A waking dream

“Punk is musical freedom. It's saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster's terms, 'nirvana' means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that's pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.”

Kurt Cobain

I woke up to find

that everything I'd been led to believe

was only a passing waking dream

I woke to find

myself flat out on the ground

immobile while the world

was spinning round

I woke up

I woke up to see

a world of endless possibility

where life is what we make

and what we choose

I woke up to find

that people weren't as pretty

as they seemed

but yet more beautiful than any dream

I woke up

I woke up to find

the universe within my palm

That we are not at all who we seem to be

Now I stare at all the dreamers

the lifeless eyes blind to their infinity

waiting for their lives to start

when they began before they fell asleep

Infinitee

is it beauty? so fine and empty

I seek God in words and phrases

look alikes and disjointed cultures

a fantasy world held up by warm feeling and hope

and then I feel my ego irking, screaming for recognition

truth and reason drag me down from my abysmal cloud

and dampen their shine

I am alone. Alone in my walk

surrounded my travelers

all searching for a path to contentment and ecstasy

we swim in the dreams of greener pastures

looking into each others lives

and yearning for a day in

someone's shoes, only to find them worn and fading

I am not a holy man, not spiritual nor lavish

though i am persistant in my searching.

Let me never breathe a day without asking

the sky and dirt why I must

reach for one only to obtain the other.

I forever wear masks, forever drink

forever slouch so that I may one may

stand straight and look my life in the eyes.

To grasp her warmly and make feel the radiant

spell of her mystery. I am a pastor of emptiness

and minister of nothingness.

Let us pray only to our freedom, to our capacity

and the infinite nature that is our Being.

Dance on, dance on into oblivion

so we may decompose and be reborn into

beautiful accidents. Just as we are, so we will be.

Music of the Common Life

The morning comes like a strong draft, bursting through the curtains of an uptown hotel bedroom. Its luminosity demands the attention of the sleepy occupant inside. The man lying in the bed stares sharply at the ceiling, waiting for the anxious morning light to drag his reluctant body out into the world. The sound of bustling outside the window and through the door opposite him serves as a neurotic reminder of the day ahead.

He haggles himself out from under the warm sheets, promising his reluctance the day will hold something worthwhile. The light flickers on as he stares in the mirror, reflecting an unsettling expression. His hoarse face, brooding eyes, and scraggly hair shine back. The man does not move for a few moments, debating on his course of action. He switches the light off and walks back into the bedroom, looking out the window, again haunted by his reflection. This street below is bustling with figures, cloaked in pea coats and hoodies scrambling to their many destinations.

"What's the rush?" he asks, "they will only fall back into their beds again, they're all running only to go back to sleep." With this the fate of his day is decided. A paper is slid under the door, USA Today boasts urgent messages of economic trouble, job loss, murder, celebrities and scandal. He continues to stare out the window, looking across the way for signs of life in the gleaming widows. Another man rushes himself into his suit, a woman packs her children's bags and readies them for the buses. He stares coldly, longingly. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go. Nothing, that is, he will bother himself with.

On the desk beside the window sits a laptop, yesterday's newspaper, an automated coffee maker along with an assortment of half eaten snack bags and jewelry. He sits down and brings up the computer. The screen shines right through him as he scrolls through his emails.

"Why must they bother me? Why can't I be left alone for one day? Just one day of silence, damnit." His voice is harsh, tired with a hint of helplessness. The sun shines brightly into the room, illuminating all but his conscience. He breathes in, feels his back crack, and still remains blanketed by his neuroticism. The sirens begin, earlier today than the day before. He hears the woman shouting at her children as they are rushed off to the bus stop, echoing between the buildings.

Across the way a woman awakes and brushes the crust from her under slept eyes. She stares out the window from her bed, wishing away the morning. Her room smells of stale chips and vodka. Shattered martini glasses rest along the wall just below the stained wall paper from whence they shattered. She rolls over to check the time, anticipating disappointment regardless of what it reads. She hears the woman next door shouting at her children, rushing them down to the street below. Her head aches from the noise, among other things. Sitting up, she looks around the room at the disaster around. Its origin remains a mystery for a moment, which is met with horror until flashes of the night before rush back to her consciousness.

The man closes his computer, met with a deep sigh. He stretches and walks to the window, looking back out into the abyss of the city, searching for signs of life. His eyes scan the rows and rows of windows and balconies. Each window a screen into a distant world, existing as if in another reality. He feels the distance shrouding him, locking him away, making the room so much smaller and constricting. Objectivity takes over as he leaves his own body, observing his being from a far off perspective. It all seems so clear, yet distance. Flawed. Subjectivity returns, and with it a deep sense of nothingness released by a deeper sigh. The man decides to get ready for the day, yet still without a clue as to why.

The door slides open, and out steps the half asleep woman. The twenty degree temperature fails to wake her up as was hoped. As the city circles and breaths around her she stand peering out into it as if it were a barren field. A cacophony of sirens, voices, barking, and wind. Bustling and rushing forwards and backwards, around and around again. In between each sound, a silence. A silence rarely heard and never spoken of. It is the city reflecting upon itself, affirming its own existence. The man washes his face, places his hands on the shower wall and leans into it. Staring at the water roll down the drain he feels the water stream through his hair, down his cheeks and off his chin. He is for a moment free, calm, and with purpose. In the warm embryonic vacuum of his bathroom he attains peace. The woman looks down onto the street. She wonders how bothersome her blood on the pavement would be, and to whom, if it would be worth the city dollars.

She makes a choice.

The man dries off his body, wets his face and stares through the mirror. Searching. The sirens outside roar north, their volume getting louder and louder. He slowly dresses himself. A suit, fitting for the formality of the day ahead. He puts on his pants and buttons his shirt. The sirens grow louder. Ties his tie into place and tightens it around his neck. The echoes now ring through his window. He adjusts his suit coat, buttons it and admires himself in the mirror. The ambulance is now outside his apartment complex. He walks out the door, and locks it behind him.

The police rush into the building, up the stairs and towards the eighth floor. The men outside hold back the onlookers outside concerned with the commotion, some only annoyed by the obstruction. They reach the hallways and surround the apartment door, knocking violently. They call out a woman's name hoping for a response. Nothing. As they burst in the door the hung-over woman cracks her door to inspect what has occurred down the hall. The firemen rush an old woman out on a stretcher as her husband rushes behind. "She had no choice," the woman thinks to herself. The woman stares blankly as they rush past her. She stares off for a moment after they pass, soaking in the silence of the moment. The calm after the storm. She lets it breathe.

A crowd of distraught voices call out from the street. The woman strolls over to look out over her balcony. As she draws the curtain a black blur drops down from atop the building across the street. It makes a blunt noise as it hits the pavement almost exactly as the crowd of onlookers gasp in horror. The woman rushes to the edge of her balcony and looks down on the street below. A splatter of red paints the pavement. All that can be made of the one who left has left it is a black suit and shoes.

He made his choice.

The ambulance frantically tries to hold back the crowd, while they try to make sense of what had just happened. The woman on the balcony nods at the man's remains and utters to herself "I suppose he wanted to get his tax's worth." The city continues to revolve in circles. The wind blows, and another is lost to the music of the common life.

I am a fucking Hipster

I am a hipster. I said it, and it may make me more of a hipster for admitting it. I've kicked and screamed trying to run around the fact. It sickens me to see such fashionable and trendy folks with the same values and tastes as I do. I've searched for some subgroup of people who share the same passions as I do and then bitch when I find it. We're all looking for something real while trying to hold on to some "working-class" credibility. We see behind all of the shit sold to us, the images, lifestyles, and expectations placed on us. Made to feel guilty for not reaching some standard we never agreed to. A large number of people like me reached the same conclusions, adopted the same values, and dealt with theses issues in the same way. We value frugality, desperately seek authenticity, want to rebel, are angry, educated, and seeking individualism. However, much like anything else in an industrialized society, individuality becomes mass produced. Just like punk, new wave, emo, metal, and whatever other counterculture/music genre becomes attached with a fashion, lifestyle and set of values. Since this tendency towards trends has become a trend itself, Hipsterdom has evolved into a rejection of such. We seek out new way of expressing ourselves while falling into the same trends as before. A lot it has to do with big business getting a hold of the fashion and publicizing it, thus destroying it. American Eagle and Urban Outfitters have both taken the fashion and values of Hipsters and sold it back to them as higher prices. You can buy "vintage" clothing and furniture at upscale prices and find the items in high class malls and shopping centers. Like Grunge and Punk, once the mainstream gets a hold of counterculture, it becomes itself unhip and destroys any authenticity left.

This is also in part due to the large number of people drawn into the trend. What was once an inside joke or shared interest with your group of friends (such as strange catch phrases and grandpa sweaters) later becomes adopted by a number of onlookers hoping to capture the creativity and originality of your creation, often making the irony of their appreciation twice as ironic and thus making it lame. This is later picked up by large marketing firms and the fashion industry, tweaked, placed on better looking people and sold all around the world. What was once your way of standing out turns out to be your greatest insecurity. You find a number of shallow, small minded fucks wearing your cloths and speaking your lingo, making you a poser in their eyes and resulting in insurmountable amounts of anger. The key to the problem here is not the fashion, nor the ideals behind them, but the scale on which they're acquired and means of marketing. What was authentic is made to be superficial, leaving the true individuals and creators seeking another way of expressing themselves.

Such phenomena occurs in any trend. Punk started as a way to stick it to the man, with strong, practical ideas, firm individualism, and fantastic music. Later it was commodified and sold as cheap, spiky haired pussy shit making the real originators look "uncool" or outdated. The same happened with Grunge (the Melvins probably look old and worn out to Nirvana and Alice in Chains fans) and will continue to happen. There becomes so much irony, so much hipness that all that was good and pure is wiped away in the name of profit margins and trendiness. That hot girl and asshole guy in Math class become trendy fucks, sporting Black Flag t-shirts and $50 would-be-thrift-shop-jeans. You, the guy or girl that hated them with all your might, must now change your style or face the horror of looking like these fake motherfuckers. Sure, you can stand strong and hold on to your sense of identity, fashion, and attitudes. Though, you will face much criticism during and after the trend. Trends kill authenticity and those who strive towards it.

You may at this point be thinking "Kris, it's only fashion, true originality is in the mind!" I wholeheartedly agree. This is what should matter most. Fashion is only an outward representation of one's beliefs, and often falls short of expressing what one really feels. They are, of course, mass produced items and are bound to end up on someone else somewhere. True individuality is in the mind. However, this is dull at time. We have to wear something, why not have fun with it, right? There is no harm in this, until it is copied and made a joke of. Then it is no longer fun and one becomes defensive. "I really DO like Judas Priest! This guy is wearing the shirt to make a joke of a very talented group of musicians, and the passion they have!" This is where it starts, and the anger only grows. It is stupid, I admit it. It should be shrugged off, but goddammit you have to believe in something! You can't just fold every time someone steps on your shoes! If you are of the creative persuasion, you know how hard it is NOT to express yourself. NOT to write things down, print them on some blog and let the world have at it. The same goes with fashion and lifestyle. It's an expression of your life.

It hurts most when your situation and lot in life is made a joke of. Hipsters are mostly, like myself, from a well off background, well educated (that is, go to college), appreciate an array of music, are liberally slanted, and creative in some way. This is just how we turned out, a whole lot of us. So many people sneer, and deny, and get furious over who or what they are. Who cares!? So you're ironic, great! Irony is hilarious. Well off in life? Fantastic! You have more power to make changes. Appreciate fine art, jazz, indie music, strange pop culture, cult movies, cheap clothing and beer, and enjoying life? What is so bad about this? Hipsterdom is a fight against pompousness, but becomes pompous by its own efforts. We don't want the ivory towers, the slick look, nice car, and fine wine. We're cheap, reckless and fucking witty. We're lost, angry and searching for something to ground us-just like everyone else.

I've hated on hipsterdom for so long and I'm tired of ignoring the blunt truth. I am a hipster, I am just like the other pissed off, lost youth of my generation. We don't share the same values as our parents, we don't know what's real and what's a joke. I don't know who to believe, what to believe in, or who to trust. It's a post-post modern world of ironic irony of irony. Of ads trying to sell us products by not trying to sell them. It's a world where revolution and rebellion are dead, and the machine has become too big to fight other than making everything an ironic joke. We're sold rebellion, manufactured rebellion, to make us feel like we're making a difference. The best efforts we had, to live cheap, be frugal, and try alternatives has become a trendy joke of itself. It's still real, and still an option, folks.

We have everything mankind has to offer and still feel empty and pissed off. We have a million problems on our hands and can't seem to find a solid solution for one. We can't even try to save our species without looking like a bunch of crazy liberals. We're trying to hang on to some middle class fairy tale, making our humility noble, while hiding our true emotions and ideas. Instead of taking hold of our new found identity, we shun it, trying to become proletariat supermen. Our heroes failed us, parents failed us (divorce, materialism, false hopes, existential crisis- you name it), and now we're expected to run shit.

I wrote this as a confession, spilling my guts all over the floor. If you think I'm lame, fuck you. Chances are if I'm friends with you, you're a hipster too and I have you in mind. It's time to move on, to find something new. We're rocketing through our youth denying it, getting lost in contradictions and confusion. So fuck it. Time to start over.

Jam Econo, Stay True

It's a ShamE

Runnin from the truth

self loathing

and seeking perfection

look in the mirror, you skinny

son of a bitch. You're anxious

anxious of the next day, anxious

of what people thinks, advice they give

and lies they tell. You trust no one

you don't trust your instincts and

are a defensive, manipulating fuck.

Welcome to the depths. The core.

Life is a bore, always afraid of change

of possibilities. You've achieved so much

and want so much more. Drinking yourself out

of the everyday stupor. Sobriety is for the dead.

I wait for the next drag, the next time I have nothing to do.

Nothingness is key. It's what everybody is so afraid of.

We're all stacking each other up against

one another. Dick sizes are nothing to what

we're really measuring. Are you questioning it?

Are you loathing it? Are you excited?

Fuck man, too good to give up.

It's too fun. I'm too insane.

It's a pity we're told to do so much

so often. To be paralyzed by fear.

Out with religion and in with medical science.

Both try to keep us scared, away from

the devils of life. Away from truth, from

feeling anything genuine. We watch our heroes burn

and they burn so beautiful.

Up all night, sleep away the day.

Up all night, sleep it all away.

I'm afraid od life, to live vividly.

I'd rather muck up the view

Blind leading the blind.

Stare and stare at what we can't have

and ashamed of who we are.

Its better to fess up to being a bum

then lie to yourself and be a success.

So afraid of pain, of connection,

of death. It's a shame.

Ideas On Nature

Here are the videos that prompted this.

True Life: I'm Living Off The Grid

George Carlin: Saving The Planet

I find the idea of returning to nature a bit...off. For one, we're in nature already. Man is a part of nature, we use natural things to create new amalgamations of different "natural" materials. Nuclear bombs are as natural as olive oil or dirt. They are comprised if atoms, all of them, and thus are "natural". The psychological barrier we place between us and nature is because we fail to recognize the above stated fact. When the natural order of things is arranged in a way that harmonizes with human understanding and intervention (such as a building) we feel alienated from it because of it doesn't look or "feel" natural. It has been processed through human thought and thus able to be interpreted through human understanding. A painting of a sad face or war scene is tinged with meaning, emotion, and intention where as a forest is without such mediums. Much like an abstract painting, nature has no meaning, no order, and no true interpretation. In both there are randomly assorted colors (that is, we cannot interpret them to symbolize anything, although we often do) and are open to interpretation as well as appreciated for the experience of their physicality rather than "message" or "meaning". I am a firm believer that humanity applies essence to existence, that is to say that we name things, give them meaning, measurement and purpose. Nature just happens, or occurs and what the result is becomes what it is as we experience it. This idea is profoundly important on how we view our existence, relationship with nature and quality of lives.

Throughout time is can be found that humans often wish for simpler times, and wish away their contemporary lives for the romantic simplicity of the past. There remains an assumption that the generations before them had it better, understood life more profoundly, and explain away the common troubles as unnecessary products of technology, godlessness, youthful carelessness, and social change. This is where conservatism preys and wages its battle on those "damn liberals". On the opposite end, those forward thinkers often abandon the traditional ideas and cling to new trends, technologies, art, etc as a key to greener pastures. This is most readily recognized in 20th century values and the cheering of progress, or rather PROGRESS! Each end of the stick clings to their end seeking ways to to improve the human condition, seeking solutions by either reinventing the wheel or clinging to its simplicity. Both are hindrances to happiness and contentment and both are nay saying to the life, time, and peers they exist within. Life cannot be apprecieated with eyes on the road ahead or rear view mirror. It is the drive itself that matters, and it is all we have. We all share a common destination and a common starting point. The upholstery and model of our vehicles may be different, but only in superficial ways.

As stated earlier, nature is viewed as a distant thing and often as a purer form of existence. Our ancestors who struggled, suffered, and died by the hand of nature have grown into a civilization of ungrateful nay-sayers wishing away the great feats of mankind by mistake of ignoring the examples left for them. In the age of information, with texts and wisdom from a countless number of brilliant, experienced human being we remain unhappy, suicidal, wrathful, hateful, bigoted, and anxious. We are richer in knowledge, opportunity, comfort, and resources than ever before yet we are also more miserable and lost. Though we may still possess the primitive demons of our ancestors we also hold enough history and examples to guide us to utopia. How many more times will the Visigoths overturn Rome? How many more Nero's and Hitlers will we give power to? How many more Galileo's will we chain to their homes for trying to help humanity? We are more enlightened than ever, 5th graders know anatomy that only the elite doctors knew three hundred years ago. We have access to Buddhists texts only read by monks outside of Asia up until two hundred years ago. There is no excuse for our behavior other than fear. I do not say all this standing atop my podium looking down, but from staring through my own eyes here on the ground. I see you. You see me.

We are now threatened by extermination by our own hands. This has hovered over us for the past century. We could wipe ourselves out thousands of times over. This reality has caused so much strife, paranoia, revaluation, revolution, and an all around change in the human psyche. But I ask you, when have we not been threatened by asteroids? By an ice age? We have always been threatened by the sheer randomness of the universe. We are blobs on a floating rock. I don't mean to sound cynical, but are we not ourselves on a cultural and psychological merry-go-round? Do we not suffer the same pains from generation to generation to generation? We've made greater enemies out of ourselves than nature ever posed simply because the trouble we create can be avoided. Asteroids cannot, ice ages cannot, solar flares cannot. We distance ourselves from these truths. We either hide them or are simply not aware of them. We've put ourselves in a psychological bubble, and feel dirtied and liberated by the unclean world beyond our creation. What do you expect the walls are made of? The plastic that wraps your bread isn't drawn in from another dimension. It was made from earth, will return to earth and the universe will go on. We have created an alien world out of our home.

Living in the woods, not leaving a "carbon footprint", "saving the planet" these are all insane objectives of a species so afraid of the unknown, so disconnected that we've put ourselves at the center of the universe to try to make something of it. The objective is not to save the planet, it is to save our species. It is delaying the inevitable. Its understandable, modern life is complicated, it can drag you in and make you psychotic. However, you have control over the very thing that creates all these problems. Your noodle. We're our own best therapist. Look at your desk, chances are its made of something from this universe. Hell, i bet its from this planet, eh? Your in nature. You are nature. I'm not going to tell you to be one with it, so what if you realize it? You're going to be either way. Don't go frolic in the woods, go shopping. Buy more stuff made from nature. Throw it out. Let it decompose. Hell, in a 10 billion years the sun will swell into a red giant and evaporate it all anyways. This isn't the best solution for OUR survival. However, it is a nice perspective to start from. Our ancestors had just as many problems as we do, just different ones. They solved them, moved on and turned into us. Let's solve ours and turn into something better. Without all the smog, pollution, and nonsense of the past few hundred years we wouldn't have had the capability to discover cures for polio or get to the moon. We're learning from our mistakes, and if we don't we're dead. Universe goes on. We become particles, get made into something else.

Simpler times do not exist, different times do. Not afraid of the plague? Bears attacks no longer a fear in your apartments? These were once as scary as mortgage payments. So what's my solution? Can I preach without offering up some brilliant scheme? Well, yes. Though, I have a few suggestions. Laugh, be content, find something to live for, love your friends, enjoy the little things, eat a damn twinky. I'm sick of worrying and picking out all the flaws of my time, my life, my friends. Criticism has its place-like on a blog :). I have a hankering that the best thing for us is to relax, enjoy life, do what matters to us, and be excellent to each other. A way between meaninglessness and seriousness, a middle way.

“Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.”

Seneca, Roman Philosopher

Jam Econo, Stay True

Mud

I'm on a quest for purity

for something tangible

that won't slip through my fingers

as soon as i get a good glimpse of it

and without anytime to feel its texture

its a constant reduction to the unbreakable

to try and sift through all the unnecessary

add ons and baggage. I just want the diamond

--or at least the coal so I can crush it into something

I feel dirtied, directionless

lost at a four way stop

with each perspective staring

dead on a red light. Goin' Nowhere.

So many choices, so little value in each.

Is happiness a game? Is it a perspective itself?

A change of seats

if you will

to get a clearer look at the stage?

Or is it being quite fine with where you are

seated now?

Shouldn't we revel in the madness, the chaotic mess?

To embrace every thought and emotion!

These questions are over our heads, rhetorical, and this is

the biggest trouble I have. What is rhetoric and what is truth?

I'm bombarded with claims to both; they are justified both my experience

and emotion. Anger, Joy, Love, Hate, Authenticity, Acting, Fear, Strength.

I'm uninterested in the happiness written in books, its so...boring.

Joy is best in small segments, anger when appropriate, and happiness

when left with one's thoughts.

Everyone has some advice, insight, tidbit of knowledge.

But where did they get it from? Did we read the same Wikipedia page?

Or is it real, deep, rooted, and earnest .

I'm looking for purity, but only walk away filthy.