I don't like giving up on people, I really don't. When people hang by a thread, I try my best to reinforce it, best I can. I call people out of the blue to see if they're still alive. I go out of my way to drive to peoples' places, all over the damn state. Hell, I was the only person who called Nathan regularly after he was sent to Germany, and I wasn't even his closest friend. But do people ever call me out of the blue? Very rarely. Who went to your birthday party? Me. Who even so much as called me on mine? When was the last time anyone came to my house? Years? Sure, distance and time is a factor. I live out in the middle of nowhere. But has that stopped me from visiting people everywhere, from Kalamazoo to Lansing, to Detroit, to Chicago, to Sault St. Marie? No. And I'm the least likely to have the money for the trip…and I most definitely have the most unreliable vehicle. But I don't care. Even my closest friends never come out here. They complain when they have to drive 20 minutes out to my place. Yet, like clockwork, I drive my ass to their places a few times a week. It's not like anything particularly more interesting ever happens at their places, I just always go.

I'm kind of getting sick of peoples' apathy. And everyone being so egocentric. People not taking the time to listen. People always trying to get in the last word. People looking down their noses at me. People taking me for granted.

If I disappear, who'll notice?

" expect me like one waits for mail,
all lost dropped and cancelled.
like foreign post, i leave twice a day
but take a week to get there.

expect me like one waits for rain,
or sleet or hail or snowfall.
like foreign post, i'm lost on the way
and take a week to get there.

i want to be delivered
'til i'm gone gone gone.

the way it's sealed in my heart, i
t's guaranteed that i'm
in your hands

by morning, when you're ready
to read between the lines
and the paper isn't telling you anything.

if you miss me, drop me a line
in care of fin de siecle,
mit luftwaffe.

it's the end of the end of the end."

If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to have the courage to live it.

I am but one small instrument.

Hrm, the sounds of last summer are starting to be recirculated. Anyone know what I'm talking about? Of course there are cd's that you listen to, that compliment the mood you're already in, but theres just certain songs or albums that make me feel a certain way. I usually tuck them away for safe keeping, for those times when I think they'll be therapeutic. Summer is weird though. Only some albums are strictly summer albums. Albums that remind me of good times, hell, even bad times that somehow look sweeter looking back.

So it's June already. One month ago I was frying in the desert, worried how the semester would end, wondering how things would get done. Well everything got done. Now all I have is work. I've been kind of looking for a place in Lansing. Originally the plan was to move down with my friend Trevor and his buddy Tyler. Tyler was in the coast guard and he got a housing allowance. So I figured they'd be okay by themselves and began looking for a place with my old roommate, Adam, from my first year of college at Michigan State. He's still one of my good friends. One of those friends that I don't necessarily see all the time, but when we get the chance to hang out, we really just clique. Well as it turns out, Tyler dropped out on Trevor, so Trevor is sorta up shit creek without a paddle. I'd like to help him out but he doesn't seem to be showing much initiative to sign up for classes, look for a place to live, etc. For example, last week I said I'd take him in and get him registered for classes. We planned for Tuesday to be the day [yesterday], and he'd take the day off work. Well yesterday morning I get up extra early [for me, about 8am], But when I tried calling, he wasn't answering. So I go over there and he'd gone to work. He could have taken the day off because he works for his family. So basically I took a day off for nothing [and I could really use the money] and scrapped other plans to do this FOR HIM. He's been nothing but a good friend to me and has helped me out so much and I know we'd be good roomies but I don't like this flaking out shit. So I really don't know who I should be getting a place with…someone who is going to have a positive influence on my lifestyle or someone who I've been a little hellion with for years. Guess I'll figure it out, but it's gotta be soon.

OH yeah, did I mention I'm broke because they CUT my hours after school ended? Make checks payable to Bryan Robb. XO I love this shit.

That will be some other tribe, some other me. You'll hold it like it should be held. A glowing flask, an odalisque, a cherry red-ripe flame, with its selling points filled with the narcissism of a serpentine alma mater. Rip it off, tongue it up and chew it with your teeth. Your finger will trace the cracked glass, in its beauty and in its metaphor that you'll pretend you do not see. But you cannot run from something that has already caught you, already nailed its sweetness to your lips and sewn your eyelids with lace. Yes, I see you tracing the glass, but all that's there is a silhouette, a chalk outline of a soul-less you that shed its pristine aura forever ago. And right now I know what is happening. I know that this isn't all you, Isabel. After all, these are my eyes that see and not your emotions I feel. Maybe you need to be there. Maybe I do, too. It could be like old times, when you'd wet your lips and bite my cuff. When your teeth would clench and those lacey eyes would look up and puncture me.

words once came easily from lips and to paper
now there is no triumphant clause. no daydream memorandum. all is trite.
bed sheets only get soiled further and ashtray contents climb.
washes of gray and gold on walls from sunlight filtered through cloth haze.
words from voices that are not my own
words that make bad singing sweet.
and despite their sweetness contain no benevolence.

life has not been so succinctly self.
i have participated as three witnesses:
first, the barer of bad news. sinister and childish, where the only growth is cancerous.
next, the insecure. who has tasted truth, but remains disillusioned by the first.
finally, the other-worldly euphoria that floats in clouds, stair less and without law.
there are no more words. there is no feeling.
there is absolutely no balance.

read about it

i don't care who started what, this is just absolutely distrubing. i could vomit.

^
"Children cheered while bodies burned after an attack on American civilians working for Blackwater Security Consulting of Moyock, N.C"

^
"Iraqis chanted anti-American slogans in Falluja yesterday as burned bodies of Americans were suspended on a bridge over the Euphrates River."

FALLUJA, Iraq, March 31 — Four Americans working for a security company were ambushed and killed Wednesday, and an enraged mob then jubilantly dragged the burned bodies through the streets of downtown Falluja, hanging at least two corpses from a bridge over the Euphrates River.

Less than 15 miles away, in the same area of the increasingly violent Sunni Triangle, five American soldiers were killed when a roadside bomb ripped through their armored personnel carrier.

The violence was one of the most brutal outbursts of anti-American rage since the war in Iraq began more than a year ago. And the steadily deteriorating situation in the Falluja area, a center of anti-American hostility west of Baghdad, has become so precarious that no American or Iraqi forces responded to the attack against the civilians, who worked for a North Carolina company.

American officials said the civilians were traveling in two sport utility vehicles although some witnesses in Falluja said there were four. "Two got away; two got trapped," said Muhammad Furhan, a taxi driver.

It is not clear what the four Americans were doing in Falluja or where they were going. But just as they were passing a strip of stationery stores and kebab shops around 10:30 a.m., masked gunmen jumped into the street and blasted their vehicles with assault rifles. Witnesses said the civilians did not shoot back.

There are a number of police stations in Falluja and a base of more than 4,000 marines nearby, but even as the security guards were being swarmed and their vehicles set on fire, sending plumes of inky smoke over the closed shops of the city, there were no ambulances, no fire engines and no assistance.

Instead, Falluja's streets were thick with men and boys and chaos.

Men with scarves over their faces hurled bricks into the blazing vehicles. A group of boys yanked a smoldering body into the street and ripped it apart. Someone then tied a chunk of flesh to a rock and tossed it over a telephone wire.

"Viva mujahedeen!" shouted Said Khalaf, a taxi driver. "Long live the resistance!"

Nearby, a boy no older than 10 ground his heel into a burned head. "Where is Bush?" the boy yelled. "Let him come here and see this!"

Masked men gathered around him, punching their fists into the air. The streets filled with hundreds of people. "Falluja is the graveyard of Americans!" they chanted.

Several news crews filmed the mayhem. The images of a frenzied crowd mutilating bodies were reminiscent of the scene from Somalia in 1993, when a mob dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu. That moment shifted public opinion and eventually led to an American pullout.

The White House blamed terrorists and remnants of Saddam Hussein's former government for the attack. "This is a despicable attack," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, told reporters, adding that "there are some that are doing everything they can to prevent" a transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government on June 30.

American military officials said the violence in Falluja, however chilling, would not scare them away. "The insurgents in Falluja are testing us," said Capt. Chris Logan, a marine. "They're testing our resolve. But it's not like we're going to leave. We just got here."

Captain Logan, who is stationed at a large walled base on the outskirts of the city, said Falluja was becoming "an area of greater concern." Last week, a contingent of marines, who recently took over responsibility for Falluja from the Army, fought gunmen in a battle in which one marine, a television cameraman and several Iraqi civilians were killed.

"This is one of those areas in Iraq that is definitely squirrelly," Captain Logan said.

Many people in Falluja said they believed that they had won an important victory on Wednesday. They insisted that the four security guards, who were driving in unmarked sport utility vehicles, were working for the Central Intelligence Agency.

"This is what these spies deserve," said Salam Aldulayme, a 28-year-old Falluja resident.

Intelligence sources in Washington said the four were not working for the C.I.A. They worked for Blackwater Security Consulting of Moyock, N.C., providing security for food delivery in the Falluja area, according to a statement from the company. The occupation authorities have hired hundreds of private security guards for a range of duties.

Witnesses in Falluja said several of the men had Defense Department badges, though such identification is common for contractors working for the occupation. A senior military officer said the four were retired Special Operations forces — three Navy Seals and one Army Ranger. American officials declined to immediately identify the dead men.

In the last three weeks, more than 10 foreign civilians have been killed in Iraq, though no attack provoked the spasm of brutality that followed this one.

Since the war in Iraq began, Falluja has been a flash point of violence. Of all the places in Iraq, it is where anti-American hatred is the strongest. The area is predominantly Sunni Muslim. Many families remain loyal to the captured dictator, Mr. Hussein, who is also a Sunni Muslim. Over the years, Mr. Hussein cultivated a network of patronage and privilege among the tribes and elders of Falluja. Many became top army officers. Some ran big companies. When Mr. Hussein was ousted last April, the people here lost their jobs, their businesses and their power.

That set off a cycle of killing and responses, a bloody feud between a clannish society and occupiers from thousands of miles away. Last April, American soldiers killed more than 15 civilians at a demonstration in Falluja. In November, an American helicopter was shot down outside the town, killing 16. Townspeople danced on the wreckage.

In February, insurgents mounted a brazen daylight attack against a convoy carrying Gen. John P. Abizaid, the American commander in the Middle East. He escaped unscathed. But two days later, gunmen blasted their way into a Falluja jail, killing at least 15 police officers and freeing dozens of prisoners.

Last week, the First Marine Expeditionary Force formally took control of the city, population 300,000, which sits on a desert shelf about 35 miles west of Baghdad. Marine commanders said they were going to try a different approach from the Army, which had basically pulled back to bases ringing Falluja and left policing up to the locals.

"We're doing work outside the wire," Captain Logan said. "We're running patrols. We're rebuilding things. We're working with Iraqis."

Most of the Sunni Triangle, north and west of Baghdad, has become so unsafe that American forces stick to their bases, their movement usually limited to heavily guarded convoys.

Around 7 a.m. on Wednesday, an Army convoy passing through the town of Habbaniya, west of Falluja, rolled over an I.E.D., or improvised explosive device. The bomb was buried in the road and blew up under an armored personnel carrier, killing five soldiers. Roadside bombs are everyday occurrences in Iraq. But few have claimed as many casualties. "It was a very large I.E.D.," said Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, deputy operations director for the occupation forces.

A few hours later the men from Blackwater Security drove into downtown Falluja. After they were shot, the scene turned grisly. A crowd of more than 300 people flooded into the streets. Men swarmed around the vehicles. Some witnesses said the Americans were still alive when one boy came running up with a jug of gasoline. Soon, both vehicles were fireballs.

"Everybody here is happy with this," Mr. Furhan, the taxi driver, said. "There is no question."

After the fires cooled, a group of boys tore the corpses out of the vehicles. The crowd cheered them on. The boys dragged the blackened bodies to the iron bridge over the Euphrates River, about a mile away. Some people said they saw four bodies hanging over the water, some said only two. At sunset, nurses from a nearby hospital tried to take the bodies away.

Men with guns threatened to kill the nurses. The nurses left. The bodies remained.

Christine Hauser contributed reporting from Baghdad for this article.
(c) NYTIMES