Dear Snuffleupagus,

Were you named after a cold? If so, I think I’ve got the one you were named after, finally. It has slowly wound its way through the population.

In my latter part of December, I have laid awfully low. I didn’t even go to the annual Lozaw christmas eve party, because I was sleeping unsoundly on the couch at my folk’s place. The couch that is where my bed used to be, in the living room that is where my bedroom used to be. The house has changed so much. I will never be one of those people that walks into their old bedroom and lets the ancient nostalgiacs back in. My room is just a memory, now. It’s not that sad, though, I guess.

I bet that big puppet woolly mammoths never think about dumb little things like that.

Do you?

I have fresh Linus scars, from my visit. Linus is coming back here to live with me, in a few weeks. It requires ground transportation, and I was flying. I told him he needs to be quieter, because he’s not allowed to be at home, technically. I don’t know if he was listening, because he was too busy swatting sharply at me.

The holiday was probably too calm. And too green. There was no snow to be found, this year. Everyone seemed pretty bored, actually. Especially me. Plus, there was far too much playing of video games. I am pretty burnt out on video games, to tell you the truth, my dear Snuffleupagus.

I should’ve taken more drives. I like the sight of scenery going by. I could’ve gone and seen ‘The Return of the King’ for a fourth time, but I didn’t. My second infatuation with the Lord of the Rings has been very comforting and nice. It’s sad that it’s all over. It’s been such a great story to me, and for such a long time. I think I still have a folder from a highschool math class with the symbols on it. I learned some symbols and I drew them on my folders. It seemed to help.

I am back in Richmond now. I went for a ride on my bicycle as soon as I got back. It was sunny, and not cold. I went to Belle Isle, and I even climbed the hill in the middle, and I looked out over the heavy river and the rocks and the skyscrapers and highways with fast cars and the cracked and bent trees, still untended from the hurricane which was many months ago. The sun was setting and it was 4:30 PM or something like that. The whole dark world was bored, but going with the flow. I am bored, but going with the flow. I don’t write anymore. They have lost touch with me. We are disappearing into our fated places.

I am getting better about at least glancing at people and strangers as we pass by one another and maybe grinning and nodding if they want to. I’m still a lot of shoegazing, though.

Spark and tinder.

I have not been sleeping well. It’s not like me. I never feel fully awake, lately. That’s a problem.

Maybe I will go for a walk. Although everything is too familiar.

Sparks and tinders and changes of scenery. Planet earth is so finite. Lately I feel very ugly, in a vain or superficial sort of way.

Apathy’s second kiss.

Also, I am recovering from a bout with hormones and longingliness. You have to beat back that testosterone, every once in awhile. Reality is a sharp bite. I have clear pictures. I am not for desperate reaches into the population, crossing fingers and dying to impress. I am a solitary and fatefull individual. I would turn to ice. I would sink to the bottom of the ocean. Lots of things just don’t feel right.

Still, asexuality is a drag, too.

Goddamn, this is a long post. I hope you’re still awake, Snuffleupagus. Incidentally, I have run out of kleenex and I’ve had to make the move to toilet paper. I should go to the store.

Tonight, 2003 ends for everyone. Even woolly mammoths who have been dead for a million years. It’s like a tree falling in a forest when nobody is around, but still making sounds. Yes, it’s like that.

2003 isn’t feeling quite as awesome as some past years. There were definite high points, but a whole lot of flatline. 2002 was a stimulating and adventurous year. And ’98? I can hardly remember. ’85, now that was a great year.

The things that were good about 2003:

First and foremost would be the Europe trip. It wasn’t all that it could have been, because an introverted dude travelling by himself just doesn’t tend to open too many doors for himself, but still, it was fabulous for the feeling of isolation within cities and within majestic sceneries like fjords and mountains and for Aarhus and Copenhagen (I will visit Denmark and Norway again someday, yes), and seeing Stonehenge and smelling the sewage of Paris and seeing Radiohead and Low play in a bull-fighting arena (are you kidding??), and the insane over-crowdedness of London and seeing phil Collin’s mansion on a hilltop in Bath.

There was Kris’s wedding. Where I made a complete jackass out of myself, but at least it was in the spirit of joyfulness.

There was Las Vegas with Adam, and seeing Interpol at the Fillmore the next week.

Mostly, there was work, and working a lot, and being far away and devoting too much to work.

Which leads me into my resolutions for 2004:

1. New job. Within or withou tthe company, for pay-raise or pay-cut, for better or worse, it is time for a change of pace. I have taken the first step, and talked to my boss about my desire to change. I did that before the holiday. Yay for Tim and his capital-A Assertiveness.

2. Proper capitalization. I am using it already. I am sick and tired of being a nonconformist. The capital letters need some lovin’, too.

3. Record label. Just in time for the death of CD’s and firm music media.

4. Physical activity. Stronger muscles, whiter teeth, larger lung capacity.

5. Write more often, be better at it, less jaded about it. I can kid myself into thinking I’ll get a book deal someday. That should do it.

6. Less caffeine. It is the cause of my headaches, the reason for some of my unsettled-ness. And the coffee sugar don’t help that waistline, any.

7. Less video games.

8. Longer bicycle rides. Day-long trips into the countryside. And eventually, back.

9. Learn to play the guitar! (I AM getting better, though. I can strum patterns!)

10. Think up a toast for Chad/Erin’s nuptials.

11. Reading of books. (Good books, with good looks.)

12. Move. Somewhere, anywhere. Decide ‘House vs. Apartment’. Decide. Make important decisions for long-term geographical priorities. This apartment is past my prime.

13. Philosophize & learn. I am getting so much dumber, as I get older. And I don’t like it.

14. Get older.

15. Yearn for nothing. Yet be as passionate about as many great things as possible. Balance and be crushed by the contradiction.

16. Smile. You have survived for more than one-quarter of a century. Things can’t be all that bad.

17. Take comfort, take heart in the simple (the simplest) things.

18. Never create lists consisting of more than seventeen items.

-

Here is the point at which I would relay my favorite ten albums of 2003, and books, maybe. But to be honest, I wasn’t really enthralled with much. I was scattered.

Things I was entertained by in 2003 which were most memorable:

• David Bowie – “Cygnet Committee”

  I was addicted to this epic of a song through the Spring. IT IS AN ANTHEM. I played it at the bonfire in back of my folks’ place at one point and Jeff and Chad started making fun of it. Maybe my penchant for dramatic music is a little too much.

• Neil Young “On the Beach”

  Especially side B, which sounds especially world-weary, especially on vinyl, listening to it in conjunction with the lonely snaps and crackles, especially lying on the carpet and staring blankly into the ceiling. It’s called the Blues, man.

• Sun Kil Moon “Ghosts of the Great Highway”

  Holy crap, what a great record. Even better than Red House Painters, maybe. Very pretty, thoughtful, introspective, and rocks when it wants to! This one makes Mark Kozelek a legend. And the songs go together so well. Gels as an album, as only a gelling album can. Hell yes, Salvador Sanchez!

• Radiohead “Hail to the Thief”

  Solid and brilliant, except for a few missteps. “There There” is phenomenal and never seems to get old, though.

• Xiu Xiu

  Disturbing to a tee. This is what it sounds like if someone is making music While having a nervous breakdown. Suicidal (but in the third person). The melodies are absolutely psychotic. Schizophrenia supplies the rhythms. It may not be healthy to listen to Xiu Xiu. In fact, it is very probably Not healthy to listen to Xiu Xiu. But I can’t help it. It is frightening and intense and dead-on. It helps push a point with yourself, late at night. Like bloodletting.
  listen to On Fire and pretend someone could love you
  listen to Lady Day and dream they knew the half of it
  listen to Birthday and pretend someone could love you
  listen to Nick Drake and dream they knew the half of it

• The Black Heart Procession “The One Who Has Disappeared”

  When you look through me, I know I’m the one who has disappeared, when I write my name, no words appear, & when I turn, I turn away & I am the one who has disappeared.

  Speaking of world-weary songs.

• Outkast – “Hey Ya!”

  Yes! I wanna see y’all on y’alls baddest behavior!

• Dave Eggers “You Shall Know Our Velocity!”

  Especially applicable, considering the plot involves completely spontaneous travel. The arrogance of giving freely. The freedom of giving freely. Voids that will always be empty. Friendship with others and with self.

• Jonathan Safran Foer “Everything Is Illuminated”

  The improvised English language. Why didn’t I think of that? Another reminder that I can never hope to be as talented as the more important voices. A mostly great and funny story with a heartwrenching and hard to read ending. The writing style is neat throughout.

• Jimmy McDonough “Shakey (Neil Young’s Biography)”

  I can relate. Never settled.

• I can’t think of any films, besides the Lord of the Rings, which I’ve already gone on about. “Lost In Translation” was great. I didn’t see much else that was any good or at least worth mentioning.

Now, Mr. Snuffleupagus, I really must be going to the grocery store. To just get out of the apartment would be grand.

I hope you’re still an invisible friend,

-Tim.

the way robert plant would say “but there’s gonna be some good news!”

1. the falling star that hit me right between the eyes at 3:24 CST this morning, just outside the little town of west columbia. i tried to remember what i was supposed to do, and i remembered that i needed to make a wish. at that moment, my mind went completely blank, and stayed blank for maybe thirty seconds.

   it was a gorgeous thing.

2. the little sparrow which fluttered around all loose-like in the charlotte airport, and perched on a seat a few measurements from me, and he stayed for awhile and seemed to want to tell me something, but then gave up and flew away.
3. i, travel-weary and exhausted from a culmination of very nearly twenty-seven years of ceaseless, unjustified, though perhaps unintentional brow-beatings, collapse in a chair only two feet from my very own and very comfortable sleeping-bed. i need only drag myself that last little…

   bit.

4. how the only thing that can make tim giggle (as far as i know, and as opposed to my stepchild laugh) is how marcy will say “crocodilio !” in her espanol accent.
5. it is cold but sunny, with bright blue skies, just like the first time i came back, three years ago today.
6. you are coming by later, for mugs of spiced hot cider with cinnamon sticks, by the fireplace, leaning back, talking and smiling. i will fall asleep during a lull in the conversation and you’ll be satisfied just to grin and sip.

i cancelled my dentist appointments and i was short with my mom when i told her she could do my christmas shopping for me this year, here is my credit card number.

my airplane leaves at 5:10pm, and my attitude is very poor.

i am taking ten cd’s and none of them have pop music.

i slept normally last night, i have to work as soon as i get to houston, til 7 o’clock AM. my time will be minced again. oh well.

i have found many old xanax, and they will help to keep me from scalping people once i arrive. i am not venom, i only think i am. i am really not venom.

mom told me to start writing a resume. a thousand people can tell me to get a new job, but nothing seems justified without mom’s say-so. so, now it is justified.

i will need more new teeth with all of this clenching. maybe it shouldn’t be seeming this bad. i dunno. three years is a long time to be an unappreciated martyr, i think. three years is a long time for anything.

the headaches are still unfailing, and that’s what the excedrins are for. headaches have never been a problem for me, until this fall. i would underline that, but i just don’t care enough.

i will fall asleep on the airplane, because that is all airplanes are good for anymore. i will have little fitfull dreams about resignations and sugarplums, aarhus and pond hockey, silmarils and tributaries, horizons with water towers, how i must have made my last christmas ornament in kindergarten or the first grade, like we had gone out of business, or it just wasn’t worth it, to us or the tree, could forever be a mystery.

i am done packing.

-tim.

i am up too early again. 5AM, this time. maybe it’s getting better.

i paid attention to my thoughts as i tried to get back to sleep. they are frantic. scattered and fast and all over the map. lots of eagerness for life phases long gone and/or yet-to-come. i am not a person who is often or ever satisfied with my present, i guess.

i am paying attention to myself and i am down, already, this morning, and for no particular reason. just down. though i suppose i’ve been neglecting a little pillbottle with my name on it. that’s probably why all the headaches, too.

december used to have a feel to it. it’s a shame that it doesn’t come anymore. in my opinion, it’s a shame.

there’s always too much growing up. growing up and out of things we’re passionate about. growing up and out of spontaneity.

i confuse myself. i would like to dedicate myself to a something, somewhere, someone, somehow. what should it be today? what should it be ten years from now? are friends doomed to always forget about each other? should i move back home when my father is old and alone, to just keep him company? how much hot chocolate is too much hot chocolate? what should my priorities be, for any given point in time?

i have a headache. i will douse it in hot chocolate, though. take that, headache!

since i was very young, and maybe since forever, i have had the strange and unfamiliar need to express myself to the world, who i am, what i can do. i do not know the reasons for this need. the other people in my family were never cursed by this need, that i can tell. it’s an alien characteristic. maybe it is a sign that my inner-child goes unfulfilled.

lots of times, i suppress it. most of the time, i am suppressing it. i suppress it all of the time. i don’t know why i should or should not suppress it.

squandered time is a bastard. my current trauma is getting old. or, i mean, aging. i am not old yet, but i know that before i know it, i will be old. i know that old people aren’t as flexible, their modes of expression are mostly exhausted, and they are bored and just watch television unless their children or their grandchildren are around. and they make money and pay bills. i don’t know if there’s any more to it than that. these days the time goes by and i am already five years older than i feel like i should be, and it will only accelerate from here. this is cause for slight panic.

i know. i will listen to a warm record album and everything will feel better to me, very soon.

perception is the subtle deviant.

i do not like to post posts like this post, but i have a Need to.

haha. see? i’m making fun of myself already.

your friend,
-tim.

here is the best spam email i have gotten in many years. since that one that promised to increase my ejaculation by exactly 561%. (“gosh, perkins, that seems like an awful lot of ejaculate..”)

anyway.

questions for originator:

1. since when is my name “echo perkins”? an even better question: who do i talk to to have my name officially changed to “echo perkins”?
2. the remaining questions would have to do with how nothing in the email relates to anything else in the email, and how it’s all a bunch of lovely nonsense. i will forego the remaining questions because suddenly i don’t care. i think i have a contact high from reading the email. oh so maybe i do have one more question. what are we smoking?

maybe nyquil will help out.

signed,
-echo perkins.

dear corporation,

your son,
-tim.

oh, phew. score one for the pout face?

too early to tell? still could go either way? things change fast and often?

i’m going to keep taking the nap, anyway.

i tried, but i have failed. i have woken up at 4:30am and cannot get back to sleep. i’ve had to make a very dedicated effort to get back on a daytime schedule, instead of this 4:30pm to 7:30am wakefulness, and it hasn’t been easy. but i guess i hadn’t been trying very hard.

today i will force myself to just stay up until 9 or 10pm, and i will be very exhausted, and that will put me on track again. it will be easy. i will buy a new coffee maker, to replace the one that broke, and i will stay up all day. it will be easy.

last night i heard my first christmas music. i know a lot of people have heard an earful of christmas music by this point already, but i don’t really participate in society very much. it was the first christmas music i’ve heard this year.

it was in a wendy’s, and i was enjoying a “wild mountain” chicken sandwich, biggie-sized with plenty of delicious salty fries. incidentally, the wild mountain sandwiches are the best fast food sandwiches on the tray these days. ‘specially the burger. delish.

anyway, i was eating my sandwich and the wendy’s was pretty empty and nat king cole starts singing “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” and all that jazz, and it wasn’t really annoying, like you’d expect it to be. it was kind of comforting, actually. it was warm and soft. it was like falling asleep in grandma’s lap. soothing.

but, i guess, ask me again in three weeks.

after the delicious sandwich, i went and finally saw the matrix revolutions, which had me rolling my eyes from start to finish. goddamn, what soap opera set did they drag that scriptwriter off of? the story wasn’t all That bad (trust me. although it definitely wasn’t Great), but the way they told the story was Atrocious. it’s as if they’ve completed the transformation for this phenomenon, from something completely bad-ass and deep-seeming, to complete garbage startrek melodrama. i guess that’s how hollywood likes to do things, though.

today, i have plans. perhaps i should make a list.

1. allow my dentist to fit me up with the final version of my implanted tooth. the present tooth is functional, and most welcome, but it is not as perfect-looking as the rest of me, and so it must be remedied.
2. buy new coffee-maker. this should probably be at number 1.
3. remember to floss very freaking well before the dentist, because they always bitch at me about it, those bastards.
4. that last one should also be at number 1.
5. my lists are bullocks.
6. stop writing words i don’t speak with.
7. stop telling me what to do, prick.
8. go to work. i can try to sneak, but the office people will most definitely see me. i must be very quick. in and out just to check the email, see who is e-bitching at me this week. the boss might ask how everything is going, and i must not be skimpy with relaying the horror. perhaps repeat the sentence “i’m just burnt-out, that’s all…” over and over again. that should do the trick, because it is true, and there are no specifics available.
9. christmas shopping…… oy vey. it’s always treacherous. and there are soo many people. oy vey.
10. am i jewish?…. no. no i’m not.
11. oil change and general check-up on my car. the tires have not been changed in many tens of thousands of miles. the treads don’t look bad. will i have a blow-out anyway? should i get the tires rotated? the car doesn’t seem to pull one way or another. power-steering needs to be checked out. that thing groans on the sharp turns. it never groaned before. this time i will take the face off of my stereo so that the mechanics won’t fuck with it and blow out anymore of my speakers. those insidious bastards.
12. replace car speakers. this may have to be delayed a long time. it will not get done today, at least.
13. procure items, and sewing machine (if needed) for construction of a ‘lord of the rings’ costume to rival all others at opening night of “return of the king”. in order to out-geek, without question and without doubt, i may have to resort to donning the image of a character from the FIRST age of middle-earth, perhaps fingolfin or turin. there shall be no contest. everyone will know who the expert is. perhaps all of the other geeks would leave in shame, and decide to rent the dvd, several months hence, instead. losers.
14. LOSERS!
15. LOOSERS!
16. haha.
17. i guess that’s all i’ll do today.
18. i sure could go for some scrambled eggs and hashbrowns. and pancakes. ohhh. where waffle house at?

oh i thought of another one!

19. i should start reading a book. i’m almost illiterate again.
20. okay that’s all good morning.

and she should not, appreciate will not condemn her vocabulary.
i will not condemn her time, or side-by-side sort of skins.
i will play my time away on a mountain top
or inside the rips in my clothes,
so it goes and goes and goes (and goes) until we just let it
(valences will not) crash to the ground, the sad)dest chorus
approaches, but you’ve never jumped that high in your life,
i guess it took getting rid of me, so many planets spinning with you.
so much spinning, i can hardly breathe, as air can not condemn
my lungs, a spider will condemn my ribcage, make babies to
ripple along my tongue, every kiss could be a cobweb
imagining a red like once, before stranded and wrapped and left
on a rooftop, saying ‘maybe, maybe, the sky is closer here,
if nothing else’, well maybe i gave up after all,
vision could never condemn imagination and so you falter,
fall forever into my picture-frame story, burning just
to take the oxygen away from me.
i will exist again for the crater in the earth, for the wreck that
condemned the shock with the guilt of an end(ing.
i will tell about the time i found a sparkle at the bottom,
about how i touched it and brought the valences down,

this was the equation of balancing, a question of locked language,
locked in chorus and nosediving, probably a thousand miles an hour,
but probably a million years away.

or maybe exhaustion is pretension.

oh, bother.

-

it’s gray here too, but how are you?,
-tim.