhaging of their personal lives into atavistic excellence. Cuz that is what is happening, that is the ethic of their night. Except there's nothing atavistic about it, really. Everybody has a cell phone, you see. Contrast this to Calgary, Canada, where there are no party people. Only normal people. Poor bloodless motherfuckers, cramming themselves into an oversterilized batch of their embarassed and embarassing familiars, co-pilots on Calgary's collective and cold trajectory to half-assed legitimacy. Public identity, in Calgary, is an art we've lost. We think we know what a good public identity is, but what we have actually created is a simulacrum of ourselves, a remote-controlled avatar whose operations manual we misplaced in a toilet-flushing mishap. We take this show, this avatar, on the road, and we mash it into other people's. We display ours if they display theirs. But this is not fun, what we are having, because fun is something we are not allowing ourselves to have. Fun is when you get your personality wet, when those traits of yours, the ones that want to come out and play, come out and play, fully and passionately, in public, and you find that this is where they belong. Shared. You see, Canadians have mixed up the true meaning of private and public domains. In private, Canadians go for the big Reveal. Americans go for the big Reveal in public. They do it every day, all the time, in the street, at Taco Bell, and most purely... in da club. And it's no big deal. Except when it is. When folks start not being able to tell the difference between themselves and all these others they want to be (or don't want to admit they are) like. Then it gets annoying.

But Church. What is the deal with actual Church in Denver? I went to Church on Sunday, and man oh man was it ever not what I was looking for.

You see, and here is where things get interesting, in Calgary there are churches for young lads like me who drink and smoke and occasionally fuck, and definitely swear, and still want to sing loudly and get together and emotionally leech whatever we can from Christian archetypes and themes for one night. Churches where incredibly hot chicks come to strut their stuff and look good, and get over their guilt-trips about the weekend. Okay, it's not quite as sleezy as it sounds, but it's close. And, sure, I'm quite a bit more, you know, intelligent than the average person who attends these Churches. (I am conscious about my desire for "fellowship" with the prevalent meme of my upbringing, that incontrovertible rite of my youth, my taste for Christian themes in my spirituality. I would never get guilty about fucking one of these youthful Christian girls, or anything else for that matter.) But still! There's singing, and youth, and kids. And they're so funny to watch cause some of the geekier kids actually get into it.

In Denver, apparently, the closest thing to this phenomenon is a bunch of adults who have a hardly emotional connection to God, and all the Christian talk, who, worst of all, aren't funny to watch, and who actually do things to help folks in the world. What a load of shit. I'm not making a joke. It's a load of shit!

So the really big question of the day that I need your help for is: what about Calgary makes their Christian youth more fun than the Denver Christian youth, and yet their clubbing pop. is as bear-ass-hair-in-my-mouth as anything can be?

Weigh in! Love your neighbor as yourself. God be with you.

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July 23

http://brondu.gaia.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:57:52 GMT

There are spiders in my room. Not often. Every third day a spider will appear on the wall. The first one was smallish, and its smear was rust-colored and chunky. It seemed male, its legs were hairy. The second one was larger, and female-seeming, and right up by the ceiling. She was more difficult to kill, and her smear was long, trailing, and black. Most of her is on the bottom of my shoe.

The problem is, I have to kill spiders. If I see one, and its not, you know, lethally huge, I'll probably end up killing it. Why? Because I associate spiders with spider-bites. Because when I see a spider on the wall, all I can imagine is that spider, if left alone, crawling under my covers at night and worming its way right inside my pee-hole. Or latching on to my taint. Or walking upside-down onto the ceiling and kamikazing into my open mouth. Or laying eggs in my ears. Or taking a tiny shit in my eyes. Or making a cozy warm bed where my balls meet my thighs. It gets warm in there. So how can I leave such a danger alone? How can I let it live, as, say, Robert Thurman might have me do.

Ah, the Buddhist. God is that fellow funny. He talked and talked. He commented on how much better everything would be if the Chinese left Tibet alone. His mainstay sayings were centered around having fun, rock groups, and he often plugged Barack Obama. On Uma: "Uma is very sweet. She doesn't kill four hundred people before breakfast. That's Quentin's idea." On Berlin: "The wall came down, people started having fun, lots of rock groups were able to play."

Actually, it's hard for me to quote him directly. I went and drank seven or eight quick beer before the show. Not right before the show, mind you, and I was mostly sober/hung-over by the time things wrapped up. But it was enough that I mostly drifted through the interview. It's alarming, looking back, how much I missed. There I was, sitting beside Lindsey, laughing. Laughing a lot. Amused by the various ways in which Thurman was outlining his vision, his very optimistic vision, and shutting down his interviewer, who seemed hellbent on joking his way through the proceedings. Like a horse whose taken the bit and is on a tear. And yet Thurman was just as jokey if not more so.

It's nice to get near someone who raised one of the hottest chicks alive. Other than seeing Kelly, that was the main reason I went. To share a room with the dude who would've seen Uma grow up. And been there. And who still likely shares a dinner table with her every once in a while. Turns out he's kind of neat on his own.

After Thurman finished there was an Eco fashion show. Waylin, or somebody, the fellow who did the interview, now had his opportunity to unleash his class-clown humor upon the world. Effectively ruining the little show, but it was funny. The mainstays of the show were old Ts, old sports jerseys (Michael Somebody's), old sheets, and old curtains. The girls looked nice and there was plenty of side-boob to keep me interested. But when Waylin (I'll call him that) came across a fashion-specific word he didn't recognize he'd say, "I don't know what that it is, but it's Eco."

To close: I would give one of my seven perfect lives to spend a year in Europe with Charlize Theron.

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July 22

http://brondu.gaia.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:57:24 GMT

It's been dark outside for a few hours now. I am with some friends and our location is less than fixed. This is not simply because we are walking. If the ground beneath us seems infirm, our coordinates incalculable, it's because it is not ground, per se, that we are walking on. We tread, my friends and I, the arc of our voiced thoughts, the meeting-point of our interests. A bridge, a fragile one, of hair and bone and words, is formed between our lenses. We traverse it. It coaleces, that bridge. It fluctuates. It breathes.

For a while we are speaking of our histories, our principles, our tenuous futures. The sinewy threads that bind us to our felt trajectories, these are apprehended subtly more than they are discussed. It's something that people do, you'll find. Chat. Feel each other. The content varies, when talk happens, but the structure is often the same. While we talk we sit out back of a cafe, and consume, like good Americans.

Then we are walking. Red brick beneath our feet. The bright, pencil-crayon green of tree's leaves contrasts a construction-paper sky. Purple, yellow. Our conversation turns to the plight of our friends as we perceive it. Being in the world means wishing everyone the very best, and going about your way. Here we see if there is anything else we can do. But no, not really. We can't.

Then we are sitting. Sitting in front of a house of product. A palace of variegated necessities. Convenience store. Pick your pleasure. I'll take one. I'll sit back down. I'll take more. There is an appropriate settledness to us now. The wheel that is 'us' has found its hub. A hub that, eventually, accrues bored drunks like planks in lakes acrrue algae. But not before a story is unravelled. One of those really compelling stories, unspooled like so much yarn around the fire that is our willingness to stay together. A true story, for as long as it's being told. A story that scares you, makes you want to smoke, deepens your stare. It's a story about the end of the world. As it's communicated, the landscape around us is retextured. This peace, this endless seeming peace of Boulder 08, now hangs by a thread.

And then that thread snaps. But there is no war. Only silence. Dumbass deer. Newspaper men. Quiet, heartfelt goodbyes. The will and volition to do this all tomorrow.

Somewhere, in a new voice, a voice that isn't my friend's, the story of the end of our world is still being told. And so, of course, it must be true.

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July 21

http://brondu.gaia.com — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:56:39 GMT

The deer here are a little retarded. Or domesticated. God help me, but sometimes those two adjectives seem synonymous.

Lindsey and I were driving around when I noticed a deformed-looking deer crossing the street. I was all, "You should follow that." So we did. As we got closer my suspicions were confirmed. This deer was not just mentally challenged. It was also physically challenged, and obviously inbred. Later we saw a cousin of our defigured champion. He looked, sad story, perfectly fine. Nice rack and everything. Before driving away entirely we saw the handicapped fellow walk stoically up the middle of the road. Like a gibbled Clint Eastwood with the intelligence of a brick.

PICTURES:

(a from-behind view of the shockingly conformed creature)

(how depressing would it be to be THIS deer?)

(how much more depressing to have this guy chilling next door?)

(what preyed-upon creature is THAT comforable?)

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July 20

http://brondu.gaia.com — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:27:09 GMT

If you read a lot of American literature, you'll find there are often areas in the stories that are only about what the characters are eating.

---"I stopped by the side of the road and had two bananas and a giant tuna fish sandwich. I drove a little further and had an apple and a half box of cracakers."---

---"Doc stopped in town for a quart of beer and a roast beef sandwhich. He made two more roast beef sandwiches on the road, and stopped for another quart of beer in the next town. On his way to the next town he ate one of the sandwhiches he made, then stopped for a another quart of beer and to fill up his tires."---

You get the idea. Those aren't direct quotes, but they're close. This sort of thing, these consumptive time-outs, pop up in everything from Steinbeck to Stephen King. They represent one of the most inspiring aspects of American literature to me. A worldview is delineated, via this sort of thing. A worldview of guiltless engagement of product. If it's unsustainable, I don't give a rat's ass.

Further: there are so many more things to buy here in American than in Canada. And each of them is cheaper. The highest quality product here cost what the lowest quality product cost in Canada. People feel at home, it looks, shopping here. For food. For whatever. I walk into a Traget and get excited. Excited because I am going to buy something. Doesn't matter what.

You see, I don't find myself in the choices that I make, or the preferences I exercise. In America, I am found by the choiceless act of purchasing. Anything. At all. And then eating it afterwards. Even if it's pants.

Where else is it so easy to be part of so large a community?

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July 19

http://brondu.gaia.com — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 20:25:43 GMT

On Beer
Households sanction activity. It's a function of households when enacted with a certain acuity, or a byproduct of them. The household that has a sign on its door, 'As for me and mine, we'll serve God,' likely sanctions the activity of communal and private prayer, public worship. The household I am staying with right now green-lights most activity. Exclusivity, the act of prohibition, is not popular here. And yet when it comes to my (sort of) newfound penchant for slow-downing Bud and clam, I believe I'm taking my cues from America as much as from my new surroundings. It's not that this household frowns on beer. Indeed, beer-drinking is as included in the non-noninclusive atmosphere as anything else. It's just... there is something about beer here. For one thing, it costs about a third as much as it does in Canada. 13 for 18 as opposed to 11 for 6. For another, beer can be on your grocery list. Or it can be on your snack list when you go to get gas. Or something you just forgot you wanted.

And instead of getting six of them, you can get eighteen of them for almost the same price. And have some for the week. And it's just easy like that.

On Sport
Today I went to an Ultimate (Frisbee) game with some friends. I have a low center of gravity. I can do speed bursts. I can change directions fast. I can sprint. But I sweat like someone put me in an oven.

Someone did. It's hotter here than in Calgary. And furthermore, I'm out of shape.

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July 18

http://brondu.gaia.com — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:19:51 GMT

(crossposted on boulder-denver08.blogspot.com)

It didn't take me long to adjust. The light was good and this drink, sweet tea, was so tasty. Even this teeth-aiding gum, utilizing the much underappreciated power of xylitol, smacked good. And the music, Michael Garfield, though ambient, was very good.

Okay, so I was sitting in a cafe called The Laughing Goat. Okay, so the walls were covered in some sort of art (the girls' faces were nice to look at, and one even reminded me of June 30th)... I was finding my power to deal.

When I first arrived in this city, I was all, "Hmm." And, "Eww." To do with the inhabitants, you understand. They're crazy. They're different. There is no one in Boulder who would fit in in Calgary, except maybe my friends. Everyone else would be lost and contemptuous, and so what if I felt a little lost and contemptuous too. Right?

You walk past a waitress and a black man sitting on the patio. The black man is saying, "And, you know, that really altered my creative direction. Because I had to ask myself, 'Do I really need this..this materia; these gains?'." You walk further, turn into a book store. There are two men, a young man and an old men, whispering in hushed, nasally, and, God help me but they sounded pretentious, tones. "What's interesting is that if you get into his later work, there's this radical dissipation of centralized meaning, which sort of oozes into a, hmm, a percolation of the id in an almost de-referenced space." You leave the book store. You throw up in your mouth. You see two hippies in intimate congress. You see someone sitting on a park bench compliment a passer-by's rose. All these raised eyebrows and bobbing heads. All these people staring at their shoes, and hugging instead of 'pounding it' or shaking hands. All these people agreeing with each other. Or barely disagreeing. Everywhere you look: beards, dreads, long impotent penises. Screamers on mushrooms. Dirty cootch.

You go to parties and find your discourse---w/r/t to the mathematical and physical backdrop for dystopian/utopian alien races, and our various attractions/contractions to/from them, in the medial world of accessing the energy of no-energy, the life in no-life, and the content of the obvious patterns in matter, body, and oh God, mind---interrupted and horribly brought down by someone who actually believes he has something to contribute, as opposed to someone who offers such advice as, "Holy God, you're fucked! Get laid!"

Is that refreshing? Am I okay with it? Well... yes and no.

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July 17

http://brondu.gaia.com — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:17:32 GMT

(crossposted on boulder-denver08.blogspot.com)

Last night I had a dream where I was living (I want to say working, though as a student) at a school. The aesthetics inside the building (I never saw the outside) were both retro and futuristic. The age of my avatar ranged from ten to seventeen moment to moment, though the effects manifested interiorly, and not physically. The walls inside were all concrete, and the consequences for disobeying the many rules were extreme.

One day the administrators, vague folk with odd names like Sheyenne Flarety, segregated the boys and the girls. The boys went to a room filled with games, yet you weren't allowed to play a single one. The girls went to a large lunch room where the boys could see them through a thin corridor. They, the girls, all seemed so lonely, and desperate, and beautiful. And in this way time passed: the boys struggling to concentrate on benign tasks while simple yet alluring games surrounded them. The girls, looking siren-ish on their side of the fence. Eventually I did the only thing I could do. On a pretense of discovering the "controls" to one of the games, I slipped through the corridor, evaded the administrators, and was rushed, there was a feeling of water, into the girls' dorm.

There I found one or two boys who had already made the discovery of girls, and I quickly abandoned the pretense of searching for access to the boys' games. My avatar, the interior I was experiencing, now took on seventeen year old characteristics. I ignored the girls who had already found their boys, instead seeking ones nearby who looked lost in the wake of their girls' new attachments. The first girl I found seemed nice at first, until I realized she was rather large, and her eyes, which were entirely brown, no whites and no pupils, were cow-ish.

I got up and move across the room, drawn, of a sudden, to a red-head with blue eyes; also, that color, filling her eyes entire. The blue of, say, bubble-gum flavored ice cream. I sat brazenly beside her, and even more brazenly slipped my arm around her thin, comfortable waste. She went through the motions of being accosted, but settled, thank God, down, and put her delicate arms around my neck. We then looked into one another's eyes for a long time. Just sitting there, temporarily abandoned to each other, forgetting our harsh and ridiculous setting. Forgetting all this architecture built up around our future.

She said, "You are a good cook aren't you?"
I said, "Yes."
She said, "You know, some people, they start life and everyone knows that they have it good. We then sit and watch to see how they make out."
I said, "Right."
She said, "But you. You're Incredible. We now sit, and watch, to see how you make out."

I woke up wanting a beer.

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July 16

http://brondu.gaia.com — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:16:28 GMT

(crossposted @ boulder-denver08.blogspot.com)

(UPDATE: For those of you who don't know, I am in Boulder. I am cataloguing my adventures, in the ways I know how.)

Their names I don't remember with any precision. C-names. Candice. Callie. Cassandra. It was the beginning of the night, in strip club terms, eight, and there were just three girls in the eighteen plus side of the bar. I was dressed up by my own standards. Meager standards, in a way. Blue jeans, a sleaveless black t-shirt with a broad textured design on the chest, and over that a dress-fit red button-up with flared cuffs. I was with a friend, a girl, which can be a perk at strip clubs, if to you a perk is extra attention from strippers. Of course it's not always the right sort of attention. The strippers, when we arrived and approached the club to have our pre-entry cigarette, were outside, giggling, joking, being girls with jobs; talking shop. On a bench. They were all robed of course, except one in a bikini. It is not hard to sit idly by girls whose nakedness is concealed by a thin curtain. In fact, it's almost hard to pay attention to them. You know you are going to see them naked soon enough. Instead I found smoking difficult. The lungs, you understand, would not cooperate. I get green-lighted or red-lighted on various substances. It's some kind of spiritual thing. My (own, personal) Jesus correlates directly to my biology, and they were both saying NO to smoke that night. Not so for my friend. We sat. Eventually I decided to go in. It would be fun, I decided. To sit for a while alone. Locomotion, for me, invokes a feeling of power. Being stationary charges that pwoer up. I am comfortable with moving. I like to move. I moved past the sitting strippers and into the club, fishing for ID as a travelled. Finding it. Showing it. Asking for forty ones. A surprising wad, that. As I went to sit down at the bar, a girl passed me from behind, put a hand on my back, and informed me that I was the only one in the bar but that she'd be dancing now. Okay. This girl was short, and her outfit concealed a wonderful, overround waste. A one-piece that dipped far enough down to fold over her pool of extra body, but not far enough to conceal any view of heaven's oval. Her tits were easily flipped out of this contraption, and they were pornstar tits. Round, with room for many pencils between them; they fell out leaning as if windbent in their respective directions; big but not puffy nipples. Her dancing skills were... well, it looked like she was still practicing. When her ass was in front of me I couldn't help but notice vague red marks all up and down her cheeks. I puzzled over these for a moment, trying my best not to laugh, as I was the only one in the bar and the whole staff seemed to be watching for how I'd behave. This girl, Candice, also seemed cagey around that seminal act of rubbing her tits in your face. You got the feeling it was that part of the job she disliked. Like when you, as a clerk, have to stock shelves. Her intial caginess might have had to do with my intial awkwardness. It'd been a year since I'd been in a real strip club, and the proper attitude, calm abandon to the stripper's breathy regard, was alluding me. No matter. She danced; I flopped ones onto the table out without crimping them; it was all very haphazard. She introduced herself as, I think, Candice, and asked me questions, but she must have got the impression that I didn't want to talk because she somwhat poutily continued dancing afterward. Next was Callie. I remember her name was Callie because I once named a horse Callie. Callie the horse and Callie the stripper were similar in ways, possibly in more ways than I'll ever know. Callie the horse was a yearling when I bought her as part of an experiment to raise a horse, train it, and sell it. Up to that point I'd mostly been doing quick turn-overs from horses I bought at the auction. My question was whether or not you could make more profit selling a horse you took extra time to raise. That's what I said my question was. In reality I wanted to have fun with a younger horse than my auction horses. Callie was a name I thought of after a long time of searching Internet databases for cool horse names. It's sometimes difficult to name a horse, and you're goddamned lucky if the name you picked sticks. Callie stuck. But usually horses get named, nicknamed, nicknamed again, and finally one day you start calling the animal something, something that may not make sense, and that turns out to be its name. Its real name anyway. So where was I? Callie the horse was a filly, so there is similarity number-one right there. Callie the horse was also very slight, very small in the chest, very tall (eventually; first: tiny, but always slender), and, more esoterically, Callie the horse was a creature whom you had to camp out with, in her own world, so to speak, before you could make any connection. Well, yeah, the stripper was a lot like that too. Skinny. So skinny that when she performed that lovely, delightful move, the tits-in-face move, you couldn't feel her skin on your face, because she would've had to lean too far forward. At the angle from which she was approaching, the only thing she could muster was to sort of graze your hair with the large space between her hardly existent tits. I liked her. Not a lot, mind you, but I liked her enough. Of them all, hers was the most difficult sexuality to discover. It certainly didn't transfer through her hair-grazing chest brushes. Neither when she ran her hands along your shoulders and breathed in your ears. Especially not when she gracelessly somersaulted along the stage. Again, she looked like she was practicing. Had to be practicing. She was wearing glasses. I couldn't help but notice that her asshole was as easy to see as her vagina. Probably due to the boniness of her ass. It was around this point I started crimping my ones. Thirdly was a girl who I will refer to as Cassandra. I think that was her name. Who cares, right? By now I had had an opportunity to sit back and watch two girls dance. My friend was now sitting beside me, and I was somewhat energized as my cover came with a free drink, and that drink had been a Red Bull. I was crimping my ones, facing the stage, my chair was pulled up, and my stomach chakra was as quiet as a day that's perfect for baseball. Cassandra was a tattoed girl, big boned but not really all that big. She had a presence that said bulk but a body that denied it. There was a roundness to her that I liked, a pulvination that bordered being truly positive. Not a trait, that third curve, I would fall in love with, but that's not what I was looking for. I precipitated that Cassandra would be less particular with her bestowal of skin-to-skin favors than Candice and Callie had been. I couldn't have guessed how much less. I placed two crimped ones right away in front of me because I've noticed that the girls will be much more willing to engage you while they are still mostly dressed. Again, how fully I wasn't prepared for. She came over, you know, as strippers do. With what was to me at least an unexpected amount of fluidity. She swiped the two ones away with firmness that indicated good things. The previous newbs had been sort of ignoring my ones. Brushing them off casually, as if to negate the fact that crimped ones at a strip bar necessitate a transaction. Yes, one dollar bills do. Hey, I didn't make the rules. Anyway, she brushed them aside and pulled me ahead quite firmly. Another good sign. The girls who put you right in place always have something in mind. Okay, so, then the next thing I know her feet are behind my head, her ass is lined right up in front of my face, and she has slammed my head, using her heels of course, into the very crack of her ass, with what I'd call about sixteen pounds of pressure, and is slapping both cheeks against my nose. I can still feel the nylon strip of her panties now. The smell was mostly of sweat. Like an armpit. But there were perilous hints of vag and poo and much older sweat and stripper perfume in there too. Everyone who witnessed this had a laugh. I put another two ones down. This time it was her chest, and instead of rubbing her boobs in the front of my head, she slapped me with them. Slapped me with them. Well anyway. I settled down a bit and just started watching. After Cassandra Candice was back up. I like strip clubs because they are my place to watch. It's bad for your health to watch people, especially girls, on the street. To observe. Unless you feel right about it. But at a strip club you'd make the girl feel bad if you were looking anywhere but her. So that's what I do. I look, and I place money, and I wait for my rewards. Why do I like to look so much? What am I looking for? Candice, who had introduced herself the first time round, was now a little aloof. I watched her dance, and this time when she went to rub her round ones in my cheekbones she chewed gum in my ear. Why do I like to watch so much? Because I can. What am I looking for? Candice's second time I was looking at how she considered herself. I was trying to see what part of her body she could look at all day, and say yes, this part of me at least is perfect. I found it, too. From just above her knee to just above her calves. This was her area. Where she looked gotta-haveable. Again I saw those reddish marks on her butt cheeks. Like an army of tiny bondage ants had whipped her. Like she'd been sitting for too long. Nakedness must be conducive to ascertaining such marks, and darkness is supposed to be conducive to conealing them. No matter. These are not the things that I'm looking for. I'm looking most intently for whatever it is in the form that I am witnessing, the female body, that compels more than just the animal in me. I am also, in a sense, witnessing the animal in me. Witnessing and asking, What about the animal in me compels more than just the animal in me?

Why do I like to observe naked girls displaying themselves, trying their best to be appealing, activating sexiness at wildly varying levels of comfortability? Why?

Because I do.

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On Insecurity

http://brondu.gaia.com — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 17:44:18 GMT

It’s too arguable (or convenient, for my purposes)—that at her core, humanity seeks relevance, and fears its prevailing absence. Human individuals, on a case by case basis, want only to ensure their rightful resonance in the heartstrings of their sisters; this statement taken as untenable premise would leave you (or I) open to dismantlement. Its downfall as a premise, of course, is its tenability.

Culturally or speciesally applied, insights might be extracted from the acceptance of an issue like “We all want to be felt as fully as we feel.” Apply the same mantra to individuals and you get stories. Bad stories, sometimes. Tired stories. And other times, maybe, good ones. Does the mantra’s truth come into the story’s quality?

But of course we are all bad politicians. We all go back on our own (stated) desires in one way or another. Sometimes these ways prevent us from achieving our desires, other times these episodes of self-sabotage prevent us from enjoying them. Let’s reduce desire, for now, to the dubitable/domitable bliss of reception. Will I let you love me? Not until my braces come off. Will I let you love me? Not until I know this ‘me’.

And in the meantime we get by. There is a flagrance to our self-sustenance. A projected permanence to our stability. But, one hopes, this is a lie. One hopes, too, that each of us about our little lie. For when can’t it all come down—the fifty seven wood blocks that comprise our tower of psychological equilibrium? Doesn’t each day represent a quivering hand extracting a square from our upward trending grid? And if not, we do well to remember that, either way, daily growth or destruction, no one rebuilds themself.

Which is why I freely admit that I’m easily losing, and easily hurt. Less easily lost.

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A Few Thoughts On Horse Slaughter

http://brondu.gaia.com — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 21:28:39 GMT

I don't like seeing horses getting slaughtered. Working with horses my whole life, it's quite a bit like seeing humans getting slaughtered, especially because a horse wears its personality on its skin, its features dictate (or are highly related to) its character. Some horses that go to slaughter, you can see it, are what I might call karmically lifeless. They have very little potential; they could mean a small amount to a small amount of people. Other horses are clearly alive. Are fine.

It seems to me there are two major factors contributing to this situation, to the necessity of horse slaughter. The first of course is the demand for horse meat. If only that demand could go away. The second is the terrible overproduction of horses in North America. Many people, horse owners and lovers, are breeding their horses, and amassing large herds, when they cannot afford to take care of the horses or the offspring in the long run. This ethic of buy when the sun is shining and sell when its raining, and always breed breed breed, creates so many unwanted horses that it is very difficult for any agency ('the people', government, etc..) to regulate the slaughter industry due to the sheer number of excess horses. And yes, excess horses means homeless horses means dead horses.

As for regulating humane slaughter techniques, which is becoming a big issue in Canada, the challenges are more than just technical. Yes, horses are skittish and move around a lot more than cows, but that's overcomeable. If you could LEAD a horse into a NON-SLIPPERY stall, horses are trusting enough (unlike cows), and smart enough (unlike cows) to get along with humans. They will allow themselves to be obliterated with no questions asked. This IS a smart position for a domesticated animal to have. It's been known of ranch hands shoot to their dying horses in the face while the horse is giving them that last look of pure commitment and trust. But obviously this ideal can't be put on the slaughter industry. Horses are funneled into sticky, slippery stalls, are bludgeoned crudely into position, and are shot several times in the wrong place until they are dragged, twitching and conscious, into that stall where their legs are cut off and their skin is pulled as a curtain or a loose sheet from their writhing corpse.

One of the problems is: not many people want to pay any attention to the slaughter industry. Now that the US isn't slaughtering, all of the horses are being moved to Canada. The truckers moving horses to Canada should be stopped at the border for inspection, but are ducking this inspection by saying their load is for a feedlot. Government responds, "We can't regulate state of mind. If someone changes their mind once they have crossed the border, we can't do anything about it."

Here is one of my ideas:

Slaughter horses should be marked somehow. They should be tagged. If a horse is purchased with the intention of being slaughtered, it should be explicitly filed, somewhere, as being that way. This would make such horses much more visible to potential rescuers, the lay population, and to the government. It's all too covert, in a way. The industry (of horse slaughter) has too much plausible deniability, which can only evaporate with influxes of visibility. If "tagging" doesn't work or is already happening or what have you, other avenues to enhance "visibility" ought be pursued.

Also, the Canadian gov. should step up its game, and do all of the things it promises w/r/t horse slaughter (i.e. inspections, et al).

From what I've seen, the slaughterhouses in Alberta are being run similar to the way my place of employment is being run: with loose reins. That's unacceptable.

My two cents.

PS: Thanks America for dumping your giant unwanted horse problem on Canada.

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The Names Of Horses

http://brondu.gaia.com — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:16:21 GMT

She is standing on the lip of a very green hill, overlooking a valley charged with an overstock of gaudy mist. There are movements in that tumbling frock of drizzle. Flitting ears penetrate the hanging water like dancing flies. Ears trending into everlong faces, necks of nature's gel, some sort of body. Horses are below, and if this were a dream—for she has dreamed of this before—how much less would she see the grass below her—each distinct blade besmirched by a smear or drop of the week's deluge—and how much more would she feel a garish burgeoning, spilling as complex audiovisual into the phantast's sky? But she is here. She sees nothing above her but a thick compelling grey, echoes of a fallen hammer, a sound preceded by the cloy of impending release. And below is equus. And equus is moving. Writhing in the fog like a many headed leviathan, whose incomprehensible speech is a regular thudding on churning turf. They are running, the horses, if she can hear them correctly, towards her. Up the slope. Soon to be displayed. Arrayed in a filament of their own ecstasy, oxide joy rising off their backs as if the heavens alone could contain it. She will greet them then, smiling. She will call their names aloud. She will ask them to come to her, and they will, for they will see her as an avatar of protection amidst this aqueous assault. And the names they give back to her are truer than the names of her parents. And she will smile again, adding the crushed n' flavored discharge of her eyes to an already soused nature, tears the product of profound completion. For here she is: home.

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On What Is and Isn't Us

http://brondu.gaia.com — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 23:37:12 GMT

People do extraordinary things every day. For one, we look out our eyes and see more than exteriors. We perceive.

We are not startled by our surroundings. This wheeled shuck of glinting blue metal is a car. I see it and am not surprised. I enter it, and it moves me, or I move it, and I am not surprised. But this is not extraordinary.

We are not startled by our closeness. We enter or receive each other and are not alarmed. We grant transmission, and say, meaning the opposite, that it is a big f*ckin deal. But this is not extraordinary.

We hear each other's rendered tune, we apprehend that clipped orgasmic breath before our human voices plunge into song, and we are not undone. And perhaps this is trans-usual. Or, if not, than perhaps it should be. But on a case by case basis. Trespassers William is a good band, for instance.

We play through one another's art. We navigate worlds of each other's making. I crack this cardboard, I plunder the contents of this thinly-cut tree, I decode this statutory sprawl; I am walking hand in hand with a girl who exists now, but not in any corporeal sense. What is that? Insert adjective here—and that too is metanormal, is special, perhaps.

And what about love? Yeah, what about it. Am I suppose to say it's special? I'll say this:

Love is an idiot in the streets, whose rolling eyes meet yours, and so enlightens you.

I am this. And so are you.

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