someday

Everything should be working at http://ampthill.us

A direct link to the journal is http://ampthillus.blogspot.com .

resumed at new blog: http://ampthill.us

new email: greg@ampthill.us

"Strangeways' emotionally raw, soul-baring centre reads like the final act in the tragedy of 'The Heir of Nothing In-Particular,' now older, world-weary and rapidly losing the fight, staggering into the wings to an overpowering orchestral requiem, at once luxurious and moribund. [...] Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me was as harrowing a realisation as its title suggested; not a dream but a nightmare, where love is forever unattainable and sleep is a torture of futile romantic fantasies. The lovelorn agony is magnified by the waking acquiescence of 'another false alarm' and the shatteringly hopeless resignation that this merciless solitude is the protagonist's life sentence." - Simon Goddard; The Smiths: Songs That Saved Your Life

The most important part of maturity is resigning to unhappiness. Slipping into this state is irrevocable and inevitable. Strangely, I've never been so happy (in unhappiness) in my entire life. God willing, it will be over soon. One of the characters in Portrait of a Lady says, "The more you know, the unhappier you are." But I know nothing - how and why did this happen to me?

I survived from ages six to twelve in a solitary, book-lined rocket ship. I met the gray-eyed Gaul and an early sleeper at fourteen, and they imparted me with the last few things I'll be able to glean from all of this stuff. I picture lights and tweed rustling; the ship lands on a foreign planet. Was I Laika in another life? Edward VI? How to study for tests, how to maintain eye contact, how to deal with people: these things have always eluded me. I sought solace between gold walls and poorly-bound covers; today France, tomorrow Wales. Birds and dogs, hares and secret codes were the only friends I needed. Being vulnerable only helps when watching a truant on the beach or at age nine, plodding wet-shoed through the halls of Northanger Abbey. It's the symmetry of things I can take an honest joy in. As studies slip by my fingers, and things get harder to hold, I marvel at these things; like those so carefully-written harbingers of a book's end: Anna and the train, Emma Bovary and the Host. I loved the descriptions of houses in books. Such solid foundations! My feet were planted on hundreds of years, hundreds of lives! But only pages.

There was a book by Balzac that I was never able to read. Once I ordered it, along with many others, but didn't have the $100+ I needed to pay for them. When I go back to that store, it's still there. I'll pick it up and laugh at how heavy the print is in some places, or trace across the Penguin colophon on the front. Made only for me. All of Paris in two hands - maybe this is why the Kindle appealed to me so much. The Black Sheep.

Titles, too, stuck out at me. Our Mutual Friend, Hard Times, The Master of Go, The Waiting Years, Howards End, Swann's Way! In each letter a herald-angel. And Shibuya station, drawn as Sumi-e in my mind, is protected by a loyal and loving dog. I'll close my eyes and wake up in Shibuya station. Foreign, now-replaced train schedules whirr and flip overhead. Conductors, "el mozos," and the rest move through the warm fog. Families riding to Kyoto, Nagoya as Ozu paints a delicate frame. In my every action I have tried to be like little Hachiko. His left ear drooped slightly downwards most of the time.

I can't stop giggling!

Ridi sul tuo amore infranto!
Ridi del duol, che t'avvelena il cor.

I went to a chemistry magic show for extra credit. I played DDR in the mall and was sick on bad pizza. My headphones create a bubble, an island of order, in which I can cause tranquility or chaos. I know it sounds stupid. I like it when the channels are in the middle of my head, rather than in just one ear. My mom's in the hospital. I see my end more than any beginning, I think. Did it hurt, being born?

This is what my character wrote: Passing by the rows of empty books, I made my way down the aisles. Though I tried, I couldn’t find anything that appealed to me. They didn’t have the light; the feeling I had gleaned from Howards End, and even Ethan Frome, couldn’t be found in them. Blank lines between loosely-bound black. What happened? I felt though as if the book-store, and indeed the literary world, had Proust as its magnetic, striped pole. To be an author, albeit a dwarf star, that was something to be proud about. When I wrote my novel it would be Hans of Iceland. I heard Hugo completed it in a week; is this true? When I came into my own I would rise from the depths of night like Balzac, brew coffee, and face the dawn with a quill in hand. I wonder how his handwriting was. I have always believed great books should cause carpal tunnel in their authors, though felt a vintage typewriter would be my only shot at passing through the gates. And what defines an author? The nominal poets who keep the avant-garde afloat, or those who rapidly churn out the latest current issues books, are they writers? If it could help, I’d write my name across every cover I could find; continue scribbling in the margins of my schoolbooks. If it was only to start, I’d be finished by now.

If only for my own sake I hoped that someone, anyone, would come to awaken real books from their sleep. Ever since Hemmingway struck splotchy, fleshy hands against a typewriter’s keys, we’ve been trapped in a sprase, all but empty prison cell. A cell; I should write that one down. Did its spirit migrate to the cinema? Truffaut could easily rank among my favorite authors. And if it did pass through celluloid, where did it go afterwards? I could search through the marquee of every theater on every street-corner; I would never find what I was looking for.

Failed author writes on failed author writing about failed authors, I suppose. I keep a folder of paintings called caravaggio in C:\Documents and Settings\Greg\Desktop\streets of paris\wolves\doghouse\caravaggio.

Last night I felt real arms around me.

What do I do? I sit in my room, all but holed up, and watch endless amounts of movies, start books that I'll never finish, or listen to the same music. The music part not so much, as I tend not to listen to the things I really like. At least the movies are sporadic, fluid, different, and super. I'm another product of failed literary aspirations, and too shy to get a job. Probably too tired, too. This all stemmed from my being accused, by my stepfather, of waiting around for someone to live my life for me (for not collapsing a cardboard carton). I heard it secondhand, so I'm free to make up whatever other parts I want, I suppose. Loud muffles come from under the floorboards.
But it's as simple as "Oh, he's in Chicago," "I'll get it refilled," AIM alerts, not getting caught using PayPal, and having a high seed ratio; these I live for these. Most of the time I think that a job is unnecessary for me, "Oh, I'll just get seven grand writing a novel or something," is my excuse for everything. I would settle for being Jean Genet. "Come in here, curl up, and I'll close the door."

I can't really finish books anymore. I think retirement funds for the religious are important.

I still have a couple more years
And then I can come back to the harbor.

I've officially failed my first class.

I am overjoyed; one step on the road to recovery.

i pinned an iron cross to my lapel

soft soft soft soft soft

Ninja Mono, recorded with registered Fraps. I'm not very good.

I usually play with higher settings, but lowered them to prevent blips. listen for g major line in minor key fuzz.

Calculus - Term1 Grade: 62

H Chem II - Term1 Grade: 64

follow me here
http://thepiratebay.org/user/ggoes

This is, or at least I think so, the only entry that will be written over several days. The new computer (especially its location!) allows me to do this easily. Revision will probably happen, though I'll try to keep it fairly scarce. I'll stick as closely to my thought patterns as possible, which means there will be commas. Commas upon commas. Blinking cursor presses onward:

Elizabeth Bennett, as she's portrayed in the newest adaptation of Pride & Prejudice, really fascinates me. In Austen she is, of course, perfectly realized, and even transcends those rigid types Victorian literary characters are usually locked into. The opening scene of the movie, accompanied by a dizzying Chopinic piano piece, pans out from the warm, autumnal tones of the crumbling estate and garden to show her book in hand, and on the second to last page. This gives us a crucial piece of information, one that fits her into and sets her apart from the usual Austenian character. She's not someone who simply carries around a book to pretend she is reading it, or to show off (as I am wont to do), but honestly reads these things alone! She paces, undoubtedly wrapped in a Bleak House or something from underneath a leg of Emma Bovary's bookshelf.. Her colors set her aesthetically with the rest of the house, and its warm colors, homey, though unstable, come to fruition in her character. Go KK!

I'm horrible at doing peer reviews. I don't feel the need to tear someone else's essay completely apart, but have my graphomanic tendencies to deal with; I just want to mark over every scrap of paper that's handed to me. What I do write, for the most part, doesn't matter. As I'm all too conscientious in these situations, I'll end up praising a paper I loathe just to have something to write about. Even so, I can't help myself from correcting a spelling error or too. Grammar is a different matter, as I tend to make mine up as I go along. But it's within reason, isn't it? Grammar exists to serve language, not the other way around. (James often had double, even triple negatives in his sentences, not to mention his prodigious amounts of commas.) Well, so long as it doesn't get as bad as some of the papers that are handed to me. Burning through tree after tree doesn't really bother me. When Wausau shuts down, then I will start to worry.

I especially like the texture of certain kinds of paper. The Barnes & Noble Classics line, though mass-produced, have my ideal sort of pages. The font is crisp and the point is very clean, and upon looking closely, you can see a faint sandpaper pattern running beneath the text. Plus, the scholarship and weighty introductions all of them have help me a great deal. Even the cover design seem to have a bit of thought put into them. The back of the binding and front are usually in a fitting color (pastel blue for my Portrait of a Lady, Coal-gray for my Oliver Twist) and frame an image. Their colophon is printed in a hearty black on the bottom left corner of the cover, as well as against a silver background near the top of the binding. Below it we usually see a pan-out of the painting or picture detail they used for the front cover. I'd like to shake the hand (and a good deal more) of the man who dug up that picture of old Oscar for his Collected Works. Sometimes it's a watercolor (they're fond of Monet), or an old picture of the working class, and etc. On opening the front cover we're greeted with a "From the Pages of..." headline with aptly chosen quotes dancing across the rest of the page.. "Justice to a lovely being is after all a florid sort of sentiment," and that sort of thing. The footnotes are extensive, and the book, for being a paperback, is surprisingly durable.

The Ecuadorians greeted me with a laurel of tropical flowers, and I did my best to join along in the party they were throwing (in my honor). My grandfather had given them the funds to build a library, and was frequently seen with a binding-brush in hand repairing their books. On walking into the building one would notice the bare shelves; the villagers always kept the books out of the place. Why are libraries in America so full? The idea of a bare library, that real people are roaming dingy London streets or swooning over Heathcliff, is fascinating.

When feeling alone or especially socially awkward, I tend to lecture myself. It isn't any sort of berating, self-deprecating thing (though this happens frequently), but an actual college sit-in lecture. I'll make up things about various authors, try to analyze various plot points and metaphors (Osmond's etching of the coin at the end of Portrait, beauty as his currency, removed from the world but yet completely obsessed with others' opinions..) Though these are invariably incorrect, it's nice to have someone to talk to. A favorite one is describing Balzac's writing rituals, how this monstrous literary figure would rise in the deepest parts of the night, brew up an enormous amount of thick coffee, and set down to painting the dirty secrets of the bourgeoisie. Typing will never be as personal (humanlike?) as the written word. Good books need to cause carpal tunnel in their authors. That someone could bang away on a typewriter for a month and produce a Picoult or Palahniuk is horrifying to me. Most things aren't worth putting down. I believe in adjectives! Sentences deserve to be convoluted and spotted with commas and semicolons. The sparse, indirect style of the 21st century irks me. Ever since Hemmingway brought drunken, flushed hands to a typewriter and set out to be the muscular, mechanical hero of college students the world over we lost an essential bit of the puzzle that made the 19th century so fascinating. Give me a cup of Balzac's coffee, give me Proust's "paperoles", give me adjectives or give me death!

It probably began with my fascination for blank white pages. Stacks of the things in the red packages kept me more occupied than anything I should of been doing, and oftentimes I'd simply juggle the heap's weight around to feel like I was doing something. I feel the backs of books and smooth covers; my ideal mode of transportation is a sliding library ladder. Dickens wrote in ink. I have no difficulty in believing in some sort of higher power, but am far too conceited to accept art serves no purpose before the glory of God. Above all, I have difficulty reconciling the persona that helps out at nursing homes with that of the bookish, downtrodden homo image I shell myself inside in. I'm not misanthropic. I squint and smile at strangers when they strike up a conversation, and will do my best to wing it if they venture into a topic I can only pretend to know something about. I would like to think that I'm good at running on auto-pilot, but this is probably not true. I was a typesetter in another life.

I've thought about it extensively, and have realized how heartless of me it was to say I wanted to die young when you were discussing your health problems. I wonder now what caused me to say this, but can't come up with anything probable. I'm self-destructive, but not to a point where I would put making a quick deprecating quip over another's problem. And I know this. My fingers type faster than I can think. My thoughts are six years behind my days. The place I went to today at over nineteen rabbits. I tell my friends I rarely sleep, but usually get to bed at a reasonable time. Moving the computer to my room, though fueling some of my more lecherous qualities, is a good thing, even if I don't sleep until morning. The rabbits in the garden know having a hovel matters.

In class, a hobby of mine is to make particularly angular question marks and then draw a rat from the pointed loop. I spent much of the day grafted to a new laser printer, making sure ring day mass programs were printing out correctly. When I die, I would like to come back as a style-book or an HP 5500. My room is where new notebooks go to die. Though I end up filling them, it never really amounts to anything. Am I lonely? I don't think so. As I said, it isn't for any misanthropic reasons that I shy away from people, nor that I'm ashamed of something. I adapt myself to suit myself. In this way, I'm horribly self-possessed*. My favorite game is pretending I'm another person and offering me compliments. "Did you see all of the tapes he brought for that film unit?" "Greg, you and I are the only people I know who read encyclopedias and dictionaries."

* Why then do I, or at least claim to, care sincerely about everyone around me? If anyone's upset around me I can't function until I do something (or everything). Most likely, it stems out of the concern I have for myself and the guilt that would come out of not helping them rather than for more altruistic reasons. I'm satisfied with this answer, I'll move on.

Today someone mistook a picture I was restoring for Graphic Arts to be a picture of me. This was the picture. I have a paper to write on Olympia. I will never leave the country, if only to preserve the mythic mental image I have of certain places. Paris, to me, is indistinguishable from Atlantis or El Dorado. For this reason I will never make a serious attempt to leave a lasting impression in the form of a manuscript, etc. I could never live up to the ideas and expectations I have set for myself, but can always enjoy reaping their (posthumous) pleasures from inside. With my pockets full of dust, I ran down city streets.

Today, it poured. I ran past the classroom windows trying to find an open door, and eventually had to buzz in and wait. I don't like doing this, if only because I don't like the feeling of being watched. I flinch at the sound of the unlocking door. Despite everything, I think I have outgrown planning an eventual suicide. It is better, as I see it, to live and die. My breath is not sustained by any sort of divine will, and my selfish sense of self-preservation (and ideas on art) will not be hindered by any sort of doctrine. I will face hell when the time comes.

I'm unsure why I sent you such a long and trite letter. It was too ill-conceived and feverish. Perhaps I thought stuffing that many papers into an envelope would help both of us. I still stubbornly cling to those ideas. That by doing this I would be showing no concern for you, that bothers me the most.

Through grade school, my only friend was a librarian. She helped me through the nineteenth century and taught me to play chess. Why these things come to mind now, I'm not sure. What's important, at least at 9:28, is that I never read this after I am finished writing. Putting letters together to form words helps me considerably; this is why most of my entries don't claim to have any sense of coherency. It's the act of typing, of having a place to put words, making my burrow, that matters. I never said any of it was true.