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I’m standing in a library, and for some reason, I felt like looking at some of my blog posts. 

I was speaking to a friend today at length, and he said something that I found interesting. “Marcus,” he said. “I read through some of your blogs one day, and something struck me. Your writing made you sound like one of those stereotypical tortured writers that have this pressing inner turmoil they can’t deal with.”

“Really?” I said. 

In some ways, like anyone else, I have been tortured, and in other ways I am completely fine, but I decided to investigate to see what he was talking about. 

I call my form of writing “stream of consciousness”, because most of the blogs I ever write, I write them once, and never read them again. I occasionally check my blog stats and see how many people are reading, but I never really go back and read my own writing. 

What I saw surprised me to no end. Some of this writing was so…. personal I wondered what I was thinking when I wrote it? I read through some of my blogs on running, my time in New York, and my most popular blog every about my “near death experience”. 

It was as if I was standing by a fence, watching myself typing these blogs up in different locales. I could see myself at 4 a.m in France, blogging about the Cannes Film Festival. I could see myself cold and trembling in an old apartment, blogging about wanting to change my life. I could see myself in New York, sitting in a suit of wet clothes and blogging after a particularly bad night in the Lower East Side. 

Even though these blogs are all about me, when I re-read these, I feel like a stranger reading another person’s blog. They are so descriptive, so direct, it seems as if whoever wrote this blog was writing for money, or something else. Sometimes I can’t even believe its me. 

I’ve felt this way when I’ve re-read some of my writing projects from the past. I find myself sitting for an hour or so, reading through old stories i’ve written, feeling as if they were written by someone else. Maybe I am a different person when I’m writing, maybe I tap into a profundity that I am afraid to show in person, and possibly this profundity (egad, I said “profundity” twice!) comes from the source within my mind that is unfiltered, unashamed and unafraid. 

It is interesting to have a powerful glimpse into specific moments of time, the memories and the motivations. A person might ask, “But you wrote this, can’t you remember how you were feeling when you wrote X blog, or Y blog?” To that I will say a firm “No.” 

In the last three years, I have written over a thousand pages of work, from novels to screen plays and blogs. My average blog runs 1200 words. So far I have 108 posts. That’s 129,600 words. My first novel, which ran 250 manuscript length pages, was around 130,000 words. 

The emotions that go into each book, script, or blog are unto themselves unique to that moment. I realize I may get an inspired feeling after seeing a person walk across the street in a certain way, I might be trying to describe a feeling that is sitting within me at that moment, or I just might be venting after a bad night. Either way, like most people, these memories fade within my mind as soon as I slip the ipod headphones on, start watching a movie, or focus on something else. Looking at these blogs is like looking at the glimpse of the past, at various versions of me in different times, in different clothes.

I like it. 

It gives me perspective on my thoughts and helps me refocus on whatever it is that i’m trying to do in the present. If I was depressed three months ago in New York for a night because some really hot girl flaked on me, am I still like that? I can gauge. If I have a blog that talks about me trying to escape a certain kind of feeling or situation, I can ask myself, “Have I escaped that situation? Have I dealt with it?” Sometimes being able to look into the past, allows us to look at the present with an amazing clarity.

I never started this blog to record tidbits of my life. I started it to keep writing in between the heft mental weight or working on novels. I started it after I read Stephen King’s On Writing and knew that to stop writing, was to create chaos in my mind. 

After almost two years of sincere blogging, I can say that it had been a good thing. Sometimes I laugh at the things i’ve written about, like angry blogs about a malfunctioning computer, or the hilarity of a night from my “Jesus Cock Block” blog, and others. Sometimes I forget that I am an individual that ends up in a lot of funny situations involving drugs, artists and millionaires. Reading through some of these reminds me of who I am, what I attract and what I do. 

I’m glad my friend mentioned the blog today, or I wouldn’t have been able to take a step back and look at myself. 

I have no internet at home, and I’m at the library and its cold outside. I think its time to mosey on home, hop into bed, and dream about dancing sugar plums and pieces of Jerk Chicken that sing falsetto with necklaces that read “Barack the Vote” hanging from the bones.

if I have that dream, I promise, I’ll blog about it.

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me at the silent rave

A man in a large costume that resembles a jar of mustard runs past me. As his yellow figure bobs oddly through a throng of sweaty, pubescent ravers, the crowd erupts into a cacophony of cheers. Somewhere, a voice shouts out. “Mustard man! Mustard Man!”. Then, a Japanese guy in a hat expertly designed in the figure of a chicken floats past. He spreads a pair of thin arms wide.
“Who wants to suck my cock?” he shouts. Behind me, a group of guys giggle. I stand in this chaos, snapping photos and floating quietly through the crowd. That’s the most interesting thing about this experience. Around me, hundreds of people are dancing excitedly. Bodies covered in sweat glisten under dimly lit New York street lamps. Tiny emo girls toss their dyed hair back and forth, strange shirtless guys do very homo erotic dances, and guys like the chicken man—there are a few of them around—all prance around, dancing to some quiet, unheard music. This is because they are dancing to their own music.
I’m at my first silent rave.
To see hundreds of people dancing with their telltale ipod headphones in their ears, all grinding to their own beat, is like seeing a music video on TV with the mute button on. But not only am I in this music video, but I’m an active participant, snapping photos, not trying to brush against too many of the girls present (many of them are teenagers). This would probably count as the second rave I’ve been to in the states. Like all raves, there are tons of very attractive women.
To my left, a Heidi Klum look alike wearing headphones straight out of an 80’s movie grooves beside her equally hot Asian friend. In front of me, a tall red head makes me think immediately of Berlin. All around, cute teeny-boppers, people with shaved heads, tatoos and t-shirts that read “I love NY” are all dancing.

Raving, in complete silence.
The silence is broken by screams which have no purpose. In rave music, people normally scream when the bass drops. Like most music, rave incorporates a specific tempo that keeps the crowd going for hours on end, ecstasy, cocaine or no. After a minute or so of the introductory song loop, a bass kick drops. This is where people scream and dance faster. Tonight, people are raving telephathically. The bass kicks in on one person’s headphones, and they broadcast it to everyone else with a scream. This spreads through the crowd like wildfire—people jump, run around and even mosh—and then the silence falls once more.
There is a natural tendency for human beings to feel threatened in the presence of large groups. If you’ve ever attended a large arena where a fight started, you might have “felt” a ripple through the collective consciousness of those present. You sense the anguish of those around you, you are caught in the bubble. For a moment, you and the crowd are one. Tonight is one of those nights.
I slip on my headphones and start playing a few trance tracks from a top 100 album I have. Almost instantly, I am in the bubble. As the sounds of voices, screams and bodies hopping around fades, I am part of the collective. All I hear are the snares, break beats and heavy basses while I look through my own personal windshield. Somewhere, a conga-line starts, and dozens of people begin sprinting in a sweeiping arc around the other ravers. For a second my radar gets tweaked. I get sensation of danger again. The groups of bodies darting through the crowd resemble the scene of a brawl. Bodies moving rapidly, touching, colliding. But the feeling subsides. These people are all here to have fun. They are happy being separate yet close.

A part of me wishes the rave was louder. At least I would have more to say.

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I’ve been searching for inspiration lately, and no I didn’t find it in the face of a beautiful woman.

I’ve been floating in between that head space most artistic people reach at some point in their lives. In inevitable top o’ the mountain. We hear the sonorous voice that could be any number of black actors ask us that question: “What are you doing?”

(if aforementioned sonorous voice said “What is real?” then it would be Laurence Fishburne. He was also Mr. deep voice in Fantastic Four two. Betcha didn’t know that!)

My only achievement this week was completely frightening a cute girl in a bookstore named Abby. There she was, walking around with a cute yellow bag, looking for books. There I was, looking for a new book to read with a great excuse to say hello. I’ll scratch the details, but the conversation ended with me asking for her opinion on something. Not her number.

She reminded me that this city is a place for artists. She’s the third girl i’ve met who works in an art gallery, but the first who actually looks like a piece of art. She reminded me of a little porcelain doll. The kind that have organs, and studied Art History in North Carolina. Yes, I frightened her, with my high-energy Jamaican wit and obvious comfort with myself. That ladies and single reader of this blog, is the most frightening thing to a woman, the idea that a man is comfortable with himself. Especially if he isn’t forty-something and flush with mutual funds and crazy levels of disposable income.

Frightening miss A didn’t bother me that much. I was actually glad I frightened her in some ways. I was glad that I came off a little too happy, too endearing, because the truth is I haven’t felt like that in days. I was experience what my friends and i like to call “frownzing”.

Frownsing: (adj. frown-zing) the act of, or activities related to frowning. Contemplating life, being generally jaded, or driven to watch porn. Facilitates lower states of energy, higher solitary presence at movie theatres and the Taco Bell line. Watching Sex and the City.

So not only was I happy to have met a cutie like Abby, I was happy to scare her away. It justified in my mind that my reality was doing the right thing. I was projecting an air of confidence I didn’t have, even if the cute girl who works at the art gallery MIGHT have given me her number if i had just turned down the man-juice a notch.

Randomly, but not coincidentally, after I left the book store carefully protecting my copy of Lost World, I leaned against a wall and started talking to my friend on the phone. We were talking about the usual madness. Women, success, money, not having either of the three, you know the deal. At some point, Abby walked past–wearing a black shawl or something–but it was her. I saw her look at me, then look forward.

I made no attempt to say hello, or “de-man-ize” myself by saying. “Hey Abby!”. I could just as easily do that by shouting “Hey Abbot!” for no reason, and i’d draw more stares. Abby walked off into the distance, reasonably tall and attractive, gone to probably manically paint in some studio apartment somewhere. Then I turned around and resumed my conversation.

The abbey thing reminds me of something. One of the key features of New York is women, women women. In fact this phenomenon can become a little bit annoying. Not the fact that the city is filled with beauties, but the fact that they walk so bloody fast. By the time you stop a girl to say hello, she’s half a block away. Its that bad.

In the last few days, I’ve been sharing my apartment with super-author Michael Crichton. He’s been in my bed, on my floor and once or twice in my bathroom. I’ve been reading a few of his books. I just read Next and Jurassic Park, and I grabbed Lost World yesterday. I’m not sure if I’m the laziest book reader ever–I don’t like searching through books hoping i don’t find a lemon–or if I’m just in a dinosaur/genetics mode right now. Either way, I need to feed my mind so I can start up my writing process. I need to kick start myself like an aging guitarist needs coke before a show. I need that high.

I think six to eight good books should get me writing again. Earlier this year, I read about fifteen or twenty books in the month of January, and not only did I write some of my most interesting blogs, but I was writing constantly. Ideas came from the depth of my insides, and spilled onto my keyboard into MS word and on dozens of tiny scraps of paper. I need that again. Time to contribute to the creative commons. I can “frownz” later

On a side note, this “scary” side of myself is pretty humorous. I went to a bar on Monday night and some girl started talking to me. A few minutes later the shortest Asian guy i’ve ever seen pats me on the back and tries to tell me to lay off the chick. (I didn’t even know her name). I didn’t find the event funny until two days later, when I remember some random dude asking me about his Russian friend who was visiting town. “You can see where i’m going with this right?” he says to me. It was hilarious. Not only was he cock-blocking me from a girl who’s name I didn’t know. But he was also being semi-threating about this girl, who spoke to ME and whom I didn’t even remember.

.Maybe I really am scary

.Maybe I walk into places and people wonder who the f*ck is this maverick come to steal and impregnate our women! On Karaoke night nonetheless.

I wish.

Cheers to better days and less cock-blocking from dudes.

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I’m looking at a girl who looks like female version of Alan Rickman.

I’m in the subway station at the 2nd Ave stop, Lower East side New York. I’ve been traipsing around these points every other day for the last three weeks i’ve been here, and the stories are numerous. But i’m not feeling happy. Something is grinding at my insides–the little voids in this social vacuum we call our daily existence. For all intents and purposes I should feel good. But I’m not 100%.

This makes sense in an odd kind of way.

I got the emotional wind kicked out of me recently, and certain aspects of it re-entered my consciousness, just at the point when I didn’t need it. I was on the phone with my sister last night trying to work out the meaning of pointless communication.

“What’s the point of keeping in touch with people who aren’t interested in seeing you?” I said.

“Well, ” she responded. “I don’t know how to answer that.

“And why is it that when i’m far away from certain people they become so interested in what i’m up to… but if i’m in the area they are like ghosts in my life?”

“Well,” she said.” I don’t know how to answer that one either.”

I can’t answer it myself. Its become a tired routine, between myself and my significant others. I can be in their periphery, a stone’s throw away and I don’t hear anything. My cell phone becomes dead weight, and i wake up early on Saturday mornings feeling like a horny Grizzly bear in a land filled with male Shrews.

I can’t bother to try and rationalize the circumstances, the events, the back story or the whatevers. I’ve come to realize like most people, that most things don’t matter. What matters is what you want with your life, what you choose to take from it, and everything else is just… scenery.

Scenery like a long car ride from state to state. You look at it, occasionally something grabs your eye, sometimes you might stop for a while and get engaged with something, or you might stop for a long time before you get to your final stop. But its all fluff. Its all jibber jabber.

What matters is the end result. Sort of.

I haven’t felt like writing humorous anecdotes about the girls i’ve met in New York, and now there are too many to write about properly. This city is pretty fun–I’ve partied on a Monday–but at the same time it has the “vacuum” that all major cities have. That quiet divide in between what you have to do, and what you want to do. Everyone is busy, everyone is working, but sometimes in between the work and the train rides, the little conversations with the person standing in line to grab a Subway sandwidch, or helping the man across the street, everything stops. Then you remember you are painfully alone.

You can disguise this sensation in some ways. You can play loud music, read books, go running. Fool yourself into feeling a sense of company by sitting in the presence of others in Parks, or going to the movies.. but there are those days when you can’t fool yourself. This sadly, has been happening more often over the last several months than I like.

Its not a depressing feeling, because its a reality. If a guy doesn’t have a girl friend and maybe two people he speaks to every now and then its a little social conundrum. Especially for a guy who has no trouble meeting and interacting with people. Its like life’s antithesis to the “cool guy”.

But I’m rambling. ( I will never… EVER say “I digress”. I hate those two words. *brrrr*)

Do I want the flashing lights? Do I want the smiles of recognition from the masses? Do I want to be known?

I dunno. I’m a simple guy. Sometimes I just want to know that certain people close to me have a vested interested in me. That’s a start.

I’m afraid of become one of those super jaded people who roam through life always thinking a little devil is following them around and watching all their positive circumstances then they poke a broom in your back and shout out “YOU’RE FUCKED LITTLE MAN!”

Alas, I think i’m already there. Feeling jaded isn’t feeling depressed. Its reading the news and not feeling anything when people go missing. Not worrying about tomorrow even if people are going to start wailing on you with terrorist fist-jabs, and thinking every woman you meet will eventually screw you. (not in that way pervs!).

I should take notes from good old Shakes:

“… take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them?” Okay this barely relates to what i’m saying, but I love a good Shakes quote.

The only solace I can take from the burgeoning jadedness that is life, is to realize I have ample writing fodder. I don’t have to be the only one feeling empty and floating around “this mortal coil”, so can my characters! and I can make them screw (not in that way) the chicks too! Sweet eh? The pen can give sweet revenge… but that’s a nerdy fantasy that never helps anyone, especially if the chicks that screw you (we’ve been over this) don’t read your books. Lost cause dudes and babes. Lost cause.

But i’ll figure it out. I’ll reteach myself to twiddle my thumbs with glee if it means buying a huge f-ing box of chocolate and a teddy bear the size of my ex-girlfriend and loads of anime to take me back to my innocent teen years.

Till then, the humorous anecdotes will continue I guess… with a morose undertone.

Cheers to unexpected e-mails.

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I’m Tony Soprano, a middle-aged man with a gravelly chest of hair, pummeling the life out of a Indian man in the middle of a jungle that seems vaguely familiar after having a massive ninja fight with four Thai girly men searching for the gay cast member of an odd reality show I’ve found myself in the midst of, when everything erupts into chaos as thousands of Chinese men in full grey overalls start attacking the Thai boys, which is after a brutal cycle of eating spaghetti in a place that seems like something straight out of the Jungle Book, being chased by a very rotund woman who runs like a cheetah, and smiling as my henchman (who happens to be Russian ) prepares to help me beat the life out of the aforementioned Indian man.

 

That was my dream, or at least what I can remember of it.

 

I know exactly why the dream was an odd mix of weird images and random circumstances. I’ve been reading this interesting book called Working Stiff, which chronicles the sexual escapades of a late-blooming brit named Grant Stoddard. I ate a large bowl of spaghetti just before my midday nap, was watching bit pieces of The Secret (a movie filled with scenery from everywhere) and listening to Erupt’s “Click My Finger” song, which explains the continuous feeling of a need to dance throughout the entire dream. What I cannot explain is a ninja fight with four girly-men, me suddenly morphing into Tony Soprano, the Chinese riot, or how the dream began.

 

I remember the last part vividly. After I started to dispatch of the four highly trained girly-men, a door blasts open, and a stream of Chinese guys rush in. Not tens, not hundreds, but thousands. The area (which is a hillside in some foreign country) is filled to the brim with men in gray overalls. Somewhere over a loudspeaker, I hear a voice say that the men are “free” (whatever that means), and as I’m looking at the crowd breakup, someone pinches my wallet. I curse myself, saying “Dude, this isn’t a movie!” because one of the thousandsof similarly dressed men took my wallet. I then begin chasing a very suspicious Asian man with Shang Tsung-long hair wearing a green dress-thingy. It looks like he is a lost marauder from that band of desert-roaming pirates in Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. I chase this guy (who is probably just the best representation my mind can make of a Chinese thief based on popular media) and it he leaps over a wall and I accost him. This is when I turn into Tony Soprano, beat him up, then hold on to the Indian guy, who was trying to steal my credit cards, business cards and whatever else was in my wallet, as I pummeled the thief. What was weird, almost hilarious, was when Soprano (or me) gets that tell-tale look of satisfaction that comes just before metering out a lot of punishment to someone “deserving” of it before they die, a massive Lithuanian looking fellow with icy blond hair in an Army guys’ crew cut appears from the underbrush, ready to dispatch the guy with me. This makes no sense—Tony Soprano is racist and doesn’t interact with blondes, unless they are prostitutes or his wife—and it is at point I wake up, wondering where I am, and what the hell I was dreaming about.

 

The last few weeks have felt like this. A bit chaotic, a bit confusing and a little off. I’ve been patrolling the city a lot, watching people, and getting inspired to write. I find it annoying that I am most inspired to create insightful prose when I’m far away from home. I rarely write anything in my room, which is a labyrinthine representation of packaged isolation. I feel like describing moments when I’m in Chinatown, blindly going from bar to bar in Adam’s morgan, riding my bike and fearing it will crash, or most recently, attending a sex-themed party (complete with pornography on the walls, sex candies and condoms in large dishes) and feeling disappointed the crowd was a bit stuffy. (Stuffy could be replaced with “tight-assed” if you wish).

 

An aspect of my confusion most likely lies in the fact that I am not inspired to write much, and this is fueled by many things. In fact, I have been hesitant to blog any of my thoughts because I’m beginning to see it as a pointless venture. Like much of my writing, it feels empty; a representation of other emptiness around me. Which faceless people read my blog? In what order? Of what nationality?

 

I have no idea. No tengo idea. Wakarima-freaking-sen.

 

 

But this doesn’t really bother me I realize. I just can’t bother to open up. I secretly planned to keep another blog, a private one that could keep an accurate record of my “deepesht, darrrkesssht, thoughts” but I decided not to. I could just buy a journal and call it a day.

 

This dream was wacky enough to prompt the ever-interesting-and-always-enjoyable bird blog, but there is more to tell, lots more. Tales of rejection, woe, the throes of the work force, racism, animal-based rejection (yes, this is true, even I couldn’t believe it) among other things.

 

A lot has happened in a few weeks, mostly good, some bad, somethings I can’t label yet. I think I’ll try and go back into the mindset I was in when I started this blog six months ago. It is an outlet for my thoughts to enter the Universe of the internet, where unlike going to a mountain top saying “God, are you there?” and probably hearing a bird squawk somewhere in the distance, I ge to see things like:

 

I want to go on adventures with you.

Oct 11, 9:14 PM

or

Is not nuh candy corn, ah di oil inna yuh back! Stop wid dis I’m-too-aloof-and pinky-finger-stiffened-and-gots-near-unattainable-standards-to-give the-bourgeois-the-time-of-day and kill off a ting! Time fi tear up bed sheet and ting.

Nov 9, 5:33 PM

Or maybe

See, we Asians are perpetually perplexed too–Asian girls we think are hella ugly always manage to be considered pretty. So maybe REALLY what is happening is that the average-looking white guys are getting the average-looking Asian girls (for Asians anyway), but you on the outside think that she’s a prize!

Maybe?

Oct 9, 6:37 AM

 

Either way, the blog will continue. I’ll have to gear up, get recharged and work some stuff out, but a writer needs to write. Alas I will blog anon.