constant over stimulation numbs me

Yeah its like that.

This is here. Now and its for real. Finally.
Back to the drawing board, literally.

PS: I need to buy a bass amp or a thermin. But something needs to happen.

What a relief. This past month has drained me on so many levels.
Its been an emotional roller coaster and I am sure there is still a lot more twists and turns to come. More ups and more downs.
But I have never really been more re-leaved that a month has come to a close. My jacket is still wet from being in the raid so much last night. I hardly even felt the pass of time.
I suppose that has been a big problem of mine this year. Far more time slipped by then I was ever aware of. This entire year has just been on fast forward. I still constantly write the wrong date on almost everything in some cases as far back as January.

There was a lot more I was going to reflect on here but will have to come back too it. It is simply to cold not to be burrowed under my blankets.

Its been a while. If your reading this you may want to add:
myspace.com/vintagefuture or vintagefuture.wordpress.com/ which is still in the works but will be where I post the most, once I find the words.

Right now I am a photographer without a camera.
An artist with no energy.
Exploding night after night. Inside.
With no release.
Its been this way so long.
I am everyone elses muse.

I can't sleep. My headache is just unrelenting.

Some times the radio speaks to me. Tonight was one of those nights.
I had never heard this song before but it really struck a cord within me.
I can't properly explain it.



"And so there's a change...
In your emotions
And all of these memories come rushing
Like feral waves to your mind
Of the curl of your bodies
Like two perfect circles entwined
And you feel hopeless, and homeless
And lost in the haze"

"And it starts...
Sometime around midnight
Or at least that's when
You lose yourself
For a minute or two

As you stand...
Under the barlights
And the band plays some song
About forgetting yourself for a while"

I just woke up, later then I had planned. I was stuck inside a dream that needed to be lived out because I could not awake until it had run its course and I found myself once more alone in the state of Omaha. As i've written before the only dreams I ever seem to recall upon waking are the vivid life like ones that are almost haunting upon waking. In this dream strange as it was I was in touch with someone I once loved very deeply. Someone that was more of a fairy tale then anything else. Young naive love that could only be matched in fairytells... But for some reason she stayed in my heart for YEARS. I used to think we were soul mates but in this dream we were still writting back and fourth and I was living who knows where at this point...
The twist came when I would get to live another life for minutes or days depending on my when I wanted to jump lives again, the same soul, just another life. She knew who I was and I knew who I was but the out come was always the same it seemed. In some cases we would be head over heals and then it would just end. The details are fading...
I felt a need to write this because I feel stained from this dream and I wondered why I had it...
Why did this dream come to life.
And really, I feel that it was a real reflect from somewhere deep inside that I really need to let go of these foolish things that bind me in this state of mind. I can't let go of people, of places of memories but I never really appreciate what I have until it is gone. And I always regret, some times instantly and most often for years. Time seems to age my memories like a fine cheese. The attachments I used to have almost grow stronger then the attachments I actually have.
I want to look into another therapist and I want to make this something to work on because I really feel stuck all the time, caught between then, now and tomorrow. To the point where I feel so much time wasted. So many new connections, new adventures, new personal growths lacking or in most cases missed out entirely. There is something haunting me deep inside and a compulsion to always look back. Always....

I feel strange today.
I feel aware of the problem and I am trying to be conceous of it, to just be here, today. now.
But I do... I feel the complusion fighting. It is hard to explain. I've fought it before. I won for a few years but it toke a lot of time alone and the strength to be aware of myself and change my thought process if required.

I just feel haunted today. It is hard to express....
There was some amazing imagery and some amazing connections with someone who I never had any of thost shared connections with. It was so one sided and we are completely different people. A bliss of another kind, is something Tori Amos wrote that had always fit. It toke me half my life to finally see that most of what I had with this girl was in my head and hopes. And more often then not it was not shared. Yet tonight in a dream upon waking, for a short while it was lived out. Deeply in one life. Closely but again... The End always came. As if to say, it is not meant to be. Wake up. Face a new day. Move on.
Some part of me just wanted to keep sleeping.
It was taxing to toss off the blanket this morning.

But. Time is short in more ways then one but right now work is growing close and I need a quick shower. My heat is back on, so I can actually enjoy a shower!

This song has been locked inside my head since waking...

Today has been great. The weather was perfect. There was sun. I felt calm. I felt... here. I felt connected and alive. Confident walking down the city streets to the Green Bean. Time being what it was, I stopped at Dunks and called John The Cabby to give me a lift to work. John is really a great guy who works WAY too much. We have a deal. I call him when I need a cab for work and he takes me there for 10 dollars flat rate. Same with the return trips home. Plus... He is not crazy like all the other cab drivers in this little city.
Not even burning myself with coffee could ruin the simple feeling of just feeling HERE, today. The lid on my coffee was not on properly so as I was leaving to go wait outside for the cab the coffee lept out of the cup and drenched my jacket. Luckily it was thick enough my chest was not burned but my gloves are another story. My hands were burned instantly, I had to rip the gloves off my hands to just get the hot liquid off my skin. But my coffee cup was still half full.
So I got in the cab. Getting pissed over it just would have done nothing for no one, it is not like they can actually go back in time and not suck at their jobs.

Anyway. It was a good day. A dacent day... a long over due day.

I am getting sick.
Or better, it is hard to say since I first felt ill yesterday.

Right now it is just the music, Oolong and "The New York Four". It is strange to have a random store affect my thoughts but I see these patterns in my own life within the main character of this story. One minute in the right place and time she is cool and cofident. She glows. She just is there - connected. She is beautiful. And then she goes inside herself. Prefers text over face to face interaction. Her life starts to fall apart again. So far it is a great read but this is nothing on the same leveling of craft that Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly produced for Local. That story it made sense to be moved. To be affected. It is by far the best piece of graphic fiction that I have found in some time. Reading Local, was like reading Sandman for the first time. Everything shifted and much like when I found Sandman I know part of my love for these works is because it puts into proof that the stories, characters and worlds inside me swimming around not only can be told but are being told. They need to be told and now more then ever there is a market for it. The world is paying attension to stories that do not include capes.

I think this should be one of my last entries here. I rely too much on artificial means of communication. I long for those rare nights when I can go out, to a show, to a club or a bar...wherever and just be there. Maybe meet people. Maybe not. But just be there. I've lived in this house for three months now and I still feel as if I have not fully moved in. There is so many outlets in this city. So many creative niches. Most of the business' down town are privately ran. If I want something large and corprate like Target I need to head outside the city. I like that....

In an attempt to finish my train of thought though I remember a time when I never even had a cell phone. It was not until maybe five years I even bothered with them. That was probally the most impressive thing about meeting Harry - He actually toke it a step further and didn't even have a house phone line. Again, straying...

I've gone in circles and circles, the spiral growing longer with age... But I have these small enabling outlets that I need to get past. The internet is my main social outlet. The one place I am simply myself. Thinking about it while the water boiled it really does make sense. The one thing that always complicates things for me... is myself. I trip over myself. I get lost in throught. I sumble self conceously. I miss the moment. I think about siezing the day but every day passes, because I was thinking about siezing the day. Instead of just... doing it.
How many people have I met online?
How many would be lovers have I met face to face and just... froze. Spending days weeks and months getting to know them. Them getting to know me. Honestly. Openling. Only for them to meet a closed book because here, in text, I don't have to worry about people seeing me. I don't have to worry about my personal issues with myself. I can delete and edit instead of sumbling over my words. I never know what to say. But that is who I am. And the people that do love me know this. In some way it is amusing. It is not with vanity that I say that people do not doubt my intellect but people simply know that no matter what is going on in my head, however deep and profuse... it won't ever come out that way. Vocally.
It is just one of my quarks.
Yet day after day I feel foolish because I just can not communicate in a way that seems so easy for people.

There was a time I felt alive, free, beautiful, strong, secure and happy among a series of endlessly pleasing adjectives. Thinking of those times I realize now that I was out of my shell and it happened naturally. There was a catalyst. At first I wanted to be the person that Kelly said she saw inside me. I wanted to be the girl that Molly said she saw inside me. I wanted to be the person I heard so many people tell me was "in there". Fuel originally by Kelly breaking up with me. After a while I woke up and reminded myself that life was beautiful and so was I. And after a while the character became the actor. After months of this. Of forcing myself up and out... I was just alive.
I applied and got accepted to DCAD.
Months went by. I was in a car wreck on my birthday. Early in the morning, after a great night with friends at a club. The sun was coming up when we were all reunited and when night returned to us, we toasted life and all that jazz. It didn't slow us. Just reminded us how grateful we all were. I go back to this often because who I am now, the event would seem "one more thing".

I am really straying all over the place...

I need to take a step back.
I need to stop using text as a crutch to explain myself.
I need to get offline more often.

I need to connect with the world again.
Who I am now is again that person who doesn't say much because he is affraid to speak because he knows it will always come out wrong.
Affraid to move for fear of being discovered. Part of me doesn't want to heal. Part of me is comfortable with this old familiar mentality that some how over time I have sunk back into.
... But the other half that right now, I want.
I want so much.

I want to turn heads, but not to justify myself.
Not for looks.
But pressence.
That is who I used to be.
I used to be able to attract a crowd. I used to call people. I used to be alive, alert and active.

My fridge is dead. It just stopped working the other day.
I owe car insurance.
My car has no breaks.
I am constantly relying on Melissa to pick me up from work because there is no one else around and the bus does not go past six at night.
My job has me on edge all the time. Rather my manager.
No matter what I do it is never good enough.
Rent is due this week. I have enough but that is about all I have.
Utilities are past due because the mail has no been getting delievered.
I lost my mail key.
My landlord lost his master copy.
I have to buy a new mail slot.
Again money...
Everything is catching up to me. I love the location and the price is decent.
It is everything else.
The unforseen car issues.
The car insurance that mounted up.
Storage. The remainder of mine and melissa's stuff will no doubt just be auctioned off by the company if we don't come up with money we don't have...soon.

I finally got everything moved in. Or most of it.
Enough to start making this place feel like my house and not just some place I am swquating.
I am out of dish soap. I can't cash my check until after this Holiday.
I have been axneous since leaving work that my manager will just rip me a new asshole for either a) Not setting up enough signs for the 3 days sale or 2) setting up too many signs.
I swear he is bi-polar.
It is a three day event. I didn't smoother the store in signs even though they sent me enough signs to decorate the entire plazza/block.

I want to wash dishes.
Clean my fridge. My house is starting to smell.
I need a trash barrel. Though I will probally just put the bags on the curb...

Nothing is going right. I am trying to make this glass half full.
But today I just can't.

I have no idea what to do.
My lease is up at the end of December. Perhaps, I should just pack everything back up.
Head to my parents.
I don't want too.
But I am just tired.
I wanted to make this good. I wanted to do this right.
I just wish I could think of one thing that I am doing right currently.

I've had this song on repeat nearly all day...

I need a break. I've been cleaning and organizing all day.
There is just so much more stuff now. I should let a lot of it go. Do I really need to hold onto my old stickfigure comics? My old "Primal Comics" that I did in High School with Anthony or even later in life "Lunchbox Press"? I still have a folder of submissions from artists and writers that I was going to team up with for an Anthology of random work and self publish. There is still one story that I really wish I could have gotten off the ground with this writter and artist that would actually be even more relevant in todays society then when the story first came why way clear back in that time so lovely refered to as "Pre-911". The story is called "American Patriot" and the "hero" in question is anything but... at least at first. Or rather he is no more or less a patriot then your average "Joe The Plumber" (that term will always amuse me to no end) until our story opens. He plays a hero on the silver screen and through some well written turns in the road he ends up in a real life situation where he could be the Hero or run for his life. He runs. At first... Until he gets too that all too cliche cross roads and wonders... what does it take to be a real hero? Anyway. Its a great story that I've seen in print in different ways but the way this one piece was written was just very honest and human. And the artist had some real talent. The name Nine Stone Studios actually came from a Poem that he had written and let me read over while muling over a new name since Lunchbox Press was taken by another publisher. So anyway...

Do I need to hold onto these? I have crates full of drawings and half empty sketchbooks. I am very wierd with sketbooks. If too much time goes by, like say a year or two, I won't pick back up in the same sketchbook. Or if I feel my passion and art are going in a new direction that I just don't want it asscociated with my other volumes...

So I have atleast four or five half filled, if not that!, sketch books.

I organized my book case a bit and there are some books I will be parting ways with... Not alot but a few. A couple doubles and a few that I Just... don't care about. IE: the books I have on Wicca among other tops that just no longer matter to me. I am glad I read them and gained some more spiritual insight on another way of life but I am sorry to those praticing Wiccains reading this (which I think is a sum total of zero but...) I just don't believe it. Not in truth, only in essence.
I do however believe in magic but far more in the variety of Alan Moore's spin on it...

So there all that is.
I need dish soap!
And power towels. These dishes need some love. It is mostly coffee cups and martini glasses, I wonder if there is some possible commentary there?

So if I don't pick up the phone today - now you know why. Perhaps when the sun has gone all the way down I will get back in touch but for now I am locked in this hole trying to clean!! Again. This place was all set until I got the rest of my s tuff from Melissa's now its just a dive. I have too much stuff... it all needs to go.

I'd say sorry if she'd believe me.
I'd say so many things. But that just is not who we are anymore. Its been a long time since either of us recognized one another.

the sun is coming up.
this is my first real day off since I started this rush training.
Only six days until my store opens. It is very exciting and yet equally exhuasting.
Between painting, learning the POS system and the policies as well as loading and unloading well over 40+ boxes of comics and merch, on top of actually putting some elbow grease into the store before it opens....I am just exhausted.

But there was a lot of things I wanted to catch up on and people too.

The other day I was driving my Jeep and since I have no CD Player I kicked it old school and tried out a few of my old mixes. Some range as far back as a before High School but the most interesting ones are from my last few years of High School.

I heard Sisters of Mercy on one for the first time in ages and still the music did something to me and I found myself really enjoying this goth/industrail/black metal mix that I had made!

What the feeling means is beyond me and I would rather just leave that way.
It was a good drive.

But in other news, my store opens on the 9th. Come buy stuff so I can convince NEC to let me have a section for Indy/Local/Art related comics/publications. They already know that the "main stream/hero" stuff is not my strongest point as I've spent more years since High School with the more off beat comics. Though I always have a soft spot for different heroes... I am not completely current but giving myself a crash course in the past five years of story.

So there that is.

Rambling as the sun rises.
And I Fall.
To sleep.

(click the link to hear the entire song)

Mike Turned 30.
There was Karioke.
I drank two Pan Galatic Gargle Blasters.



... The Blackspot, has them for 8 dollars and yes. They do everything they claim too I only wish I saw this clip sooner as I was not a 30 ton Elephant Mega Elephant.
I couldn't see my face!

Details will emerge shortly.

I am putting some finishing touches on this years spring mix.
Unlike last year, I have an entire spindle to burn through and am really excited about this years mix. It feels more like the first one I did. More for myself...

The mix is actually two discs since I just had so many songs (namely because some tracks were just so good from the unreleased '07 mix that I wanted to put it on this years). The first disc is more the feel and energy I've been drawing on in the past few weeks and the overall vibe I long to get back into my soul. Its got some radio friendly songs but not as many as usual since I have been without a car for over a year now.

The other disc is an almost acoustic disc. I tried to make a hybrid of the two discs but too many great songs get cut. As is most of the acoustic-ish tracks got bumped off the main one. I long for excitement. I long to dance. The second disc is more the sort of thing I would listen to in spring at a bonfire on a Cape beach.

So there that is. They should be out in about a weeks time, so leave a private comment here w/ your address or email me if you are all interested in taking a listen.

what would it take to start a revolution?

That was a great night.
I forgot that the video was approved by YouTube the day after I had uploaded it but will have to save my commentary about how great the show was for later. This is just a clip from a great night!

"Death of Seasons"

A lot of the these posts have become Friends Only over the last year or two and I am not really sure I like that. I used to post here, to let it all out.
I never used to care who was reading it and over the course of recent years involving X-Girl Friends and even friends falling away I felt a need to know who was reading what....


In this new year I want to reserve this trend.
I want to stop abusing this journal to simply vent in.
I want to try avoid ranting late at night when I should simple be in bed because I almost always delete those enteries the next morning.

I want to feel honest again.

So I am going to be taking some time away from writting here till I feel a little more centered. A little more certain of myself.

In the mean time, Happy New Year!! I look forward to seeing what this trip around the sun offers for everyone!