Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Things

Yeesh, the blogging interfacey thing's all different now. My inspiration can't keep up with technology, apparently. This is a burgeoning problem for three-sentences-per-year-of-my-own-accord type guys like me. And it's been even longer since my last horror story thing. Oh well. Society's loss.

Here are the haps now: two semesters after this summer left of undergrad, so a year left in SGF (that's what folks down in el centro call Springfield), which I've taken a new appreciation of since losing my wheels and taking to the streets hobo-style. I walk six miles a day, to and fro my Spanish summer class. There really is a niceness to walking through the residential parts of the city, especially early in the morning and especially if you don't mind the inexplicable "Fuck you!"'s some people feel inclined to shout at you with a really unreasonable-seeming anger. I've seen a bunch of gorgeous flowers thick with biology dangling from a large kind of tree I've never seen before. I've appreciated as never before the miracle-affirmingness of a breeze on a blistering afternoon. I've established--weirdly--a stronger sense of my personal identity than I've ever had before, and it all has to do with some sort of dynamic in being a slow-moving human being in a realm of faceless, ridiculously fast machines. This new-refound identity I think has a lot to do with rekindling my fantasies of vagabonding: in the next couple years, barring dramatic and unfortunate life changes, I'm gonna hit the road on a motorcycle into South America, and I'm not going to stop til I hit Cape Horn. (That's Cape Horn, not gay porn. Not phonetically emphasizing this distinction is a fun conversation starter.) Ireland, too, in the near future. Simplification is going to be the key to making this all happen: the realization that experience, and not material is the fundamental driving force of happiness, and a generator of psychic (meaning w/r/t/ the psyche) awareness established within me this idea, and it feels good to know that its almost certainly true. And I kind of have my car breaking down to thank for allowing me to realize all this. All of which being said, I can't wait to get the bitch back up and running.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

01/04/2012

First post of the New Year, less than a couple weeks out from starting the new semester (my third-to-last as an undergrad) and actually doing some writing. Revising my story written in class last semester, then submitting it to a few hopefuls, then I'm planning on trying out a couple ideas that've been fermenting in my head for the last few months. For the first time in a long time, I'm looking forward to the future.

Part of it has to do with acclimating more or less to Springfield; a personal (not New Year's) resolution to try and be a tad more social (read: go outside a couple times a week, and not just for work); waking up on January 1st in an amazing mood (it's gotta mean something, right? I all but hopped out of bed, made a huge breakfast, opened the blinds, listened to joyful music, and I even had to work that day. Weird.); and discovering that my ex is happy with someone else. Maybe I can begin to move on a little more smoothly now.

This Summer I'm planning on hitting the road for a week. Either heading to L.A. to see a dear friend or up to Duluth to spend a few days by myself in somewhere I've never been. I'm going to attempt some songs.

This Fall I'm submitting apps to as many grad schools, in as many places, as possible. Iowa, Florida, Oregon, New York, New York again, North Carolina, Montana, California. So many possibilities. I feel like I'm actually getting somewhere in my life. Maybe it's an illusion, but I'll take the placebo.

I've been reading more and more in depth than I've been able to in a while. Bee tee dubs, I strongly recommend Francine Prose's Reading Like A Writer, John Jeremiah Sullivan's Pulphead, and Bolano's The Savage Detectives. 


This year, I'm also hoping to start an online (and maybe eventually print) literary/arts journal with Jerika.

Off to lunch, then to continue writing. Better, more in-depth blog soon.


Here's hoping this isn't one of those phases:

Much love, Matthew