Lit blog

[Tzara]

Sentiment

He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
—T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

I don't think of myself as being sentimental, despite the fact I cry in movies. But I was cleaning out my office today, tossing old software and books on programming Visual Basic 4 (whelp programmers would shriek prehistoric! at that) when I came across the package of a product called CDI/100.

Yeah, dopey name. What it is ("is" not "was" only because I probably have the last surviving copy of it and it would almost certainly still run on vintage hardware) is PC database software from 1984. Twenty-three years ago. The year of my goddaughter's birth. She's now doing brain chemistry research in college. My, my, how times do change.

Uh huh.

Anyway. I pulled this package off the shelf in my Software Closet and it was covered in, I don't know, maybe a quarter inch of dust. Some spider had died on its upper surface and was not only shriveled and dried up, the poor thing had half turned to dust.

It's been a while since I took this down.

Yet I am hesitant to throw the thing away. This seems really silly, since 1984 software has about the same relevance and gravitas as a powder blue leisure suit—i.e., none. Negative, even. I mean, my God, the thing's on 5.25 inch floppy disks!

Do you have a system that can read 5.25 floppy disks?

But, but but. But I wrote some of this software.

Me. Myself. Wrote it myself. Alone, with no help. Just me.

Wrote the documentation for it as well, though I think the tech writers may have mucked with that. Still....

The murk of sentiment stirs up around this box (which did, actually, have an attractive design—they spent quite a lot of money on that), obscuring the fact that this is, to be forthright about it, garbage. Complete effing landfill bait.

Yet I've held onto it for, what'd I say? Twenty-three years.

Sentiment. Must be. It's the only explanation.

So, fine. Now it's in the trash.

Reluctantly, though.

Reluctantly.

 

[DeepAsleep]

He passed the stages of his age and youth
Entering the whirlpool.
—T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land

I don't think of myself as being sentimental, despite the fact I cry in movies. But I was cleaning out my office today, tossing old software and books on programming Visual Basic 4 (whelp programmers would shriek prehistoric! at that) when I came across the package of a product called CDI/100.

Yeah, dopey name. What it is ("is" not "was" only because I probably have the last surviving copy of it and it would almost certainly still run on vintage hardware) is PC database software from 1984. Twenty-three years ago. The year of my goddaughter's birth. She's now doing brain chemistry research in college. My, my, how times do change.

Uh huh.

Anyway. I pulled this package off the shelf in my Software Closet and it was covered in, I don't know, maybe a quarter inch of dust. Some spider had died on its upper surface and was not only shriveled and dried up, the poor thing had half turned to dust.

It's been a while since I took this down.

Yet I am hesitant to throw the thing away. This seems really silly, since 1984 software has about the same relevance and gravitas as a powder blue leisure suit—i.e., none. Negative, even. I mean, my God, the thing's on 5.25 inch floppy disks!

Do you have a system that can read 5.25 floppy disks?

But, but but. But I wrote some of this software.

Me. Myself. Wrote it myself. Alone, with no help. Just me.

Wrote the documentation for it as well, though I think the tech writers may have mucked with that. Still....

The murk of sentiment stirs up around this box (which did, actually, have an attractive design—they spent quite a lot of money on that), obscuring the fact that this is, to be forthright about it, garbage. Complete effing landfill bait.

Yet I've held onto it for, what'd I say? Twenty-three years.

Sentiment. Must be. It's the only explanation.

So, fine. Now it's in the trash.

Reluctantly, though.

Reluctantly.

When people say that mathematics is not a language, I wish I could speak Arabic, but they wouldn't understand that, either.

Save your poem, idiot.

 

[Tzara]

When people say that mathematics is not a language, I wish I could speak Arabic, but they wouldn't understand that, either.

Save your poem, idiot.

Hey, youngster. You're kinda cute when you're intense. Which is like, all the time.

Let me quote from a disremembered Patti Smith recording: Some new art must disintegrate.

Trust me. It's okay.

Or are you the kind of kid who still has your junior high school annual? The one where, kited on those first exhilarating jolts of testosterone, you managed to wind up enough nerve to ask Kitty Kiley, head cheerleader, to write some misspelled, desultory note over the top of her out of focus picture?

If so, all I can say is this.

Yeah, yeah. My gen, not yours. That's the point.




Yes, that was a rave 'bout the bowling thing. I'm am unarticulate at times. Stop smoking. It's bad fer you.

 

[DeepAsleep]

Hey, youngster. You're kinda cute when you're intense. Which is like, all the time.

Let me quote from a disremembered Patti Smith recording: Some new art must disintegrate.

Trust me. It's okay.

Or are you the kind of kid who still has your junior high school annual? The one where, kited on those first exhilarating jolts of testosterone, you managed to wind up enough nerve to ask Kitty Kiley, head cheerleader, to write some misspelled, desultory note over the top of her out of focus picture?

If so, all I can say is this.

Yeah, yeah. My gen, not yours. That's the point.




Yes, that was a rave 'bout the bowling thing. I'm am unarticulate at times. Stop smoking. It's bad fer you.

Hey, geezer, you're cute when you're setting me down gently.

I didn't mean it in a cruel way - I'm sometimes brusque.



I never banged the head cheerleader, but I held her when she cried, in Word Processing I. Her name was Caitlin McMahon, and I don't think she signed my yearbook (though, as I had a dog with an affinity for chewing my shit up, I'll never be able to verify it.)...

I suppose I'd be inclined to hang on to something like your program because I own almost nothing, these days. The things I have are fiercely important to me, because they're what's left from whittling. A few pictures, some wooden beads, a small collection of coffee cups I never drink coffee out of, a couple knick-nacks, and an official metric fuckload of books. Bed, dresser, pot to piss in, and I'm out.

In any case, there's nothing wrong with holding on to memories - I don't imagine you're the type to take the wrong fork in that path. I guess the way you wrote about it offended something in me that I should have recognized as an intensely personal difference. Learning, learning, learning.

I say this, to your generation gap:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFlSy1TuRv4

 

[Tathagata]

I am in the process of going through about 32 years of collected stuff in preparation for an addition to my house.
All the attic shit ( including 800 vinyl albums) cartons of books, special bottles and clothes, concert posters etc etc all passed by me and said " Remember when you did this?, wore this? wrote this?
Remember when you were in that band?
Ultimately I threw all the albums out, everything I wrote in High School ( it was fucking embarrassing) all those cool clothes that would look stupid on me ( as though I'll ever be 160 pounds again unless I get cancer)
I just threw it all away.
I was telling someone about it and I said that all that stuff was a me that doesn't exist anymore.
I had held onto it all these years and never looked at it except when we were moving.
I didn't need it any more.
In my experience the older you get, the more you have to let go of, and it's hard.
But the less you grab at, or clutch at, the freer you become, little by little.
5 years ago I could have never thrown away half that stuff, now I simply look at it, recall the memory, and toss it is the box, I still have the memory, and if it some point I forget that...well that's ok too, just means I don't need it.

We all cling to things that remind us of good feelings or people we miss
things that we made when we were " in the zone" as though the creation is some how proof that for one minute we " got it" or " had it"
but the sad thing about " it" the harder you try and box it, the more it runs away.

Just my take, you'll know when it's time to save it and when it's time to give up the ghosts

 

[tungtied2u]

I am in the process of going through about 32 years of collected stuff in preparation for an addition to my house.
All the attic shit ( including 800 vinyl albums) cartons of books, special bottles and clothes, concert posters etc etc all passed by me and said " Remember when you did this?, wore this? wrote this?
Remember when you were in that band?
Ultimately I threw all the albums out, everything I wrote in High School ( it was fucking embarrassing) all those cool clothes that would look stupid on me ( as though I'll ever be 160 pounds again unless I get cancer)
I just threw it all away.
I was telling someone about it and I said that all that stuff was a me that doesn't exist anymore.
I had held onto it all these years and never looked at it except when we were moving.
I didn't need it any more.
In my experience the older you get, the more you have to let go of, and it's hard.
But the less you grab at, or clutch at, the freer you become, little by little.
5 years ago I could have never thrown away half that stuff, now I simply look at it, recall the memory, and toss it is the box, I still have the memory, and if it some point I forget that...well that's ok too, just means I don't need it.

We all cling to things that remind us of good feelings or people we miss
things that we made when we were " in the zone" as though the creation is some how proof that for one minute we " got it" or " had it"
but the sad thing about " it" the harder you try and box it, the more it runs away.

Just my take, you'll know when it's time to save it and when it's time to give up the ghosts

Funny you should mention this. Just minutes ago, I was contemplating going through the hundreds of old photos I have...not just of my past, but my parents.
I have not looked at them for years...
My only reticence in going through them is I know the tears will be streaming down my face from the memories they recall, and my daughter is here doing her college homework. She has been staying all week, trying to recover from a nasty cough/cold.
She already finds me sappy, so I don't need to reinforce that ( although I have taken great pleasure in trying to help her feel better).
Funny isn't it, how we are defined somewhat by the things we've accumulated and decide to hold onto, rather than what we are at the moment.
Frankly, I think it's about time to unload some baggage.

 

[Tathagata]

Funny isn't it, how we are defined somewhat by the things we've accumulated and decide to hold onto, rather than what we are at the moment.
Frankly, I think it's about time to unload some baggage.

Exactly
My wife's sister moved to Salisbury beach a few weeks ago and we helped her move.
I was all excited to see it because I hadn't been there in 20 odd years and I spent a lot of time up there being a crazy hooligan.

When I got there it was gone, all condos and malls, one or two things remained but I realized the Salisbury beach I knew had stopped existing years ago....just like the me who used to go there.

 

[Angeline]

Exactly
My wife's sister moved to Salisbury beach a few weeks ago and we helped her move.
I was all excited to see it because I hadn't been there in 20 odd years and I spent a lot of time up there being a crazy hooligan.

When I got there it was gone, all condos and malls, one or two things remained but I realized the Salisbury beach I knew had stopped existing years ago....just like the me who used to go there.

When I went back to my hometown this past summer, I couldn't wait to show ee the Little Italy neighborhood where I grew up. So old world, such interesting characters, such great restaurants. It's gone. Almost all of it.

The only way I'll get it back is to write about it.

 

[normal jean]

.................

 

[Tzara]

I am in the process of going through about 32 years of collected stuff in preparation for an addition to my house.
All the attic shit ( including 800 vinyl albums) cartons of books, special bottles and clothes, concert posters etc etc all passed by me and said " Remember when you did this?, wore this? wrote this?
Remember when you were in that band?
Ultimately I threw all the albums out, everything I wrote in High School ( it was fucking embarrassing) all those cool clothes that would look stupid on me ( as though I'll ever be 160 pounds again unless I get cancer)
I just threw it all away.
I was telling someone about it and I said that all that stuff was a me that doesn't exist anymore.
I had held onto it all these years and never looked at it except when we were moving.
I didn't need it any more.
In my experience the older you get, the more you have to let go of, and it's hard.
But the less you grab at, or clutch at, the freer you become, little by little.
5 years ago I could have never thrown away half that stuff, now I simply look at it, recall the memory, and toss it is the box, I still have the memory, and if it some point I forget that...well that's ok too, just means I don't need it.

We all cling to things that remind us of good feelings or people we miss
things that we made when we were " in the zone" as though the creation is some how proof that for one minute we " got it" or " had it"
but the sad thing about " it" the harder you try and box it, the more it runs away.

Just my take, you'll know when it's time to save it and when it's time to give up the ghosts

See? I can always rely on Mr. T. to drop 'round and say what I meant to say much more clearly and less combatively.

What he says here, above. Like, I meant that.





I still have my LPs. Is that bad?

 

[Tzara]

I suppose I'd be inclined to hang on to something like your program because I own almost nothing, these days. The things I have are fiercely important to me, because they're what's left from whittling. A few pictures, some wooden beads, a small collection of coffee cups I never drink coffee out of, a couple knick-nacks, and an official metric fuckload of books. Bed, dresser, pot to piss in, and I'm out.

Hey, kid. Don't know your age, but can guess you're maybe about the age I was when I left for LA and grad school. Packed my entire life belongings into a 1978 VW Scirocco (think a slightly longer but narrower Mini Cooper) and pointed it down Interstate 5. Pressed the gas. Stopped when the traffic got really bad.

I still had room in the passenger seat.

Well, it wasn't exactly my entire life belongings. I think I left my speakers home. Couldn't fit them and the LP collection in the car. Used headphones. CDs would have been nice, though. They are smaller, not that you would know, prolly never having seen an LP outside a museum.

I think I left my golf clubs at home too. Took my tennis racket, but somebody stole it.

In any case, there's nothing wrong with holding on to memories - I don't imagine you're the type to take the wrong fork in that path. I guess the way you wrote about it offended something in me that I should have recognized as an intensely personal difference. Learning, learning, learning.

I say this, to your generation gap:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFlSy1TuRv4

You notice the geetar player is thrashing a Gibson SG, just like the one Angus is playing?

Everything is connected. Even across the generations.

I feel so at one with God.

 

[normal jean]

.............

 

[DeepAsleep]

Hey, kid. Don't know your age, but can guess you're maybe about the age I was when I left for LA and grad school. Packed my entire life belongings into a 1978 VW Scirocco (think a slightly longer but narrower Mini Cooper) and pointed it down Interstate 5. Pressed the gas. Stopped when the traffic got really bad.

I still had room in the passenger seat.

Well, it wasn't exactly my entire life belongings. I think I left my speakers home. Couldn't fit them and the LP collection in the car. Used headphones. CDs would have been nice, though. They are smaller, not that you would know, prolly never having seen an LP outside a museum.

I think I left my golf clubs at home too. Took my tennis racket, but somebody stole it.
You notice the geetar player is thrashing a Gibson SG, just like the one Angus is playing?

Everything is connected. Even across the generations.

I feel so at one with God.

Did you notice that they were playing analog techno? Tell me there's something more exciting.

~R
Yes, yes. "Girls."

 

[DeepAsleep]

I wore a businesslike high, last night. I don't smoke pot very often (twice a year? Maybe?) but sometimes, situations seem to demand it and I don't find myself resisting like I normally would. Witness:

Shelly (roommate, surrogate mother, friend) has a friend who was brutally murdered two nights ago, after all of her friends left the day of the dead party she'd thrown. No money was taken, the house was not ransacked, she was just stabbed repeatedly.

I walk a weird line, when I hold a crying woman. It's one of the few times when I become overtly male, in the usual muscle flexing, kill anything that moves sort of way and I have to mind my tongue more than usual, or I'll wind up saying ridiculous things. But I hate seeing people I love cry, and I'm not against this, as a phenomenon - it's just noteworthy, I suppose.

So. In lieu of sleep, i received beer and two hits, and God dammit all, anyway.

 

[sophieloves]

I wore a businesslike high, last night. I don't smoke pot very often (twice a year? Maybe?) but sometimes, situations seem to demand it and I don't find myself resisting like I normally would. Witness:

Shelly (roommate, surrogate mother, friend) has a friend who was brutally murdered two nights ago, after all of her friends left the day of the dead party she'd thrown. No money was taken, the house was not ransacked, she was just stabbed repeatedly.

I walk a weird line, when I hold a crying woman. It's one of the few times when I become overtly male, in the usual muscle flexing, kill anything that moves sort of way and I have to mind my tongue more than usual, or I'll wind up saying ridiculous things. But I hate seeing people I love cry, and I'm not against this, as a phenomenon - it's just noteworthy, I suppose.

So. In lieu of sleep, i received beer and two hits, and God dammit all, anyway.

how difficult for you. when you can not act to rectify a wrong, the power in you must rebel, become frustrated - with many it would turn to pure anger. dealing with it the way you did without a doubt helped your friend far more than if you began mouthing off. what a bitch of a situation.

 

[Tathagata]

I wore a businesslike high, last night. I don't smoke pot very often (twice a year? Maybe?) but sometimes, situations seem to demand it and I don't find myself resisting like I normally would. Witness:

Shelly (roommate, surrogate mother, friend) has a friend who was brutally murdered two nights ago, after all of her friends left the day of the dead party she'd thrown. No money was taken, the house was not ransacked, she was just stabbed repeatedly.

I walk a weird line, when I hold a crying woman. It's one of the few times when I become overtly male, in the usual muscle flexing, kill anything that moves sort of way and I have to mind my tongue more than usual, or I'll wind up saying ridiculous things. But I hate seeing people I love cry, and I'm not against this, as a phenomenon - it's just noteworthy, I suppose.

So. In lieu of sleep, i received beer and two hits, and God dammit all, anyway.

I am truly sorry for your pain and for your loss.
I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers

 

[Angeline]

I wore a businesslike high, last night. I don't smoke pot very often (twice a year? Maybe?) but sometimes, situations seem to demand it and I don't find myself resisting like I normally would. Witness:

Shelly (roommate, surrogate mother, friend) has a friend who was brutally murdered two nights ago, after all of her friends left the day of the dead party she'd thrown. No money was taken, the house was not ransacked, she was just stabbed repeatedly.

I walk a weird line, when I hold a crying woman. It's one of the few times when I become overtly male, in the usual muscle flexing, kill anything that moves sort of way and I have to mind my tongue more than usual, or I'll wind up saying ridiculous things. But I hate seeing people I love cry, and I'm not against this, as a phenomenon - it's just noteworthy, I suppose.

So. In lieu of sleep, i received beer and two hits, and God dammit all, anyway.

I'm sorry. My sister was murdered, pretty much the same way. It's a horrible, horrible thing to deal with. You're a good friend. Your roommate is going to be needy about this for a long time. Counseling helps.

 

[unpredictablebijou]

I wore a businesslike high, last night. I don't smoke pot very often (twice a year? Maybe?) but sometimes, situations seem to demand it and I don't find myself resisting like I normally would. Witness:

Shelly (roommate, surrogate mother, friend) has a friend who was brutally murdered two nights ago, after all of her friends left the day of the dead party she'd thrown. No money was taken, the house was not ransacked, she was just stabbed repeatedly.

I walk a weird line, when I hold a crying woman. It's one of the few times when I become overtly male, in the usual muscle flexing, kill anything that moves sort of way and I have to mind my tongue more than usual, or I'll wind up saying ridiculous things. But I hate seeing people I love cry, and I'm not against this, as a phenomenon - it's just noteworthy, I suppose.

So. In lieu of sleep, i received beer and two hits, and God dammit all, anyway.

Jesus.

I'm praying. I hope you and she don't mind.

bijou

 

[WickedEve]

A relationship isn't quite as real as it can be until the guy meets your mother, until the guy chats with her on the phone about you, until the guy is ushered through town to meet all her gay friends. It gets uncomfortably real when he meets your kids, when aunts and uncles call to ask about him, when your dad thinks he's normal. "Finally, she's met a normal guy."

Friday, my Hanna was a flame -- wild, beautiful, fascinating -- during her first meeting with Hugo. Katy was Katy and quite adorably so. Hugo was pleased, despite the fact that he was at the downtown Sparkle festival and meeting flamboyant bachelors, despite the fact that my mother uttered the dreaded words, "Get use to me. I could be your mother-in-law in some day."

Later, we went for drinks (rude bartender) to the movies (bloody lame vampire show) back to his place (drunk and pitching my vibrator at him) and all was right in our new world together.

Ah, morning, and back to my mom's house to see the kids while Hugo worked. My flame had burned into a screaming rage. The adorable one informed me that we didn't need anymore babies. "When there's a man around, you get babies, and we don't need anymore babies around here!" Hanna made kissy sounds. Oh yeah, she was disgusted with me. I swore that he was only a friend. Katy demanded that I break up with him immediately. I didn't see Hugo that Saturday night.

Sunday, I met him for breakfast and sex. I kept thinking about babies, and I'm sure I heard kissy noises somewhere in the distance. Hugo saw Hanna later that day. She curled into a ball and stuck her head inside her shirt. She told him that she was a talking rock. At least the screaming had stopped.

 

[Angeline]

I woke up this morning with a poem fragment in my head. In my dream I was reading a poem that Champagne1982 had written. I don't think I've ever had a Literotica dream before, but there I was reading Champ's poem, and the lines I awoke with are "and I want it stressed/he was heavily and orally dressed." It was from a poem about a wooly mammouth.

 

[champagne1982]

I woke up this morning with a poem fragment in my head. In my dream I was reading a poem that Champagne1982 had written. I don't think I've ever had a Literotica dream before, but there I was reading Champ's poem, and the lines I awoke with are "and I want it stressed/he was heavily and orally dressed." It was from a poem about a wooly mammouth.

There once was a mammouth named Wooly
with an erect probiscus that fully
(and I want it stressed
he was heavily and orally dressed)
filled up my pussy quite wholly.

 

[Angeline]

There once was a mammouth named Wooly
with an erect probiscus that fully
(and I want it stressed
he was heavily and orally dressed)
filled up my pussy quite wholly.

Oh hush. I'm blind and a lousy typist to boot. But I do feel completed now that I have the whole poem.

 

[champagne1982]

Oh hush. I'm blind and a lousy typist to boot. But I do feel completed now that I have the whole poem.

I would have felt better if it could have been about an anteater though. Their mouths are at the end of those very long.. (eeeeeew! I've just grossed out myself).

 

[Angeline]

I would have felt better if it could have been about an anteater though. Their mouths are at the end of those very long.. (eeeeeew! I've just grossed out myself).

I'll see what I can cook up for you tonight. You never know.

Now I have to help eagleyez put our new rowing machine together. It arrived Saturday in about 40 pieces. He just left for the hardware store to buy an allen wrench. He looks depressed lol. My help will likely consist of hovering and offering him coffee.

 

[DeepAsleep]

home with a pulled muscle in the lower back. feel like a jackass for missing work, but better one day, now, than ten, later.

Oh, Motrin, you are my only friend.

let's see, what else is interesting?

We could talk about......

Women. Yes, let's not.

Hmph. nap.