“high ate us” all together now

i apologize for my hiatus the past couple of days. i’ve lost some followers but there’s no use crying over a little blood loss, right? 

this week has been spring break for me. allow me to explain my week.

i’ve spent that majority of it working my ass off with my father. we’re framing a house up and it’s some tough nails, literally. i’m beginning to look a lot more tan. but before the weekdays started (thus my working), i went to my dear friend’s cabin with a bunch of rowdy, awesome people. it was a great time and i smoked far too many cigarettes because of reasons. then, after yelling ‘CUDDLE’ from my place of sleep every 5 minutes for what seemed like 6 hours, i finally fell asleep, only to wake up at 7am for my first day of work with my father. 

not the best decision, but i did it and i won. thank you, starbucks doubleshot that i chugged before i left.

then tuesday i got out early to go visit my yearbook kids at my old high school and to give my official endorsement for next year’s editor in chief. i have high hopes for those kids. then, i went to the DMV and my soul was killed, revived, and then killed again, and then revived again, and so on. 

the DMV is a special, incredible, terrible place. i mean those former words in the same vein as the latter word: absolutely grand in its awful-ness. for one, all the workers were incredibly dry and rude. for two, there was a screaming child behind me banging on everything with a surface except to my surprise, my face - this was the only saving grace. for three, there was a really happy, elderly woman on the phone that found it of great import to yell at all times through her jitterbug cellular telephone. this upset me for a few reasons, but mostly i was perturbed at how rather content she was with life, flying in the face of my DMV-inspired demeanor. i kept thinking “did she just win the lottery?” and “oh did her nemesis finally get put into a nursing home?” and also, she was just too, too loud for modern technology. i honestly would have felt terrible for the person on the other end of the line had i not been in the DMV.

the thing is, all of these things alone i could handle with ease. maybe even two things would hardly cause a slight annoyance. but take the DMV and the fact that i was in those hellish, fluorescent walls, and that all 3 things were happening in a manner that seemed to compliment each others awesome power of my joy, i was unable to be happy until i found my balance outside starbucks with a really terrible new license picture, a venti iced coffee, and about 3 American Spirits.

oh, did i mention that the cabin i was at has no signal, nor does it have internet? that, and the fact that i’ve been working all week and going to the cabin, i haven’t been as connected as usual. and it has kind of blown. 

some spring break this is, i’m getting up EARLIER and staying up LATER than i normally am… how the hell am i supposed to make it through these next two months? 

well, it would help my if i get this job i’ve applied for. it’s in a coffee shop in downtown Rome and it very well could be my new paradise. i think i have a pretty good shot. 

it would also help if my parents choose to allow me to live off campus next year, because then i would be overjoyed. i could live on my own this summer and work at this coffee shop. 

these two things have to happen to get me through the rest of the semester. if they don’t, i’m sure i will. but i’ll be much less happy in the meantime. 

good night, tumblr. end rant. (TLDR, amiright?)

i’ve made a huge mistake.

as comical as this title sounds, this is an entirely different matter and with it comes heavy, heavy business. i follow with an account of my mistake not for any attention or response, but to get my thoughts in order before i return for my 2nd semester of college.

because i want to be a ‘good person’ and i want to so dearly avoid the pitfalls of my predecessors, i really want to understand why i do the negative things i do in my life. writing is my conduit, comprehension of my actions is what is contained with in, and i am the destination of this system. what you’re about to see is myself trying to take responsibility.

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Lana Del Rey - ‘blue jeans’

“sultry” … “coquettish” … “old-school hollywood glamor” 

pitchfork has done an excellent job pinpointing an artist’s identifiers. such flavorful, mostly useless words; no matter how relevant. i have a rather strong opinion of pitchfork some days. today is not a day for pitchfork related rants.

Lana Del Rey is an artist that has recently come to my attention as a blog obsession. i discovered her, like most things, through hype machine - one of my favorite music discovery tools, and websites in general.

photo courtesy of Lana Del Rey’s facebook page.

the first thing many people say about Lana is her intense, strange beauty. at 24, she carries the grace of a “gangster Nancy Sinatra” (i can’t take credit for that. MTV, i’m looking at you) in both her clothing and lyrics.

she has two songs out officially right now. her single, ‘video games’ is phenomenal as well, but i appreciate the b-side ‘blue jeans’ (featured above) far more. 

blue jeans is a lyrical masterpiece. it weaves a tapestry filled with the beginnings of a would-be love story and states a promise Lana is hoping to keep. she gains major points by mentioning James Dean, alluding to a badass-ness and the classic “blue jeans, white shirt” look that Dean so effortlessly pulled off. 

the song progresses to the chorus, when Lana promises her love, and how she’ll wait for him forever. the chorus interrupts the story, foreboding her love’s eventual journey into prison.

this assumption of incarceration is not unfounded. “chasing paper” “‘caught up in the game’”, obviously Lana’s love was trying to make an easy buck so that they could live a better life.

‘i told you i wanted more-but that’s not what i had in mind.’ at this point, Lana is essentially saying that she had always dreamed of the perfect life, with more money and all the bells and whistles, but when she had her James Dean, everything was perfect. 

Lana’s lover left her in an attempt to make her happy through material gain. his reckless quest for material gain eventually led to his downfall and prison. now, Lana croons about her promise to ‘wait a million years’.

personally, i’ve always placed importance on material things in both my life, and when looking at other people. it’s not always the right thing to do (in fact, it rarely is), and ‘Blue Jeans’ would definitely suggest that Lana endorses a simple, love-filled lifestyle rather than a glamorously excessive one. i would have to agree.

Source: SoundCloud / pillowjungle

i want an island, part 3

i’ve been proclaiming about how i want some isolation on a peaceful island somewhere.

today i went to the library to check out the Hunger Games, but it wasn’t available (of fucking course). so i got to thinking about what else i could read…

then my mind stumbled onto an excellent idea:

why don’t i read something that has some sort of relevance to my own plight?

20 minutes later, i was walking outside the library holding an incredibly old copy of Walden and Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau; but more specifically, Walden. I’ve read some excerpts before and did some light writing on the topic, so I generally know the point of the book. 

basically, Thoreau makes a bunch of observations about his time spent COMPLETELY alone by a pond in Massachusetts. 

essentially, Thoreau wanted what i want: a proverbial ‘island’.

island (n):

  1. nature.
  2. peace.
  3. being alone.

___________

i already spend much of my time self-consumed. basically, i am waiting to make an observation about myself depending on outside interaction because i’m trying to figure myself out. 

it’s a tiresome process and an island would take out the outside interaction, thus the constant introspection. i could get back to nature, aka my natural self.

but unfortunately, an island is just outside my grasp. i go to school. more specifically, i go to school in a bubble. this bubble is filled with people bouncing around, whispering gossip. their conversations flow around my head, inside this bubble and can be described as nothing more positive, more lovingly than just plain trite. 

because owning an island is not within my fiscal resources, i’m resorting to living vicariously through Thoreau. so, i’m reading Walden. i might not finish it. it might not have what i need. but i’m reading it.

woah, meta.

       this is me blogging about my blog.

i really just want to say that i’m incredibly happy with this blog and how it has evolved over the past year. i also love my followers. currently, my follower base is mostly made-up of close friends, newer college friends, and your average tumblr folk that I’ve never met but if I did, we’d be instant friends. hopefully as a write more and more original material, i’ll gain a legitimate following - one day maybe outside the tumblr follow ecosystem. that is tumblr nirvana. 

it has shifted from a ‘reblog everything that lolz you’ to ‘this is personal’. 

this has come about for a few reasons.

first of all, i stumbled upon a sudden, rash, unexplainable maturity. through this scope of maturity, i found that blogging can be whatever i’d like it to be and this can and will change on a post-by-post basis. readers might think my posts are just ‘simple bitching’ but this is my blog and it’s only bitching if i say it is.

second of all, i learned how to write properly. rather, i learned how to properly examine and analyze things and put those examinations into sentence form. it really isn’t that big of a deal and for the life of me i am unable to figure out why i thought this was so hard.

third of all, college is an experience worth writing about. before college, my life was filled with absofuckinglutely nothing. how does one write about nothing? i am currently traveling in an exciting part of my life, and so chronicling it is incredibly easy.

        directions.

where would i like this blog to go? i’d really like to start reviewing music, or at least discussing individual songs in relation to my life and the meaning that jumps out at me.

i’d like to expand my writing past ‘bitchy’ posts.

i’d like to expand my photography past my measly iphone 4 (disclaimer: the best camera is the one you have with you) with legitimately beautiful photographs using professional equipment - more of this will come next semester as i begin my photography class. i am incredibly excited that i get to be creative again. i’m going to have flashbacks from yearbook in which i was that guy who knew almost as much, or more than the teacher - at least with post-shoot production. 

there. i’ve just posted about posting. have a good monday, tumblr.

in the goal of over-sharing every detail of my mundane life

i’ve been busy you guys. last wednesday, i moved into Berry College.

this is important because this is my first foray into the world sans parents.

but you’ve heard that before.

anyways, i would say i am handling things pretty well so far. today is my first day of classes and i am somewhat excited. i hope they are interesting. 

saturday night was the best time i’ve had in a long, long time and all i got was season 2 of laguna beach and this crummy georgia state t-shirt.

just kidding, its one of my favorite shirts now.

saturday night involved jim beam, marta, piedmont, mcdonalds, more jim beam, the movie Metropolitan (my favorite), sleeping in the floor on a pile of blankets, and starbucks the next morning. 

l fucking loved it.

and now it’s back to the harsh reality of school, living in rome, that i’m over an hour away from him PLUS all of the great things about saturday night. 

but it’s okay because i’m determined to enjoy every minute of every day of college.

anyways, not that you read all of that, i hope everyone has an excellent first day of classes or the first day of the rest of your life, be that as it may

in the dark, comfortable midst of familiarity

there’s light right in front of me.

“now our lives are changing fast. hope that something pure can last”

the song of transition emanates all around me

“we used to wait. we used to waste hours just walking around”

without fail these words bring tears to my eyes.

i can’t help it. we really did used to wait.

all the “wasted hours” at Starbucks.

we used to wait for the times we are about to have.

we used to wait, anticipate what is about to happen to us.

we used to hate where we were and our circumstances.

but now that those times are leaving us, we want it back.

we want the anticipation.

we want our unfavorable circumstances.

we want those things for one very simple reason.

it’s all we have ever known.

those things that kept our minds hostage for so long are now leaving

we are afflicted by a strange version of stockholm syndrome.

everything we wished we could change for so long finally changes

and all we want is everything to stay the same.

it’s just a twisted form of nostalgia.

we want the familiarity.

but we need to let go.

we have to let go.

like a plant growing beside a wall,

when the wall is knocked down,

the plant is forced to the ground,

but the wall is the only thing missing.

all the other conditions remain and we’ll keep growing.

we’ll keeping growing in all directions

because that well known wall is broken.

it kept us safe and gave us support,

but it limited us.

and i’ve got one life that i refuse to limit.