Wreck this Journal.

Yesterday I decided to officially begin my destruction of Keri Smith's Wreck this Journal, as part of my summer bucket list. I am growing more and more bored as the days get hotter, so this became my next resort.

For the first day, I flipped open the book and found these words at the top of the page:

"DO A REALLY UGLY DRAWING
(use ugly subject matter: gum, poo, dead things, a badly drawn bird, mold, barf, crud.)"

I promptly drew an ugly set of toes, a warty witch arm, a moldy sandwich in a bag, a pile of trash in a corner, and cluster of bugs. (I'll add pictures later, since I don't have time to take them now.)

(Also- the bugs, sadly, turned out cuter than I'd intended.)

For the second day, I numbered all the pages in the book. There were ninety, which I liked, because I like the number eight and I got to go through all the eighties before the end.

Also today I painted a postcard, worked on the score for Troilus and Cressida, read House of Leaves for a good hour or so, and helped my dad move stuff from his old office to a new one.

P.S. I miss everyone. A lot.

That's what I get for telling people things.

Cosas y otras cosas.

I'm home/in the desert.

It's hot and I'd rather be back in Provo.

But the nights are clear and starry, and my family is funny, and I wrote a new song today.

Should be a decent few months. :)

Young at Heart? Promise, Frank?

Today I was feeling low, when this song came up on Pandora.



Frank Sinatra, you are my new best friend.

Bucket List:

21. Visit Sinatra's grave in Palm Springs.

So Long, Sam.

Hi. This is Sam.

I met Sam in my freshman English class (Honors 150: Writing and Rhetoric) this year. We realized very soon that we had a creepy amount in common and became really good friends.

I think the time we first hung out was after a football game. We saw a weird movie at International Cinema, played penny golf, rolled down the library hill, and then got a guitar and a ukulele and played music on some stairs by the RB.

Good times.


Some of the vaguely strange things we have in common are:

• We own the same shirt, from American Apparel (in the respective Mens' and Womens' versions). On top of this, that shirt happens to be my absolute favorite color and therefore one of my favorite things to wear.
• We enjoy all the same books: Steinbeck, Fitzgerald, etc. We are both borderline obsessed with The Great Gatsby. Oh, and Harry Potter.
• And my personal favorite: We were sitting next to each other at the 2009 Anaheim Choir Festival, and had no idea that less than a year later, we would become very close friends. 

This is one of many times we went to Salt Lake City. Sam's grandparents live up there, so we'd go visit them and finish his grandma's puzzles for her. We'd also walk around Salt Lake looking around in different stores. On this night, we just explored, along with our friend Dan.

We reference Harry Potter constantly, which is kind of part of our generation. This picture is Sam/"Harry" looking into a Pensieve.

Other Harry Potter references:

• Once we got wheat grass shots at Jamba Juice and called it Polyjuice potion.
• People: Sam- Harry. Dan- Ron. Emily- Hermione. Asian Girl in our class- Cho Chang. President Gordon B. Hinckley- Dumbledore. Karl G. Maeser- Godric Gryffindor.
• Places: Velour- The Leaky Cauldron. Wilkinson Center Terrace -The Great Hall. JDawgs -The Three Broomsticks. Etc, etc.

Anyway, the point of all this is that Sam is leaving on his mission today, and I am going to miss him exceedingly. He's one of my closest friends and I'm so pleased that I met him this year. I'm going to see him  and talk one more time today and then he's off to the MTC and later, Portland!

In conclusion:

Sam, you can be sure I'll be writing, fool. Even though you're not going to read this.

The End. :)

Summer Bucket List (continued)

11. Make pretty new skirts.
12. Plant and grow strawberries.
13. Learn to make a lemon meringue pie. Well. Famously.
14. Hike Fossil Creek when we visit Pine, Arizona.
15. Do something like Richard Schilling's "Land Art":

16. Visit a zoo.
17. Meet five new people and keep in touch with them.
18. Write a message in a bottle, sail out to some buoy with my dad, and leave it in the ocean.
19. Take my brothers and sisters to the Festival of the Arts.
20. Write a new song on the guitar.

Yesterday I took Ginsberg (my guitar), a notebook, and some pens, and walked to that park at University and Center Street to brainstorm. It was kind of like this (not that I took these yesterday):

Two hours, seven blocks, and a nap later, I finished a new song. :)

For fun, I make charcoal out of harmless cookies.

Maybe I should start listing “burning baked goods” as a hobby.

Summer Bucket List

I leave in 12 days for my hometown- Rancho Mirage, California. Since I have come to terms with the realization that I will be languishing in boredom and 115 degree weather, I've also decided I need to make a list of things I want to do this summer.

So to start with, here are the first ten things on my summer bucket list:

1. Take my sisters to the beach for a week (again) this August.
2. Do one page of Wreck this Journal every day.
3. Practice tennis with my dad. Cultivate a decent serve.
4. Read House of Leaves.
5. Write a poem every day of the summer. Share some of them. Maybe.
6. Draw a sidewalk chalk mural on my driveway.
7. Learn to crack an egg with one hand.
8. Memorize "Fern Hill" again, and "Soneto de La Noche."
9. Write three This I Believe essays.
10. Read the Book of Mormon in Spanish.

Notice

(Photo: David Shrigley)

A weird limerick.

I wish I lived inside your heart
I'd pay the rent, appease your brain
At night I'd stroll
Through each ventricle
And keep you living, stall the pain

Let it Snow?

I meant to post about this earlier, but my camera wouldn't jive. It snowed last Monday, on May 24th, in what was hopefully the last snow/weather tantrum of the season. I took some pictures:

That killed me. It really did.

(A collection of my favorite Catcher in the Rye quotes)


I think if you don't really like a girl, you shouldn't horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you're supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It's really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes. 


Then she left. The Navy guy and I told each other we were glad to've met each other. Which always kills me. I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though. 


About all I know is, I sorta miss everybody I told about. Even Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss that g----m Maurice. Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody. 


It's funny.  All you have to do is say something nobody understands and they'll do practically anything you want them to.


I have a feeling that you're riding for some kind of a terrible, terrible fall.  But I don't honestly know what kind.... It may be the kind where, at the age of thirty, you sit in some bar hating everybody who comes in looking as if he might have played football in college.  Then again, you may pick up just enough education to hate people who say, 'It's a secret between he and I.'  Or you may end up in some business office, throwing paper clips at the nearest stenographer.  I just don't know.


Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior.  You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know.  Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now.  Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles.  You'll learn from them - if you want to.  Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you.  It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement.  And it isn't education.  It's history.  It's poetry.