senior programmer

Of the last 30 hours, i've spent 10 in movie theatres, 4 in bed, 2 skiing, 8 in parking lots and idling cars waiting to park to go sit in the theatre, and the other 6 probably eating and in the bathroom. and i havent been repeatedly impressed for this long in a long time. outside of the bathroom. it certainly isnt the kenneth cole sundance fleeces or the pink ugg boots, or the gucci sunglasses inside the tennis courts-cum-screening room. to the surprise of the beautiful people. it is the rebound of originality in the same story, or the story of boredom that's finally okay to tell. it is people you know nothing about, would never know, waking you up to the ones you do know, who aren't so different, even if they are. it is amazing to sit in the dark and get lighter. sometimes with the weight of other people's darkness, other times with the strength of their denial.

Of the last 30 days, i've spent 10 in the fog-socked pocket of liberalism fighting for breath in a mormon state. the other 20 i've spent in the smog-socked pocket of liberalism fighting for recognition as a real state of mind. there is nothing stronger there than denial. in the sunrise serenades of the half-Cherokee man who sits on the green bench and tells people he is Johnny Cash. in the fierce stare of guy who wears two pairs of glasses and plays Iron Maiden on the violin and says there is nowhere else in the world he'd rather be. in the step of the leather-clad KidRock wannabe who breaks into dance in the middle of the street. in the teenaged kid carting his duvet around his shoulders like a cape. there is nothing stranger than their denial. except when they become your reality, their waste becomes your measure of time. their mental disintegration your countdown to the next season.

The last movie i saw put kids in a bad place and made them try to communicate, and they couldnt. the only thing they could say is that they wanted out. one of them did anyway. and he left at the cost of all others. and it made me think about the fact that i have grown up in the place that everyone wants "out" to. and i now live in a place that is inhabited by the ones that made it out. that found their out from the heat of people and the shade of money, and because of that, it is nothing. it is denial: sunny, and crisp, but full of people and their money. it's all about the very things they've come to escape.

when you live in this world that everyone escapes to, do you live? or do you have to want out of something, do you have to feel an intense longing for a future, to know you're alive? it seems so, in that same way that you dont know what happy is until you are sad. life is the future. do you die when anticipation does? do you become a bum and sing johnny cash to the sun? maybe. i know a few guys who do. and i'm watching them die.