Didn't even know I needed it.

See that girl there? I'm in love with her. She has single-handedly salvaged an entire year of uncertainty, sadness and estrangement. She is my best friend. I want to tell her nice things all the time. I want to tell her about stupid shit I find in gas stations (See this? See how funny? I love you I love you.)

Nothing about it is work. In fact, it's the easiest thing in the world. It's easier than brushing your teeth, or watching firecrackers, or drinking beer under the burning wheel of the sun.

I admire her. She's everything I love about people, but she's nothing like people. She's something else entirely. Never before have I encountered such kindness, sincere compassion, intelligence, humor and impossible beauty. That sounds like hyperbole, but it's true: her beauty, in all its manifestations, truly seems impossible. There's no way to adequately describe this -- you just have to be there, inches away from the soft globes of her blue eyes, unable to stop kissing her, knowing you wouldn't stop if you could, barely hearing yourself - if you're even speaking - I love you I love you I love you.

Don't let our youth go to waste.

I really don't know how I've managed to corral such good karma, but I must be doing something right. After three days of working at Voertman's, after the post-hiring discovery that I was merely a "temporary employee" brought on for the back-to-school rush, I got a phone call from an unknown number. I rarely answer my phone when I get calls from people I like, let alone numbers I don't even recognize; but, for some reason, I answered this one. It was the manager of Art Six, a local coffee bar in Denton, and he was offering me a job.

I'd turned in my resume almost a month prior and had, by that point, put the entire prospect out of my head. I never get my hopes up if I can help it. The universe really came through on this one, and it didn't do such a bad job when I fell in love with the job and the people (or when I passed the excruciatingly nerve-racking efficiency test and was officially brought into the fold.)

But, still.

I've got this job that most would kill for. I'm going to school at UNT, my self-described dream university, and I'm living in Denton. This is the life I was pining for not six months ago. Why do I still feel like half a person? And, almost more importantly, why am I not surprised?

Even on those bitterly cold nights driving through central Oklahoma, swooning over "It's Gonna Take an Airplane" and imagining the indescribable bliss of getting the hell out of Dodge, I knew the move would fix nothing. I even halfway knew I would immediately begin the process of romanticising Ada. I knew I'd miss the simplicity, the comfort of being surrounded by nothing. I knew I'd grow quickly calloused, unamused by and completely over the cold pretentiousness of the fleeting music snobs and intellectuals. But I still did it.

Was it to prove to myself that I could be spontaneous? That I, like so many others, had the courage to flop awkwardly into the deep end with no regard for anything but the act of it? For the sake of my own mental health, I wish I could answer this question. I have no idea why I'm here, and I've never felt farther from home.

It was lonely awake on the bus.

[Work in Progress]

"I Can Hear Them Now, Even Here"

Tuesday, out of eggs; a trip to the grocery store, dodging awkward glances. I hear them when I crack one brown egg on the side of the counter, and I hear them when I'm whisking the egg in a glass bowl. TV's too loud. Turn it off altogether, it's making me feel stupid. It's evening, almost fall. I hear them when the thunder claps over the apartment. Forecast said rain, but until now I've seen no evidence of it.

A time before, though. This time before I was on the bus to Dallas. Some buddies of mine and me went on the bus together, a dollar two ways. We drank at the bars and met (but did not sleep with) many women. It was nothing unusual. The seats on the bus were nice, like airplane seats. The two other guys, my friends, slept through the ride home. The dusk looked like a bruise. We had a pretty good time, and I halfway wished those two guys would wake up and talk to me. It was lonely awake on the bus. It was not really that unusual. But driving through Dallas dusk! That's the thing.

I can hear them now, even here. I can hear the violin. There's a sudden collapse of the memory, an implosion of nostalgia that grabs the shoulders, and I can even hear the baby laughing. I can almost be right there, where I was on so many soldiering nights of my youth, smoking a cigarette on the apartment steps. Faint saw at first, then a quick beautiful swipe. Then it starts, the music.

I heard this poem once: "Why is fortune so capricious? / Why is joy so quickly done? / Why did you leave me? / Why have you gone?" And I think it's mostly true. When I hear the wild ducks leaving the pond where I am now, I think it's true. There's a place I'm going to one day. A violin swells in my brain and I know it's true. I don't claim to understand poetry, but I can recognize it when I hear it.

I stretch up and out against the kitchen wall. Shower's running, but it's too late. Ear against plaster, I stretch my fingers out across it and I know they're there. God, I can hear it as if I were in their room! And I can almost see them, the way music makes us almost see things. I have seen all of this before: an older Asian man, he's playing that violin to his child, a baby. His wife is making breakfast for dinner. Shower's on and I lower my head slow. I've played the stock market and I know about a gamble, but if there's something ever missing in the world it's men with families, playing violins to their children.

And sometimes I think of that poem even when I don't hear them, when I'm not even thinking about them. Every word turns over and shows me itself from every angle, and it's just got to be true. I know it's true when I wake before the sun's up, scared; when I'm alone in the supermarket, collar up against the cold; at home where it's so quiet I can hear a book sliding from its sleeve; when there's a paper headline I find interesting -- "YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN TEA AT HOME" -- and I put it in a box. (I'll eventually do something with all of them, but I haven't decided what.) There are things you just know, but there are people in the world we can never know, and it's mostly a shame that it's our only life.

Can a Search Engine Really Save the Planet?

I originally posted this as a MySpace bulletin. Rupert Murdoch (probably) doesn't own BlogSpot.com

ONCE YOU GO BLACK
by Jezy Gray

Pardoning the fact that everyone reading this is currently logged into a website owned by Rupert Murdoch, Fox News mogul whose cut-throat conservative ambition and Reaganbating economic ideology has propelled him into the ownership of more companies and subsidiaries of companies than either you or I could imagine, I'd like to think that we're all somewhat interested -- however passively -- in helping the environment.

That's why I was especially interested in Blackle.com.

Basically, it's Google, only black. Get it?

Thing is, the founders of Blackle claim [according to this report] that using the site as an alternative to Google would save 750 mega-watt hours a year. Apparently, different display colors consume different amounts of energy; so, it makes sense that a predominantly black display screen would use less energy than Google's white.

Of course, Google says this isn't true. And who wouldn't? It's not like Google can just go changing its trademark look, throwing into a panic the throngs of internet-savvy Americans on an e-quest for stills from R. Kelley's "Locked in the Closet, pt. II."

But, still, they seem to have a pretty good track record as far as progressive matters are concerned. According to The Wall Street Journal Online, sites like Blackle could actually increase the amount of energy used by computer monitors.

Then again, who is (as of this month) the proud new owner of The Wall Street Journal?

If you guessed Rupert Murdoch, give yourself five points.

However, Techlogg.com -- an independent site which chronicles technological news and breakthroughs -- seems to support these claims. They say that Blackle's figures, while not completely wrong, only apply to CRT monitors and not LCD monitors (of which 75% of the PC market is apparently composed.)

Now, I'm an English major. I can turn my computer on, and that's about it. I have no idea what CRT and LCD mean -- but if these percentages and their power testing results are correct, it seems to be something we might want to take into consideration.

Here is an article which factors in such variables as monitor type; and, while the results aren't quite as drastic as the initial figures on Blackle's website, it still reports a decrease in energy usage when switching from a white to black screen and claims that "in no case did any of the LCD monitors use more energy displaying black than white."

So, decide for yourselves.

As for me, I really don't know. It looks like too many hands are tied up with Google and it's WSJ-conducted research. Still, there seems to be some unbiased research validating their claims. Then there's some unbiased research debunking those claims.

Long story short: I wish I were better at science.

If I lose you in the streets, if I lose you in the streets, if I lose you.

"On Moving"

Make coffee on the first morning. Start the pot before you shower (and you should shower on the first morning); then you'll taste the smoky black heat as a clean, new person ready to go be alive in the world. It's coffee from home, and that's important. You'll have the rest of your new life to experiment. Make coffee from home on the first morning.

Take it with a cigarette on the porch. Familiarize yourself with this new routine, this new porch. The birds sound different, the scattering squirrels more domesticated, but don't be alarmed. These are the fixtures of your mornings now. The pony-tailed pool boy (did I mention your new mornings include a view of the pool?) fishes something from the water with a large net. Wave to him, offer a cigarette. He doesn't smoke, and why should he? There's work to be done, a big normal day ahead of him, and you're just here learning how to wake up somewhere new.

Drop the cigarette, your last of a mauled pack of Parliaments, into the Wendy's cup. Swirl it around with the other butts (cigarette bones, Dad used to call them) until you hear the death rattle hiss. Excellent. Don't rush back inside just yet. Enjoy the rest of your coffee. Don't be intimidated. This is your morning, too.

The time will come, after the morning news but before it's too hot to consider venturing out, when you'll need to go exist in your new city. Make a good mix: a few old favorites for familiarity, a few songs you've been meaning to hear properly -- something lively, exciting, forward-looking. Drive somewhere. Get turned around in the tapestry of street signs you haven't yet memorized. These songs sound good in this new context, different. They're different songs now. Pass people who know where they're going.

Your old boss, a prickled European who grew up without cartoons but has a good head on his shoulders all the same, calls to see how you're adjusting. Ignore this. Call him back later. Eventually you'll figure out how to live in both worlds, but not now.

Things are excellent, excellent, excellent.

Use this time to iron out the details of your romanticized vision of this new life. You can map out six years in twenty minutes, because you know none of this will pan out the way you imagine. Think about school, about being a name in the department. Think about the people who will hate your fiction. Think about how they are douche bags. Think of early morning bike rides to the University. What is fall like here?

Sex! Don't forget to think about the great sex you'll be having. Think about those early morning glasses of water, the exhaustion and laughter. Think about the girl you'll meet who loves Carver, then think about reading Carver in bed with her. She's never read Will You Please Be Quiet Please?, which you think is absurd and tell her so. But you've never read Furious Seasons -- so, there's that. You'll read memorable passages aloud to each other, the same passages the other has long since committed to memory. [I laid back my arm and I hollered, "Now!" I threw that son of a bitch as far as I could throw it. "I don't know," I heard him shout. "I don't do motion shots." "Again!" I screamed, and took up another rock.] You'll be reading to each other, basically.

But these things -- the school, transitional seasons, the girl -- these things are specters, phantoms. Hyper-reality, you read about that in Gravity's Rainbow and inwardly congratulated yourself for retaining it. Maybe that's what it is. But still, it's all there somewhere -- all waiting, like you, to wake up and be alive in a different place

You did the right thing when you put that skylight in.

It's 1:42 A.M., and I can't sleep. I told myself I was going to bed at a decent hour tonight, I even took two Tylenol P.M. for the occasion, but after reading a few chapters from The End of the Affair and turning out the lamp for what I had anticipated as a lengthy and dreamless slumber -- even after clearly hearing the pre-sleep voices, those snippets of conversation and backdrop noise you collect and carry with you throughout the day -- I found my brain not so willing to cooperate.

Does my dad know that I moved? and Will I like my new job? and Did I behave too pompously at the party last night? and so on, forever and ever.

So, here's the shit: I live in Denton now, and I can honestly say that it has been the most surreal experience of my adult life. I'm memorizing new street names, shortcuts and alleyways, new restaurants, new friends, new acquaintances, new awkward once-bed partners and the like. I've got a great place, alone, right next to campus. I have cable and an ivy named Simone de Beauvoir (but she'll answer to Sugar Tits.)

I wish I were half as clever as I think I am.

But I digress: it's been nice, living in Texas. I had my doubts, but -- though I can't say in honesty that they've all vanished completely -- I think that, for the most part anyway, I made a pretty good decision. I got a phone call today from Voerterman's, the college textbook outlet, and they want me to come in Monday at 3:00 for an interview and training session for my first day. I think that really sped up my adjustment process. Before a job was on the horizon, I felt miserable and pathetic and stupid. Yes, yes, that's a bit dramatic. But it's true. Now, though, I feel like I'm finally getting my shit together. I'm enrolled for the fall semester (which begins on the 27th) and, as of Monday, I will once again be a contributing member of America's workforce.

This is off topic, but I just had a conversation with someone and felt it worth mentioning. We won't get into the specifics of the person in question (our history is an exhausting and partly embarrassing one) but here's the part of the aforementioned exchange worth mentioning:

She says, "Have you been writing lately."
I say, "Nothing worth talking about, really."
Then I say, "How about you?" even though, honestly, I don't care.
Then she says, "Yeah, but -- I'm not sure what you'd call it."

Tip: don't do that. It makes you sound unbearably pretentious; and, being an unbearably pretentious person, I have no patience for it. I have to live with my own sense of self importance, spare me yours.

"So," I want to tell her, "let me get this straight." Here is where I would take my glasses off, sit them on the table without folding them and rub my eyes with my middle finger and thumb. "You're telling me that, at the ripe old age of 22, your ability as a writer transcends the confines of genre, of basic classification?" I want to tell her to save the both of us the energy it would take to conversationally kiss her ass, and just get to the meat of the thing: Aren't I interesting? My personality, my intellect, it's -- like -- well, I'm not exactly sure what you'd call it!

Jesus. Am I this grumpy all the time? I like to think not. If I had to locate the heart of my cynicism, I'd say that it has something to do with last night's showing of David Lynch's neo-noir masterpiece, Inland Empire. My friend Matt (with whom I originally saw it in the theatre. Oh, and David Lynch was fucking in the room with us!) put it on at his house, making use of a projector and a wonderful stadium-seating couch set up.

It went wonderfully. Everyone passed pipes and bottles of hooch. People shrieked and laughed and shouted "What the fuck!" at all the right moments. But when it was over and everyone convened on the back porch for discussion -- and I don't know if this was the bottle of wine and generous tokes of hash talking -- I found myself saying the type of shit that I would internally berate anyone else for uttering: "It's post-modernism, for me. Plain and simple. So self referential, aggressively aware of its medium." I listened to myself dominating the conversation, steering it and molding it to what I had been wanting to talk about throughout the entire film. "It's an exploration of the sub conscience, which -- in the context of the movie -- has a lot more to do with Jung's collective unconscious. I mean, we're literally watching a woman explore the dormant parts of her consciousness and find that its a tapestry of indistinguishable thread, each narrative so different and similar to the last, which passes through every living human."

When did I become this person? Almost overnight I seem to have become insufferably masturbatory. I name dropped Eliot, for Christ's sake!

Am I genuinely interested in the life of the mind? Absolutely. Still, though, I'm quite aware that a large part of me just wants to sound smart, to sound interesting. It's a self defense mechanism, definitely. But that still doesn't make it any less pathetic. It's not really pretense, since I don't have any real delusions regarding my intellect. I'm quite aware of my limitations, of the same arguments and ideas that I regurgitate at will in order to blow up the conversation and rebuild it in my image. Maybe that's going to be my life in Denton, constantly trying to prove myself in a city that prides itself on being of the arts, of being an academic sanctuary for those of us still interested in thought's loftier pursuits. But I'm here. I'm mostly having fun.

I'd try to describe exactly what it is, this feeling, but I'm not really sure what you'd call it.

- Jezy

I know I'll make it back one of these days and turn on your T.V. to watch a man with a face like mine being chased down a busy street.

Last night was possibly the most bittersweet time of my collegiate career. Nick and I threw the last party -- the very last party -- that we will ever throw in Ada. Maybe the last party he or I will ever throw in Oklahoma, even. Every time someone retired home for the evening, I couldn't help but wonder if I would see him or her again; and, while that isn't the most depressing thing to wonder about, it makes me pretty damn blue.

But the word "bittersweet" implies an upside, and the upside is that I'll be moving to Texas in less than two weeks. I just got a place in Denton last weekend -- a one bedroom apartment on Eagle Dr., right off campus, three minutes from downtown -- and I move in on June 1st.

"Thrilling" isn't the right word; it's much scarier than that. I'm possibly the most neurotic, self-conscious human being on the face of the planet. I make Woody Allen look like The Fonz, and I'm moving to a place that exudes nonchalant coolness. I'm going to be trying to assimilate into a group of clear-faced hipsters who love my favorite records more than I do, have read all the books that intimidate me, cook better than I cook, have better sex (obviously),
and would laugh at the way I fold clothes or use the dishwasher.

Of course, I know this is ridiculous. I already have a couple friends down there. I'll fit in fine. Not only that, but I'll be living in Denton. I'll be going to UNT, where I can get a concentration in Creative Writing. I'll go to a real university! I'll live mere blocks away from the best venues, the used bookstore, an exciting and pulsating city!

I lied when I said "thrilling" wasn't the right word.

Thrilling!
Thrilling!
Thrilling!

We watch her fall over and lay down, shouting the poetic truths of high school journal keepers.

Two more weeks!

Yes, just two more weeks left of this semester. Two more weeks of papers, reading assignments, and -- of course -- finals. Two more Red Bull chugging, hair pulling, chronically nauseating weeks.

I don't know what I should find more astonishing, the fact that the semester has gone by so quickly, or the fact that I've (thusfar) made it through without performing a self-inflicted lobotomy and/or hitting the crack pipe.

It has been hard to focus on school for the past few weeks because I'm so excited.

Here's why I'm excited: Larissa's coming!

It's been a long time coming and, after a few botched visitation plans and one concieved trip gone horribly awry, it's finally here. She is flying into OKC on the 27th. Period. No bullshit. It's final. It's frightening.

I only say it's frightening because I worry that she'll be bored -- not just here, in Oklahoma, but with me. I'm afraid that spending a week with me, sleeping on my floorbound queen-sized matress and reading back issues of The New Yorker all day while I work at the espresso bar isn't as romantic as it sounds. But I don't know.

I don't really feel like writing, I just wanted to have something to document this wonderfully exciting time in my life.

- Jezy