Afterword

  Finals week is always a blessing. I'm apparently the reigning champion of procrastinators.  My work load isn't all that bad, considering I quit Japanese sometime in the middle of the semester, but I did manage to save three papers for my other classes till the last minute.  I ended up writing through the night, first for American Studies and then a reflective piece in the morning on Rumi.  I ended up e-mailing it and I got a little bit of much welcomed praise.  Things like this make my day: ----- - Thanks Bryan. I enjoyed the class a great deal--I really found your willingness to think about these ideas and be honest and open in discussion to be important to the success of the class. You are a smart and thoughtful student--best wishes in your future studies and in life in general.

I still have a couple of your papers–especially your Walt Whitman-esque poem from the first project. The Whitman poem is excellent, and the connections you made in your Gilded Age paper showed a comprehensive grasp of the themes we have been talking about. 

Good luck in the future, and keep thinking.

Jeff

---

  Earlier in the semester we had the choice between a)writing a paper on the Transcendentalist movement in the midst of the westward expansion, or b) create my own original artwork in the style of my choosing that reflects the ideas of Transcendentalists.  So I wrote a quick poem before class where I tried to emulate best I could a Walt Whitman prose piece, reflecting the time frame:

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 27pt; TEXT-INDENT: -27pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">O, this mighty fortress built upon eloquent words and powerful ideals spewed from soft lips,<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p>

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 27pt; TEXT-INDENT: -27pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">This nation, carved from a continent and gilded with ambition and deceit-filled purpose, with your settlers never settled in their ever-changing notions of will!<o:p></o:p>

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Your people, scattered and numerous across the plains and the mountains, the cities and the countryside, who have grown up with a distance that has failed to set them apart from a nation, tiring and romantic all the same,<o:p></o:p>

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">This young mindset, charismatic and naive, brilliant and baffled alike, and though through many faltered steps you have not ceased to believe strongly in yourselves, <o:p></o:p>

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">And hardships, they have not been few,<o:p></o:p>

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Struggles far and large, stretching the extent of this country’s vastness, but it is through this toil that your cheeks grow rosy and body restless, feeding the spirit of this land,<o:p></o:p>

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">From the defeated scalawag groaning under the pressures of the other-worldly north, knowing not another way to make his livelihood, who interred his progeny for the ideals that he knows true,<o:p></o:p>

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Blessed be the Yank that has not permitted this vessel to break in two, and has gone lengths to see that freedom and liberty are extended to all of God’s creatures; a challenge that extends beyond the battlefield,<o:p></o:p>

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">May you rise against the difficulties that await!<o:p></o:p>

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">To the freed men, weeping with joy at the sight of a generation born into freedom!<o:p></o:p>

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US"><SPAN style="mso-tab-count: 1">      and to those children, beaming with veneration for their fathers, and hope for their futures!<o:p></o:p>

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">Yes, <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />st1:country-regionst1:place<SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">America</st1:place></st1:country-region><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">, frothing at the mouth with hysteria and genius, the garden of a great people; loathsome and proud, amiable and generous; you are all of these things,<o:p></o:p>

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">With startling ambiguity you exist, for you are the wicked and the heavy at heart; the chain that binds and the torch that lights the way,<o:p></o:p>

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">And as I sit here in my reverie, change do you still, moving forward and backward concurrently in your narcissistic godliness, with all your juvenile follies that are sure to make you grow wise and mature in your years, <o:p></o:p>

<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 0.25in; TEXT-INDENT: -0.25in"><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">This is my hope for you, st1:country-regionst1:place<SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">America</st1:place></st1:country-region><SPAN style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">.<o:p></o:p>

—- – -

As far as I know, I'm done with Lansing Comm. College.  Funny, every single one of my professors were MSU profs too.  I saved like $20,000.  Thanks LCC!

Everybody, do me a favor and:

a)go to google b)copy this—-> Camp Striker Iraq "Bradley Robb" <—–directly into the search bar c)watch the chaos ensue

cleaning out/throwing away all of the boxes i left here from before i moved to florida.  funny, i saved so much.  the best part about it are the photos and all of my writing assignments that i saved over the years, from grade school on up.  the evolution of bryan was/is hideous.  i should scan some memorabilia.  everyone would have a good laugh, including myself.

i also found a record player with needle intact!  listening to the kinks with neverending zealous!

today i woke to the sound of my focus-challenged, seventeen-year-old brother, and my 43 year-old mother fighting because she didn't wake him up in time for school. my brother, who has been through four high schools, for various reasons, many of which i believe to be fiction, has once again accumulated more than nine (9) absences in the better half of his classes this semester. meanwhile, in a not-so-distant corner of the house, where i was coming out of a dream where i was supposedly some kind of motorcycle pro who has just come out of a coma and is getting back into his training regiment, hear the sound of an adolescent boy's whine reverberating off the freshly de-carpeted wooden floor of the house, down the hall, and into my dreaming head. five years ago i would have screamed back. today i just opened my eyes to the sun coming through my bare windows and listened. i felt for my smokes, which are never farther than an arm's length from me at all times. i pulled one out, lit it, and took a drag that would have knocked me down if i hadn't already been in my bed, and when i exhaled it did that thing where all the spinning smoke is automatically highlighted when it reaches the rays of the sun, contrasted to the shadow where the sun doesn't reach. i listened to a little bit more of the conversation as i finished the cigarette, yells and stomping feet…"it's all your fault, and now i'm gonna hafta take those classes overr!"…"NO, whose the one who had all of those absences to begin with?!"…"well i was gonna go the rest of the year…why didn't you wake me up??"…"you're seventeen years old, can't you set your alarm?"…yada yada. it's funny, but not so funny. i mean, i've known for a while that my brother has been fucking his life up. and as i lie there smoking, i thought to myself, "oh, eric. if you only knew how hard you're making this on yourself". and it's too late. we've done everything for him, from helping him, offering to help him, offered counseling, fought with teachers to keep him, changed schools to get a fresh start, tried medication. he spends a lot of time on his car. more than a healthy amount of time sanding, inhaling fumes, painting, ripping this out, welding that. he's pretty good at it. the trouble i had lying in bed there, listening to the fighting, was my belief systems. i'm not quite a fan of our economy, our political system, capitalism, the american dream. sure, we all dream about stuff. we all have dreamt about being a great (fill in the blank). and it has us chasing these things without heart, recklessly. not just things, but status and power, too. and on countless occasions, i don't know how many (but probably far too many), i have sat my brother down and tried to get his goals out of him, push him towards something, to use his brain. to focus. to set the bar high. but as i look back, i wonder why i should put any more effort into it. why should i have him chasing these things? if he finds happiness in simple things, like working on cars, so be it. if he achieves that, then that's more than i can say i've accomplished. why should i give advice to someone who doesn't want it? in addition, why should i, the giver of that advice, say anything at all when i could use some counseling myself? so i continued about my day in the normal fashion. smoked a lot of cigarettes, did as minimal as possible. i sat in my car an hour for the warmth and the silence, clearing my head of all the trials my head fabricates, trying to dissolve fears, narcissism, clutter. i dressed up to go no where. i looked at myself in the mirror, "i'm ugly, i'm pretty, i'm ugly, i'm pretty…","…my mother was a real woman and my father a real man, what am i?" i cannot go back to working mindless jobs. i can't stand to work with one more person who's about as bright as a fork in a microwave. then i think, "goddamn, that's such a mean thing to say. what's wrong with manual labor and finding enjoyment, maybe even enlightenment in it?" thus i teeter, back and forth in my thoughts, only becoming clear when i force meditation upon myself. can it balance? i think that i'm great, then i think i'm worthless. i wonder how much is indoctrination. how many of my dreams are prescribed by this place in which i live, how many aren't complete fabrications. what won't i accomplish by my lack of commitment to anything or anyone? what will i accomplish by wanting to do everything, be everywhere at once, and be everything to everyone? absolutely nothing. but will i die happy? i'm still working on that.

It's times like these that I'm glad that I don't keep a lot of personal possessions. I'm moved out of my apartment and it really didn't take more than two days to get everything organized, packed up, and moved. There is one thing that I'm neglecting, though, and it's painting over the walls. I shouldn't have ever done it, being that it's an apartment but I was tired of living in mind-numbing white. Hopefully I'll finish that up tonight.

I've been thinking about heading over to the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship as a spectator on one Sunday to see what they're all about. I'm not really into organized religion, and I'm sure those who know me the best would say that I've said more than my fair share against them. But I think that these people are kind of the anti-religious-establishment establishment. I was researching their stuff and at very least they sound uncommonly interesting to me. They're so open minded that I've been wanting to check them out for the sheer sense of community…and possibly so I can do some volunteer work. I don't know what I'd do, but I feel that I've got a lot to be thankful for, and there are plenty out there that have nothing, so why not do what I can instead of griping about things all the time.

Also, I'm probably a little late on this train by a couple of months, but I've been listening to Bloc Party and it may just be true that they saved music for me. I was starting to think that there were no truly sincere bands out there…that also whaled like nobody's business. These folks most certainly do, and I'm rockin' it like it's hot. Don't listen to the hype, just grab the album Silent Alarm before you're the last person on earth who hasn't heard this heroic band. Also, I'm pretty damned excited about the 6 re-releases of all the Super Furry Animals discs. Too bad I'm pretty much flat. British Sea Power also. I do have the ole iPod. Someday I'm going to need and repent for not paying these wonderful people. My logic - they're a lot richer than I am, and they're not eating kraft dinner…so when I'm old and loaded from retirement and booze, I'll go through the old collection, and any band that I feel changed me positively in some way…I'll buy two of every copy. No I won't.

Lately I've been so incredibly lazy. I think that the last year has caught up with me, working and school and partying and trying to balance it all out. I don't have much motivation to do anything this week. It's like a mini vacation. My body is catching up, and maybe I'll be recouped by this weekend. Until then, I'm just concentrating on myself. I've neglected that person.

i spent the afternoon and much of the evening right here

much of the morning too

the sun hid for the better part of a season this midwestern gray with its skies drained like my lungs suffocating with a Camel’s all deliberate speed

but today no, yesterday the sun decided he was tired of suicide notes and came out with guns blazing forcing me to class

to those trite teachers flagrantly approaching godliness to themselves and to the mindless dummies who grasp convictions based on cynicism– like fashion coughing up whatever hasn’t been stated except in the vague references of music and the undercurrents of a popular-by-unpopularity- existential- bullying weak who at first surprise with vocabulary but who still haven’t any idea what the fuck they’re talking about

they’ve found a taste for coffee by day and despondence by night bellowing obscure words like swooning disaster at the end of the bar to the girl with the pink pink skin pink pink skin

legs long as knives in loins dress hiked to the barstool peeking white cotton panties when she laughs, she laughs

what was her name

derek: I went to listen to a Salsa station on my radio derek: lazy mexicans derek: it's not up and running

"What people don't realize is that the so-called Seattle grunge scene grew out of several close-knit gourmet supper clubs - we would only pick up guitars to pass the time while our dishes were simmering, baking, boiling, etc." -kurt cobain

Last night the fill station attendant wore a thigh-length, faux fur coat, a garment whose strands were at least three inches in length, and black like that of his own locks. A subtle, pink neck bore the only separation of the two, leaving his head dangling in space above the jacket like a dot atop an upside down exclamation point. My excitement was not for the coat, but instead for the passion in which he wore it as he collected bags of trash from outside!

it's not everyday that i'm drawn to someone's personality and demeanor just as strongly as i'm desirous of their physical person. today is gorgeous.

I'm dreading my return to Lansing. I'm absolutely 100% tired of my roommates. 2/3rds of them are okay people, but the novelty of living with them has worn off and the whole thing has started to become kind of awkward. I think it would suit me to get one of those studios, 5X5 with a kitchenette and bathroom and that's it. Have everything I own in one room to save my concentration. The truth of the matter is that I'm only living there because it's dirt cheap and I don't know exactly where I'm going to be in the fall, so a lease is out of the question. I've actually thought about going back north for the seclusion; I kind of miss the country and the peace & quiet (and my sanity). But that probably won't happen. I'm getting kind of too old for that? Whatever. But this song has me in a good mood and thinking happy thoughts so enough about this garbage!

What's the big deal with individuality? If you ask me, it's more just a means to an end, a reason to draw lines around and/or between EVERYTHING. I'm speaking of individuality, not to be mistaken for creativity. Why are we always making up these boundaries about who we are and who we are not when most of the time this individualiaty is just dogma or stigma or hypocricy. What is the desire, the positive outcome? I'm not talking about that "friends come in all sizes" bullshit; I know, people are yellow and brown and fat and skinny, I'm not talking about making clones of everyone. It's just that we try so hard to define ourselves, to constrict what our values and ideas and lifestyles and everything are. It's just such a bunch of bologna. Shit, I bet half of you probably spent 4 hours on your keywords for livejournal trying to create what you believe to be a good image of yourself to save face. Lose a little face. We're human.

I'm slowly coming to terms with the fact that I'm completely, utterly afraid of commitment, almost in all aspects of my life. From who I am to who I want to be, to what I wear, to who sleeps in my bed with me, and the only things that stay constant in my life are fears and addictions. Good Goddamn it feels awesome to be truthful with myself. And now it's time to move towards the positive, to keep with the general flow as of late. Thank you Rumi, once again, for your insight.

I've also come to realize that I have virtually no life at all. This is good because I've had so much time to think that I'm actually figuring things out (kinda)! I'm also learning a lot about history and early American Civilization, which is really opening my eyes to a lot of things. I have a humanities class (AMERICAN CIVILIZATION), which the professor has taken as, "HEY, let's have two hour discussions and write a paper every week about whatever we feel." I've been coinciding our dates and history discussions with my reading of A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn. So far this has proved dynamic, and compliments one another quite perfectly. P.S. I think that becoming a Senator or Representative should literally be a prison sentence, where their sole job is a community service of holding that position. That way we only get people that care so much about what needs to be done that they'll actually put up with being in prison to do what needs to be done.


Today is also my second day of not smoking. Yesterday was so much worse than today. I'm still jittery, but it's probably from the coffee which I needed to keep my hands busy. I was a 1 pack a day smoker so that's at least 5 dollars a day in the Great Lakes State, or in other words $150 dollars a month. Believe it or not, that extra $150 a month is going to help me so much. I may actually be able to go away for spring break like I had been hoping to do And my lungs, jeez, they have been so pissed at me! Yesterday when I didn't smoke my mind said to my body, "HEY YOU LITTLE FUCKER. I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE. I CONTROL YOUR FUNCTioNS. TODAY YOU WILL NOT FUNCTiON IF I DOn'T GET MY FIX!" But my lungs were screaming, " HEY! AIR?!?! FRESH AIR?!? THANKS, DUDE* ".


*But fuck you for making me put up with this shit for so long.

…trial separation from the life i once knew

man, i never update anymore. i should start again.

i've been fighting off so many urges lately. i'm stuck here, right in the middle. "here i am…stuck in the middle with you."

there's a girl, two floors up, waiting for me to arrive, but she's pretending she's not waiting. that's the way it's been. we dance and drink and screw. then we don't call eachother. sin, repent, repeat. is this the way the mid-twenties are? don't get me wrong, i love swervin' to the berv, but damn, what happened to intimacy. shit my ninja. shit.

by the way, jen, jessica…i had a blast the other night, too. thanks for the cheers.

He flicks his cigarette over the ledge. “It’s one of those things you think couldn’t happen here, not in New York.” A pigeon lands. He shakes his head. “But I guess I’m living proof.” The pigeon flies away.

[bullet holes]

[the orchard out my bedroom window]

[backyard west]

[backyard east]

[an all too typical sight]

[slightly less typical]

[it rained while it was sunny, this day]

[take me to the place i love]

so i'm looking through history pages to see what has happened on my birthday, february 20th, throughout time. i came across this:

born on feb 20th:

20/02/1898 - Enzo Ferrari, Italy, sportscar manufacturer (Ferrari)
20/02/1901 - Louis I Kahn, Estonia, architect
20/02/1902 - Ansel Adams, photographer (1966 ASMP Award)
20/02/1967 - Kurt Cobain, rock vocalist (Nirvana)

died on feb 20th:

20/02/1431 - Martinus V, [Oddo Colonna], Italian Pope, dies
20/02/1790 - Joseph II, Emperor of Holy Roman empire, dies at 48
20/02/1985 - Clarence Nash, voice (Donald Duck), dies at 80 of leukemia, in Calif
20/02/1993 - Ferruccio Lamborghini, Italian auto-designer (Miura), dies

Ferrari was born and Lamborghini died on february 20th.  i don't know why, but that is just FUCKED UP to me.  also interesting to find kurt cobain and ansel adams on that list.  word.

But in the morning on the sober dawn of Sunday you're not sure what you have done Who told you love was fleeting? Sometimes men can be so misleading to take what they need from you Whatever you need to make you feel like you've been the one behind the wheel the sunrise is just over that hill the worst is over Whatever I said to make you think that love's the religion of the weak this morning we love like weaklings the worst is over.

 

President Johnson has commited a further 50,000 US troops to the conflict in Vietnam.

Monthly draft calls will increase from 17,000 to 35,000 - the highest level since the Korean War, when between 50,000 and 80,000 men were called up each month.

It will take the US force in Vietnam up to 125,000 but officials say at this stage demands should be met by conscription, without calling upon the reserves.

I do not find it easy to send the flower of our youth...into battle President Johnson

Speaking in a televised address from the White House President Johnson said: "We do not want an expanding struggle with consequences no one can foresee."

"Nor will we bluster, bully or flaunt our power. But we will not surrender, nor will we retreat," he continued.

The President gave the news conference after a week of intensive talks with senior military and security advisers in Washington.

He explained the decisions were in response to requests made by General Westmoreland, the US Commander in the South Vietnamese capital, Saigon.

Mrs Johnson and her daughter looked close to tears as Mr Johnson admitted: "I do not find it easy to send the flower of our youth, our finest young men, into battle."

The US leader also made clear his desire for peace and recalled the - unsuccessful - efforts of 40 countries to bring an end to the fighting on 15 occasions.

He called upon the United Nations to redouble its efforts to restore peace to Vietnam and detailed a personal letter to that effect being personally delivered to the UN Secretary-General, U Thant, in New York by the new US Ambassador to the UN, Arthur Goldberg.

The Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, and the Secretary of Defence, Robert S McNamara, are to persuade Congress of the need to finance the US' new military commitments, in the light of a reduced defence budget this year.

President Johnson explained: "We intend to convince the communists that we cannot be defeated by force of arms or by superior power."

 

(c) BBC, All Rights Reserved

Original text found @ [news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/july/28/newsid_2754000/2754033.stm)