My written works of varying quality...
June on the West Coast Friends Forever How to Fight Loneliness The VoidJune on the West Coast June 14, 2025
A pretentious and navel gazey lamentation on leaving my home state
Goodbye washington. goodbye dry, cold, empty air and perpetually gray skies. Goodbye drizzling
rain and hazy fog. Goodbye sleepy mountains, sleepy towns, sleepy people. Goodbye dark earth and
ferns and mushrooms and everything being just slightly damp at all times. Goodbye pine needles
in my shoes. Goodbye endless labyrinthine wilderness filled with trees so tall you feel like an
ant under them. Goodbye salty seas and crabs under rocks and whalewatching and driftwood and
coastal wind slicing your dry skin as you squint at the horizon. Goodbye to the place where
the forest and the water become one. Goodbye to watching the ocean dance under the moon.
I've lived here my whole life, but I've never seen the beauty I see now that I'm finally leaving.
my wish of 17 long, hard years is coming true. It's bittersweet.
As much as I complain, It's no wonder this place inspires poetry. It's the most beautiful natural
wonder in the country. But there's also a perpetual lingering sadness. It's our identity, we can't
live without it. From a death cab song, "How can I stay in the sun when the rain flows all through
my veins?" Us pacific northwesterners are too used to the cold and dark. When you're sad for
long enough, it just becomes who you are. We hold onto it because it ties us together, our
shared self-enforced gloom. we're like vampires who cringe away from sunlight, smiles, friendly
faces, because we think we're too good for it. Maybe there is beauty in suffering.
it makes us pure. Tom Robbins said "October lies on the Skagit like a wet rag
on a salad. Trapped beneath low clouds, the valley is damp and green and full of sad
memories. The people of the valley have far less to be unhappy about than many who live
elsewhere in America, but, still, an aboriginal sadness clings like the dew to their
region.... it has dignity, fertility and hints of inner meaning—but nothing can seem to
make it laugh." Driving through skagit valley feels like being lost in a memory that's
just nostalgic enough to be comforting and painful all at once. But with the dreamlike,
blurry swamp swirling around you and the mountains looming over you on either side,
it also sort of feels like being cradled by a promordial mother. Like the earth is going
to swallow you whole and turn your bones and your stupid material worries back into mud
that pine saplings and ferns will sprout from. You can decide if that's a good thing or not.
"One day we'll settle in seattle." To me the downpour doesn't feel all that loving.
But to someone from the sweltering, dry desert, it probably seems like a paradise here. I wish i
could appreciate it with the fresh eyes of an outsider. In Pete Wentz's evil not-autobiography he
waxes poetic about driving through the northwest on tour. "Seattle, the glimmering emerald in the bosom
of the mountains. Mount Rainier over our left shoulders.... Trees for miles, patches of bright red
clay, God’s dirt, the best there is. So clean and fresh, I almost consider shipping some back to the
kids in the skyscrapers of Chicago, because they don’t know what they’re missing. Because words
will never do it Justice. At night the sky is lit with a million jumbled stars, scattered across
sheets of velvet. The stars out West are jokes on city kids like me. They make you feel
insignificant, they put you in your place. The rain and the fog are almost invitations
to slip this bus off the road, into the trees, the sounds of glass shattering and metal
bending, one wheel still spinning and the smell of pine cutting so hard. I'd be okay
with dying in the woods just off Interstate 5." even city kids like pete aren't
immune to the suicidal love affair this place draws people into, like a siren luring
sailors into the murky depths of the ocean. They set horror here for a reason too.
Jennifer's Body (well, they filmed it here anyway), Twilight, The Ring (that blue color
grading is so Seattle), Twin Peaks, Coraline. There's some evil here too, something
sinister. Something just past the edge of reality and sanity.
And I'm leaving all that magic behind, bound for boring, flat wisconsin. for cornfields and
dry grass and trees that become skeletons in the winter. For lakes playing pretend as oceans as
if they could compare. For trips to chicago every month and visiting the places my favorite
bands hung out. For some tired, tranquil place where the weather won't get trapped inside
my bones. A place where people have sympathetic faces and strangers aren't aliens.
Maybe it'll be home. I don't know yet. But
something's gotta happen soon. I know I can't keep living in this dead or dying dream.
No matter how beautifully sad it is. Because sorrow gets too heavy and I can't carry it
anymore. Forget about that potential lover and the girls I knew there, I'm leaving it all behind.
Music for this month: bright eyes (obviously), death cab, remember maine, letters to cleo,
ethel cain, alex g, brand new
Friends Forever June 2025
Some whiny poetic shit I posted on Livejournal a while ago to fuel my delusions of being an emo teenage boy in 2005. All complete fiction, written about no one in particular... trust me.
To my best friend forever
i miss you. i love you. i see you soon. not for long enough. after that, who knows when i'll be in the
same room as you again. as a kid i dreamed of running away with you and making our own life together.
but now i know that's a fantasy. reality is, we might never live in the same state again. reality is,
i only get your magic through phone calls and 4 days every summer.
we're not together now, but our lives are so intertwined. we grew up together. i hurt you and you hurt
me. we taught eachother everything we know. you looked up to me. i wanted to be you (still do). you
always had more heart than me. i was the shy one who thought too much. you were the confident one who
always said what you were thinking. and i'd be dead without you, if you weren't there just on the other
end of the phone, in that long, lonely year after i had to leave you behind. your voice keeping me
just on the edge of the abyss.
when i was scared and alone at night, i'd think of those golden days, us playing by the river, curled
side-by-side in your attic, up past our bedtimes and rotting our teeth with candy and tall tales.
sitting under The Tree, we were soldiers from an ancient kingdom, we needed no one else. we were
little menaces. we thought we were the kings of the world, when our world was 4 blocks of cracked
sidewalks. the neighbors' cats and the crawdads you fished from stagnant ponds were our subjects.
these days it's different. our own lives, own friends, own worries that don't overlap anymore. i don't
call you every day (but i think about you at least every other). i don't tell you everything i'm
thinking. but i could, and you would listen. when you don't work and things line up, our late-night
meetings interrupted only by poor connections are like a mother's kiss on my scraped knees. when
things go wrong and no one else understands me, i know you will. you tell me it's going to be ok
and suddenly i believe it will. you always know just what to say. you defend me to a fault because
to you i'm worth protecting. you know me better than i know myself. my guardian angel. my best and
only friend. separated by so many states but we still live in the same mind after all these years.
when i see you in july i will soak in your magic for every second of those 4 days. with any luck
i'll take some home with me.
Hang in there friends forever
In memory far away
things that remind me of you:
animal jam,
warrior cats,
fnaf,
hot chocolate,
scary stories,
willow trees,
quilts,
crawdads,
tabby cats,
xbox,
lighters,
coca cola,
snow,
tomato soup
To someone I didn't really trust
stop telling me i'm gonna save your life. we've never met. you pour your soul out to me at 2 am. say i want to live past 40 so i can annoy you every day. well. at this rate, vincent, you won't see 20. you want to die but not in the suicidal way. youre committing slow suicide but not because you want to die. i think i scared you by talking about death so much. you just want to talk about drugs and guitar and your ex girlfriend (she's the albatross around my shoulders and i'm just the shoulder to cry on. you always take her back). it must be nice to care so little. i'm the one who needs saving.
i think ill drive across the island to see you. im leaving soon. we might as well meet face to face. we can go to that rotting shack in the woods and you can get drunk and i can dissaprove silently. you can read to me from your bible since we were both too lazy to finish it. i doubt either of us will convert by the end of the night. with any luck i'll crash my car on the way home and if god is real he can decide what to do with me then.
To someone who understands me more than she'll ever admit
it was dark today. the water was cold. no one was on the shore but you and i. i will probably never find myself in those waters again. this island is a lonely place, but it's been home for the last 6 years. 6 years of memories i'm leaving behind me like nothing. i threw them out into the wind today as we watched the clouds pass and the reeds sway. you were a good friend. we never really got eachother. polar opposites, but underneath we have the same fundamental flaws. the things that keep you awake at night, that set you just apart from everyone else, are pretty similar to mine. you think i'm crazy. i know you are. after everything i could never feel ashamed around you. i'll miss you.
i've lived on both coasts, but the middle of the country isn't so familiar. i'm hoping i will like it there. you always wished there were more concerts here. there will be no shortage in chicago. i'll think about you every time i'm out in the city, dancing to the music, walking the dimly lit streets, doing everything we can't do here. here there's no parties. no skyscrapers. no bright lights. no staying out late. no distractions. just you and your own soul. being stuck with yourself is a lonely state. you never minded it as much as i do. maybe you're at peace with yourself. i'm sure not.
am i just running away from my problems? maybe. but i'm a fast runner.
How to Fight Loneliness Dec 16, 2024
A depressing journal entry
I'm not really sure what to write here but I wanted to make a log page to record
my thoughts and maybe someone out there will read them and have some advice for me.....
I don't really have anyone to talk to in real life, so I get stuck arguing with myself over the same made
up problems
and drive myself into week-long mental breakdowns. Haha I'm sure that's not a serious problem.
Anyway.. I'm feeling very
lonely lately. On the one hand it's easy to get lonely when you live in the dark woods in a tiny
house and spend
all day in your tiny beige room on the computer. In a town with 1000 people on an isolated island
where 70% of the population
are senior citizens. When you don't go to school and do online class instead so you never interact
with people you don't already
know and rarely see the sunlight. When the only thing people your age do for fun is go to
abandoned cabins in the woods and get blackout drunk. I'm making my life sound really depressing.
On the other hand, I get good grades.. I have hobbies.. I'm "talented", It's not like I have nothing going
for me.. I have
more friends than I ever imagined I'd have, even if we don't really have much in common and I don't see
them as much as I'd like.
My life really isn't that bad. It could be much worse, it has been much worse. I mean, I once spent an
entire year without speaking
to anyone outside my family and spending the majority of every single day thinking about my own death,
crying myself to sleep every night
without fail. This is heaven compared to that.
But despite all that I'm still miserable.
I still have a constant sinking feeling that I'm missing out, I'm not doing something I should be doing,
I'm alone,
I have no future, things are only going to get worse and I'm wasting the last enjoyable years of my life.
Are these just
textbook depression symptoms? Well yeah. But I can't help but find the partial truth in my irrational
thoughts.
These are not the teenage years I dreamed of as a kid, because that classic American high school
experience just doesn't
exist where I live. It hurts to know I'm missing out on that, and that I made it worse by leaving normal
school and
doing online school instead. For a person who, for better or for worse, depends on the company of other
people to
keep myself sane, I made pretty much the worst possible decision. But now it's too late, if I switch
back I won't graduate on time.
I've isolated myself from my peers purposefully, after spending the last 16 years wanting desperately
to be one of them and trying
in vain to understand and integrate myself into normal society. WHY would I do this to myself? But yeah,
I'm stuck with that
unfortunate decision now.
My only hope is that college will be better.. but I have very little faith in that. I can't be
positive about the future when it feels Like
a bottomless ravine in front of the cliff I'm going to be thrown off of the minute I graduate from
high school. I've never been able to
do the things other people can, so why would this be any different... but maybe. Maybe I'll go to school
in a cool city with
a music scene and underground comic publishers and meet all the cool weird people of my dreams ahh
wouldn't that be great <3
But then that train of thought just leads to more problems.. college is so fucking expensive!
I can't go anywhere I want because I'd have to promise my hand and my firstborn son to afford it!
What if I can't get by without my parents! How will I afford rent and food! ..See the problem with my
brain?
Anyway, I'm tired.. zzzzzzz