The dead keep contacting me in my dreams. People that lingered in my life however briefly pull me aside and talk to me in languages that I do not understand. I see their faces and instantly recognize them, even if she was only in my third grade class for eighteen days and i saw her at The Alamo during the Sesquicentennial. Nonetheless she is dead and she tried to talk to me last night.

I spent part of the day on google looking up names, trying to remember who they were. Kathy reached out to me holding my hand while grabbing my ass. I last saw her walking down a parkway in 1997, I was driving the other way. She died a few years later with a needle in her arm.

I had not really thought of her in between that time nor since, but when she started talking in what may of well been tongues last night, I remembered quite a few moments of insanity from high school times. but what was she trying to tell me.
What did Jim, Ethan, Molly, My grandfather, Jeff, and who ever else visited me -- but while i remember them, their names escape me -- the past few weeks want me to know.

It is like the time in 1993 when i was driving down the freeway to the bank, getting money to take with me to college the next day. When I got on the feeder road a Arabic man drove up to me and screamed as me through the window trying to tell me something i knew was ever so important, but i could not understand a word he said. Was he yelling at me because I cut him off, or was he stating a universal truth that would have made my life so much easier to understand and live.

So i sit here now, once again pondering death, and pondering the significance of what is trapped in my head. What let it out. Who is next in my life to disappear and talk to me in a voice that is familiar, yet so distant.

one year ago i spent my days walking around in a fog, trying to figure out what had just happened. 3 years down the drain.
four years ago i spent holding her, comforting her after she went to the clinic and took the pills that took away what we created, but neither of us wanted. i was always against abortion, stating things like well even though i do not want a kid, i can never see putting one out to pasture.

but when she made the choice, i was relieved. i spent no time convincing her otherwise. she took the pill, i think it is considered a chemical abortion, as it was caught early. and all i remember is sitting in her apartment with her on her couch holding the hot water bottle, trying to make her comfortable. telling her i loved her. holding her hand. all the while wondering what could have been.

and then we got on with our lives, never looking back. well i spent the last month with serious time in my head reviewing memories, and i guess finally dealing with what was one 4 years ago. i distanced myself from the act, as i never thought it was right. i mean for god sakes i do not eat eggs for a reason.

and i was in love and wanted to move on a start a life with her. well it came crashing down a year ago.

and even as i type this, my heart is a flutter trying to figure out why i just let go of what i wanted in life -- well i never wanted a child, but i never wanted to assist in creating one either. but i turned my back on what i believed because i really wanted to spend the rest of my life with anne. hell once she told me that she was interested in me, i let my guard down and said i would plunge in knowing full well that i could easily be hurt.

well right now i still sting from her tossing me aside, but i really hurt from the idea that just like my brother that never was -- stillborn -- i have another part of me that finished.

december is the month of my birth.not that i ever really cared about such things, well at least not since i was 16 so i could drive. but and now it holds so much baggage, part of me wants to sleep till the new year come thanksgiving.

just skip it entirely.

this forum has become so much about loss, and i guess that is really what memories are -- time gone, slipping further away, distorting as the days grow more.

i really want some part of my life to take on a positive focus and gain something, and i guess i am now working towards that. but after having past the one year mark on saturday of 'my worst year,' it is time.....

dec 3rd of last year hit me like a brick. after about 3 yrs anne decided that she did not want me in her life anymore. she told me we were through.

we were sitting talking, on the couch, and i told her that i had a feeling that she would be going to columbia for law school next year. and with that comment a spark turned into the burns i still feel today. just a few days before we argued about her desire to return to california to be closer to her family and i said something off the cuff to this that was not the best thing i could say. it went something like this: "it is not the 18th century, you do not live on a farm, there is no reason you need to live close to them as we have phones, trips, etc..." mr. sensitivity strikes again...

and well we were not having the best life together, as i was studying and starting a new job that took far too much of my time. she was spending all her time with law school apps and teaching. we stopped being intimate some time right before school started, right after she returned from maine. we were just not taking time for each others' needs, let alone our own.

i guess we really started to fall apart when we went to megan and becks wedding over memorial day weekend in 2003. i was with so many people that i had not seen since college and she felt out of place and jealous of my friends, especially sarasvati. whom she said she never wanted to see again.

but i spent my time, i guess we both did really, giving our relationship cpr over the next year and a few months. then there was the whole incident when she found porn on my computer when i was with friends in philly for a weekend. that did not go well.

but right now i miss her, i still think of her as i drift to sleep and wake up with her on my mind. i would like to think that i would think of helter, but it is anne.

i emailed her once since she moved out to california, got a response and never did write back. in my email i told her i was no longer in love with her, but no longer hated her for letting me fall off a cliff. i lied.

i would have hated to leave new york, but i would have followed her anywhere. and now she is there and i am simply trying to figure out where i am and where i am going. and i just really wish that she was beside me, helping me with the map, as i drive in whatever direction i take.

so i just filled up a cup of water and walked to my window and tossed its contents at two cats who at first i thought were fucking, but they were fighting something fierce. and it went on for about 3 minutes till i tossed the water.

don't they know how to run away. even my opening the window did not scare them off. the water splashing down on them sure did.

i felt bad throwing the water, but they seemed to be damn near killing each other.

the heat is seeping into their brains too.

i sit her thinking about the heat and how i think my eyes are melting. i have taken 3 showers today and am about to take another.

but the heat has me thinking about fire, as i feel like i am being slowly turned round a spit. and for some reason my mind wandered back to an episode some 14 or so years ago. it was the last three days of my high school career, and i had passed out of my finals, so i did not have to be there. so i went with my buddy matthew to the beach to met up with his friends robbie and jerome. the goal was to smoke a ton of pot and sleep on the beach with a bonfire. robbie and jerome were also going to drop acid.

well matthew and i left our house about 9 pm, and it was about 1.75 hours to the beach. well we drove down singing along to the beatles, at one point we turned off the cd and just sang rocky raccoon by heart -- i would be hard pressed to do this now, that is for sure. all the while we were smoking pot.

i drove a 1970 VW camper van so were were set to open up the back and sleep, and we had oh i don't know maybe 2 oz of pot to smoke as well.
but we get to the beach around midnight, as we made a few stops for god knows what and drove around to find robbie and jerome.

well it took about -- well it felt like 3 hours -- 20 minutes to find them. they had built a fire in the sand, but it was not all that big. but i had about 10 big logs that we through on and it quickly grew to mammoth proportions. hell i was stoned it probably was not all that big. but we sat in the sand and talked about big things -- going away to school: robbie to oregon, matthew to austin, me to vermont, and jerome had dropped out of school and was to stay put taking drugs and working job after job till he no longer looked young and felt even older.

but as we sat there and finished all the pot we brought and they brought i became immersed with the flames. they were so vivid and as robbie and jerome, who were tripping quite heavily ran out into the water making noise, i began to see a story play out inside the flames. it was almost like a black and white movie, but colored in yellows and reds and oranges along with the black from the moonless sky.

i stared at the flames till they became bright embers, claiming that the lesson that i had learned would revolutionize everything -- again i was stoned out of my gourd. i remember cars driving by so slow that i believed that time must have been shifted, and i was moving at a level far faster than i had ever done before. the rest of the world was silent and slow. matthew could not even break my trance .

well we slowly realized that sleep was necessary and opted to sleep in my van. robbie and jerome were gone, only their car remained. i had so much to process as the flames had spoken to me. matthew just looked at me and said: "you are fucking stoned," at such a slow speed i did not understand it till 3 minutes later.

but to sleep i went.

the sounds of high tide woke us up. robbie and jerome had escaped sometime during the early morning. so we got in the car, my mind still filled with smoke. but i went to look at the ashes hoping to get one last piece of info. they were silent. we drove home in near silence, only a quiet droning of early neil young and my mind trying to remember what important message the flames provided me. the quick sleep of the night before had wiped the memory form my head.

the ride home was quick. i walked upstairs and sat on my foam mattress and did my damnedest to recall anything from the flames. nothing. i passed out for a few late morning hours, and drove to school to pick up my friend beth so that we could go to a museum downtown.

there was a painting of flames there and i was enthralled by it. standing there, i looked intently into it hoping that it might jar my memory. beth tried to get me to go to another room, i did not budge. i tried to tell here about the pictures, the voices, the meaning wrapped around flames, the ones i could only seem to grasp hold of like smoke slowly lifting away from the fire.

she walked away.

we went for coffee and talked about how different life would be once i went to college. i had a crush on her something fierce, but never said a thing, knowing she would remain in texas in my old school. we talked some more, but i was distant, wanting to discover what i had lost over the past night.

well i took beth home and went home to find matthew still laughing at my 'flame story'. we went out to my van and smoked more pot, but not like the night before and talked about going to school the next day, our last day, to say goodbye and pick up our caps and gowns. i went back upstairs and watched the yellow submarine for like the 50th time, hoping the madness of pepperland would pry the story out of my head. nothing.

we got up for school the next day and were both probably still stoned. slowly i drove to school and mentioned that i smelled gas, but we were a bit late, and matthew smelt nothing. as i approached the school down a long row of houses i looked at my gas gauge and mentioned that i needed to fill-up on our way home. then the engine shook and my gas peddle fell to the floor and the car shuddered.

we looked at each other and then saw the flames coming from being where the motor was. out of the car we quickly lurched for the fire extinguisher. it was not enough. my van, my pot, my music, my memories, so many things quickly were engulfed in flames. the fire department came and turned the red flames, black billowing smoke plumes, and startled faces all around to black burned out embers in a no longer yellowed van shell. and then i knew what the message was. i was seeing the wood structurally change and break down, it was all a metaphor for a big change in my life. i had looked into the fire to see that i could never go back. and matthew, robbie, jerome have never all 4 hung out sense. i actually gave up smoking pot entirely, saying the fire told me to stop. i only have smoked it 3 times since. my chemical make-up had just changed and out of the ashes of my van was a different person. i shed all my high school friends over the next year but matthew and vincent. only to lose vincent the next year, actually cast him away, as he had burned up in front of my eyes as well, bursting forth like a phoenix as a person i stared at trying to figure out rather than looking and knowing everything was all right.

and every time it gets hot, as my brow dampens i consider what is the next thing in my life to change, will more things erode away or will the heat create. now, i totally understand.

after drinking 64 oz of imperial stout my shit detector buzzes all night.

i miss my wonderful chelskiss who rests in mexico tonight

i hate to mis people, it makes me miss my brother even more. he was born in 1971, a few years before me and 4 months more premature. he never tasted air. ok, so he was never born, but he did get buried, and thus named by my parents. infact he was given my name. or ratehr i was given his.

in many ways i think that i fear achivement because i fear the idea of overshadowing him. i live simply because i live for 4 footprints on this earth and do not want to disappoint him.

as a kid, or at least when i found out about my namesake, i really wanted to see where he/i was buried. but we pulled up stakes and moved clear to texas. he was buried in the bay area, a place that calls me almost as much as the city.

once whne i was doing acid i sware he callled me on my shit. told me not to fuck up. i stole a life, it feels and can never really deal with what tha means.

it hurts to know that i am meant to be an echo of a corpse. it hurst o know that my parents had not the slightest originality to create, only rename.

and i never even talk about this, in fact maybe 2 people i have ever spoken too knows this truth.

so what i do is model my life after others, try to slip into their shoes and become them for a while, it is all i know

the coming election has me thinking

will a democrat actully reduce or elminate the patriot act and other abuses of the constitition, or will the euphoria of kicking bush out cloud the memories of the dems; therefore, the status quo will continue with just a new happier face in charge

i also am calling bill clinton as sec of state should a dem win the high office.

i also think that the dems think they will win as the most sutable cabnient faces have already claimed they will not run next term, giving fair warning that their seats are up and not having the chance of losing it to the other party in a make-up election.

the job hunt continues and i keep looking for things that i am not qualified for

people here have so much specialization that i am a lost cause

or is it that i am looking for things that i know i can never get so that i can hide away in my apt and not be forced to confront the possiblity that i no longer have anything special to offer, that i am damaged goods and feel no reason to fix that

i keep trying to look up, but i am reminded about that time that i was in a pool and could not find the surface -- kicking and reaching ad nasum. like that time maybe i am waiting until i just float to the top.

i never make the first move, want others to do it for me...

at this time of year i bolt the door and turn off the phone

escape, or try and escape the crap that is christmas, as much as i love thnaksgiving, i hate christmas

all my friends have gone into debt buying gifts that no one wants

one even told me that if she did not the economy would crumble. wtf.

a day where you fet together with friends and feast and enjoy company -- that is a day i can respect

a day that is somewhat based on religion and is celebrates consumption; fuck that.

live little, live lean

live without religious or materialist dogma

this 2 more fav girls is killing me

i had to go through and see who was a veg for inclusion, damn moral fiber i stand on...