INTER NO. 14

2011-08-10T14:30:00.002-04:00

i don't think tao lin is using his "interns" from back in 2008 anymore - at least, not that i've seen on his blog or anything. don't think they're even linked to anymore.

regardless, i let this blog slide for too long to come back to it now. the layout is kinda terrible too. so i have a new blog called wasted potential . hopefully i will nurture this one better than inter no. 14. hopefully i will nurture it better than the orchid in my office, which is dying right next to me as i type this out. hopefully i will nurture it better than the way i was living last year. hopefully, i will nurture it better than the relationships i've had and cared about and yet let wither and die.

dead birds

2008-06-18T23:16:00.002-04:00

its been too long and i can't say anything because whatever i say you guys will think its because my mouse died, simply because that's the last post. now i just need to post enough to push that down to the second page, etc. etc.

this is something i wrote today:

one day while i was walking down long lonely laconia avenue

i saw a pigeon get run over in the middle of the street

but slowly, in several clearly distinguished stages:

first the pigeon, deluded by the lack of cars, charges

into the middle of the two-lane one-way street.

second, the light changes and cars descend as the pigeon is in the center of the street.

the pigeon backpedals furiously at the approach of the first car and manages to do it fast enough

to walk straight into the next lane.
a second or two later another car comes and the bird,
perhaps startled or already wounded by circumstance
doesn't fly away like he should have the whole time.
he tries to hide between the wheels of a yellow taxi and maybe i looked away for a split second

but it looked like that pigeon got hit straight in its head and

the elegant curve of its neck was shattered.
i've seen some other pigeons die and when they get run over for real you can hear an impossible pop as their sweet life pours out of their shattered lungs.
this one just lay there, shaking,
unable to escape.
a few more cars came until the corpse flattened into a dark grey ball of awful nothing.
all i could and can pop out of my mouth is:
i'm sorry.

i can't believe you actually

2008-04-26T21:16:00.002-04:00

RIP Horatio. i was only your co-owner for a month or so, but you were a great mouse. i'm sorry you died.

looking down at a sleeping woman

2008-03-21T01:35:00.001-04:00

there is no pleasure like pleasure

2008-03-15T23:32:00.002-04:00

the world's most perfect water would be something like your first kiss (mine, eager and yet humble, was on the now non-existent 9 train in the bronx)
and it would be something like reading a tree grows in brooklyn, but it probably wouldn't. the world's most perfect water is a spam e-mail i received just a minute ago. are the really such schemers in raleigh, north carolina? time to go

ghislain poirier

2008-03-14T20:06:00.003-04:00

have i really let four days go bye? whoosh. well. i write in my creative writing class and we have free writes every time so that is kind of like writing in my blog, for me. i'm not gonna post my free writes, but actually i'm going to post one of my stories from class on the world looks better in pink, maybe.

i think i have a strange sense of dark prophecy, as in, i see events that will later happen way before hand as dark possible choices that i don't want to take, and then they mysteriously happen. i don't know what to do other than become a writer. ha ha.

but what happened because of my weird prophesies has taken up my time even when i didn't have creative writing class anyway

"you have your own clock"

2008-03-10T18:46:00.004-04:00

i'm going to start posting on this obnoxiously frequently.

i am late for things and that was the theme of today. i am late for nearly everything, and when i do not come late but just barely on time i am coincidentally or accidentally made a tiny bit late. i am never early.
is there nothing i can do about this condition of my personality, or is there? i never know whether or not the self is something you can really change like that. obviously modern psychiatry is about to tell me (on friday, at three) that i probably can, but what about small little things like that which, you know, my dad is late for everything all the time, and so is everyone in his family. many of them set their clocks late - or early - in an attempt to make them conditionally on time for things by means of trickery. these attempts to trick the self by the self always amused me, like a dog trying to chase its tail would. but should i really be getting into that shit? is that what is going to make me not run into problems because i am always late for everything?

i don't want to say why i got into trouble for being late because right now i am ashamed of being late. this empty space inside of me existed and then someone, like my society and my parents, put this idea of "guilt" into that space. i learned this by watching them apply it to both others and myself. now i apply this idea to days like today where i was late for a meeting to beg to not fail a class for always being late and later the same day i was late to two other things - one noticed, one unnoticed.

more thoughts soon

intern

2008-03-10T01:13:00.004-04:00

an intern is just an idea, that's the whole point of being an intern. it's not a job or a trade or a craft or an art but a thought that someone once had. and so i will not be off-put by not being an official idea but an idea created by other means and then divorced of guidance and protection, even though sometimes i have done that in my life. because tao does not protect me by linking to my blogger page but rather by writing things that i read. and this is just one of those many things that tao writes that i read, and it provides me with something like all the rest, at the same time that for the first time tao is directly speaking to me in a rather precise way and not as the anonymous reader. this is interesting but also disarming. i want to go to sleep and dream about something else and then think about this feeling.

i want to do something for tao and for myself and for a few other people

my self my self my self over and over again

2008-03-01T22:49:00.002-05:00

sometimes i have days where i just fall through layer after layer of my own idiocy, just getting into worse and worse shit till the end. and my mind leads me through the wreck, cheering itself on! what am i thinking when i do this?

selfishly

i have destroyed all of my own ideas and plans recently, before they hatch, before they are even out of me. this is bad. how do i fix this?

2008-02-18T14:12:00.002-05:00

i've already lived to see the dreams and fantasies i had as a young adolescent wither and die in the face of a more mature understanding of myself and the world. several of my heroes have already become commercially successful and tepid, such as isaack brock . i used to not have an ipod because i wanted to listen to real CDs and support the artists i liked and read the album jackets. now i have an ipod. once i said i would never do drugs because i wanted to keep my mind pure. that was a joke.

2008-02-18T10:38:00.003-05:00

superdelegates have no place in the america i live in, the america of swirling morning mists and snow-covered trees. how could one tree have a bigger voice than another tree? every gust of wind is the same.

2008-02-17T23:42:00.001-05:00

the trick is grabbing hold of the mind at that crucial moment when it knows itself, when it sees what's up, and before the world or one's own insecurities rise up, to pounce! and kill that instinct. that instinct, those moments when you truly KNOW THYSELF are sometimes almost indistinguishable from those when you don't. who even cares about knowing thyself most of the time? but sometimes, maybe you just have this sneaking suspicion about yourself and the reasons why: you can't go to sleep at night/can't stop doing things you know are bad/just can't. don't you ever feel like you got it?

2008-01-26T21:31:00.000-05:00

the real world, oh the real world
the real world, oh yes the real world
the real world, oh my god the real world
the real world, oh dear lord how real our world is
the real world

hello? can anyone hear me?

2008-01-18T14:59:00.000-05:00

dear tao lin/his other interns,
how might i better serve tao/taoism in terms of my relationship to:
1) tao
2) his other interns
3) myself
4) humanity
5) animals, plants, the rest of the world
i would like to be helpful and disturb the world less often with my prickly fingers.
love,
-me

and that's that

2008-01-16T02:06:00.000-05:00

well sometimes we start out with the best intentions and then just forget about a thing, whether its benign or malign neglect.

i think this is the theory behind chipotles, ultimately. i've eaten there for the past two days, as well as other times in my life. they make delicious mexican food and they hang up all those signs in every chipotle about how healthy their meat is, and i'm sure the strict definition of everything they are saying is true. but we know that all they really do is assemble a solid but unassuming product which tastes good but looks ok and which is almost hot enough but not quite because they make it in giant batches and then leave it out only mildly heated so they can assemble all those countless burritos. and when they press your burrito wrap it gets warm but its not really toasty and then its all relatively expensive considering that you are getting such a industrial-revolution style product - that its just being churned out like that at chipotles everywhere. at least fast food is cheap, not that i'm saying fast food is good or bad. those burritos are always exactly the same in terms of pretty much everything wherever you get them. they could be better but to prevent some of them from being bad chipotle creates this unnatural uniformity of quality that is good but never great. this feels somehow fundamentally american in a way i feel treasonous and vulnerable if i put it into words.

this blog is gonna be about america

2008-01-10T22:34:00.000-05:00

i am tao lin's intern number fourteen and inter no. 14! my two new identities, sealed into black briefcases, have just arrived, complete with instructions from mr. tao lin.

my mind wonders: are they personalized? are we all meant to be the same because he wants us to be or because the human species is like that or will our differences flourish because of his design... or God's. whether a divine will or not, whether the stars still move over red hook, new york, or whether somehow they stopped, i can't write any more than this at present. who can really tell?