Really haven’t had the gumption or self reflection to want to sit down and write something that I find meaningful. Which are the things I want to post on this website for the most part. My last poem did enough for some time.
I do however find other ways to continuously write and one of them is watching & reviewing film. Recently I have been introduced to letterboxd.com and have created an account. If you have interest in any writing I may be doing in between things that get posted here then that would be the place to go.
Megan and I often watch a new movie together every day so the profile will be updated regularly with films I watch or re-watch. This is a way for me to keep myself motivated about writing without bogging my site down with things like movie reviews.
The Elms’ movie collection as of 8/31/2017.
We have a lot of movies and the collection is growing every day, it is one of my very favorite forms of art & media. A form that my grandfather really spent a lot of time nurturing within me.
If you have interest in my thoughts and writing in general you may like this letterboxd profile.
I just wrote this about… ten minutes ago while watching Alan play Metal Gear Solid Five and listening to Maurice Jarre’s magnificent score for Lawrence of Arabia, on a first print vinyl.
Took a great motorcycle ride to Ma & Pops’ house and finally got a hold of my moleskines from when I was in college. Those always prompted me with their size to write the very particular kind of poetry I love to write. I was sitting on the couch and begining to wallow about still not being able to write poetry.
So I said, “why not?” to myself, picked one of the unused ones except for a single line — crossed it out and began to write beginning with today’s date. This post will be going up at 4:00PM Sunday, but I am typing this out at 11:50PM Saturday night. May 5th, 2017. My second poem now in many years.
Vinyl.
These records we listen to give us such bliss,
With many a note,
or just a few.
The obsidian architecture spins weaving the sweetest of nectar.
For the scene we see in abstract is an indoor campfire,
with no matches,
but tracks.
Catharsis. One of my very favorite words. Football is something that gives me great catharsis. Right up there with being tattooed, & riding my motorcycle. I love to watch football with my family, or even entirely by myself at home. Because of the great catharsis it gives me to get emotionally invested in my team and the game — and give in to those emotions entirely during it.
This is something I wish I understood more when playing ice hockey. I’d like to have been more emotionally invested in the game, anything, in those times. Though I guess when you don’t understand emotions at all it’s hard to understand your own — as well as when and how to harness them.
I really wasn’t the biggest football fan until turning nineteen, going crazy, meeting Megan, & starting mandatory therapy. Now, I was a Broncos fan — since the start of the 1997 and Super Bowl XXXII winning season. Which was when I was getting Sports Illustrated Kids in Andover. Many articles about Terrell Davis & John Elway, my then idols, were consumed. I was also eight years old and had spent a fair chunk of my life outside of the US playing soccer as a goalie on concrete during lunch. My first real exposure to football that I can actively remember was after moving to Andover, and watching Super Bowl thirty-two on the fancy big screen.
I went to a number of Broncos games and CU Buffs games growing up. Relatives will tell you I’ve also been to a handful of Patriots practices at Gillette field, don’t believe them. Not a word, I won’t admit to it any longer.
Football just didn’t click with me, though. Elway’s retirement and Davis’ subsequent injury-forced one are the first real heartbreaks I can remember. Aside from losing my great-grandmother, Nana. So I kind of forsake the sport for a good amount of time.
It just awoke in me one day, though. I can’t even remember what caused it.
My brother has given me a hard time and tried to postulate that it was because of the Tim Tebow season. However I have fine evidence of me watching the Broncos have a grand ol’ time fielding Kyle Orton — and watching that garbage fire of a season before 2011 when he was thankfully replaced part way through. I remember really disliking Josh McDaniels as well.
Of the ones I have seen, that 2011 season is the most hilariously successful season the Broncos have had. Watching that glorified halfback attempt to hit the broad side of a barn for three quarters, then have the defense & Von Miller’s Defensive Rookie of the Year season — keep it close to save his butt. The guy continued on to pull out some halfback/quarterback nonsense, to win the game.
It must have been so infuriating for the opposing fans. Then there’s that wildcard playoff game against the Steelers. Where the Broncos won the first overtime game with the updated rules in league history — on the first play. On a Tim Tebow pass of about 15 yards to Demaryius Thomas who took it to the house.
What I really want to talk about though is the stadium experience, that’s my favorite.
There’s absolutely nothing like it for me. I have been to a lot of places and experienced many different things, going to a live NFL football game is one of my very favorites. I’ve certainly found it to be one of the greatest natural highs there is for me. Even starting with waking up on game day. Megan and I, or anyone that I go with, typically make a whole day of it. It’s a vacation, for that day, to Mile High and the surrounding area.
Orange, a sea of orange as far as the eye can see is something that just gives me such warmth and comraderie. I feel like I am a part of something that is just in general positive and fun. I’ve met and shared so many laughs with strangers whose faces I will never forget and names I will never remember.
Usually we sit in the five-hundreds which are the highest section up. I prefer to sit in the center field and those are the most affordable tickets for us at this time. I also like to be able to see the whole game. As long as I can read the numbers I am good, and there’s not a bad seat at Mile High for seeing digits effectively. It’s live all-22 film, I will never get enough of it.
That’s what’s so frustrating about watching the sport on TV sometimes. They spend so much time focusing on the football and the quarterback that you honestly don’t see all that much. There’s been so many times now I have been at a game and I see a big bomb in our favor or theirs before it even happens. I love groaning or gasping before the ball is even thrown — it’s exhilarating.
Speaking of exhilarating, let’s talk about the crowd.
That’s where most of the catharsis comes from. Starting with the walk up the ramps to the five-hundreds where I can see the crowd below and there’s just such anticipation that can be felt in the air. The excitement is palpable and invigorating! It just makes me feel satisfied with life. That I am at a place with all kinds of human beings just trying to get through this chaotic journey of ours. This is something we all share — regardless of religion, political beliefs, or any other such thing that causes people to not like each other for whatever reason; we share this. We are all football fans and share a love of something together.
Of course there are always jerks that either drink too much or take rivalry too seriously. However, for the most part the grand majority of the crowd I have found to be good respectable people looking to have a good time. I’ve had great heckling sessions with all kinds of opposing fans where we end the game no matter the score with, “good game” and shake hands.
When kickoff — kicks off, that is when I get to release any frustration, anger, depression, or any other in a breadth of emotions that just need release.
One of my favorite things about Mile High is not only how loud people are with their vocal cords. It’s the stomping. You can literally feel it throughout the stadium. From what I understand it isn’t anywhere near what the experience was in the original Mile High — but it’s good enough for me.
I get to roar at the top of my lungs. It’s absolutely liberating in the best of ways. My parents always taught me not to boo excepting very particular circumstances, and not to curse because there’s always going to be kids. So I end up yelling things like “Get him! Saaaaaaaack! Pansy! Laaaaamo!” or I just yell with all my might. Sometimes I will go so hard I almost pull a muscle in my core. I have before, it’s not fun — but it is at the same time. I do slip up and say nasty things sometimes, I try not to though.
Even when we lose, I feel better about life after a football game; that’s true catharsis.
I think these are things we need to find, escape — release. I’m learning as I get older that true experiences are meaning more to me too. I absolutely love video games and comic books, but there’s really not anything like actually going out and experiencing the world. Doing something with my body and with other people. It’s making me feel more connected and less of a meaningless speck.
At the end of the day because I am quite a bit of a nihilist (sans the rejecting moral principles portion) — I still think I am a meaningless speck, on a meaningless rock, in an ocean of so many meaningless rocks and stars that if you tried to visualize the number it would wrap around the Earth many times over.
But, in a way, isn’t that what makes life and this existence beautiful?
That if all I have, is this and these experiences? That I do what I can now because there is nothing, and no one after? It makes me feel pretty optimistic, really. The fact that I am happy and enjoying my life. This website in a morbid kind of way is meant to be my mark. Regardless of if people like this or want to read it, find meaning or not — I am finding meaning in it.
Just like football. What football means to me is that it is absolutely a part of me. It gives me great catharsis and happiness. It allows me to push on and appreciate what I have when I wonder, truly, if anything myself and we as a species does matters. Because honestly, from what I know about space, stars, time, & the universe — it would go on without a sneeze if we disappeared tomorrow.
That makes football, and life, so spectacular to think about for me. I’m really happy I get to experience these things, with people I love. That is what the meaning of life is to me.
Music is something I have a very personal relationship with. So personal I very rarely share my music interests with others. So personal that I have stopped listening to entire genres of music because I could not control my emotions or desired actions while listening.
Music is so personal to me I literally feel it inside of me. My favorite thing to do during my substance abuse days was to sit by myself in nature, on LSD, and listen to music. To let it absolutely consume me. My every atom. That is, to this day, my favorite experience in life. I don’t know if that will ever change.
I’m starting to finally be able to feel music again. I can listen to Metal again which is fantastic. I’m actually going to a Slayer & Lamb of God concert this summer with my cousin, Ryan. Well, Megan’s cousin, but he’s mine now too. I don’t think of him as anyone but my cousin, and family. That’s why I am comfortable with going to this concert with him. This concert in this genre of music that means so much to me.
After I went crazy music was dead to me.
Completely, utterly, unquestionably, dead. I could not feel it inside of me. It gave me no pleasure. People would try to share their music with me and I would pretend to care. I couldn’t listen to anything. Not the Rolling Stones, Faith No More, Metallica, Tech, Rage, Queen, Tribe, Common, Zep, and on and on and on.
It’s one of the worst experiences I have dealt with — and it lasted years. It really wasn’t until the last few months where music made me really want to move around again. I’ll never be much of a dancer, but I’m saying that I wouldn’t even tap my foot to a beat at this time.
There were spurts, surely. But it wasn’t as deep or as consistent as it is right now. I’m open to and discovering new music. Something I haven’t done again until recently. For the longest time I was either listening to sports radio or film scores — as I never lost my love and emotion for film, so their scores were a form of music I was still capable of connecting with. Kind of a funky roundabout, but it really helped me cope with the issue for a long time.
It’s Metal and my love for Paul Perkins that has brought music back to me.
My cousins Kevin & Paul are the biggest metal heads I know. They were just finally getting myself and my brother into it right before I went insane. Alan went on to become just as big of a metal head as the both of them. I, on the other hand, could not listen to it any longer. I was too angry and it put me in even more of an angry place. Even when the songs weren’t inherently angry! Something like Amon Amarth’s Live Without Regrets is just super optimistic and inspiring.
Unfortunately Paul is no longer with us, but I like to think that part of the reason I am able to really connect with music again is because of that loss.
The journey of me being able to connect with music again can be traced back to a trip myself, Alan, & Kevin took to a record store in San Francisco while visiting Alan together — not very long after Paul’s passing.
This was the first exclusively vinyl store I have ever been into. My brother is hugely into collecting vinyl records like I am with physical movies, so he was super excited to show us his digs. There was a great smell in there. Like the kind you get when opening a brand new paperback book. It just wafts of creativity awaiting consumption.
Rows of boxes with hand-written cardboard signs denoting genres, sales, & price ranges. Records just littered in organized chaos, awaiting fingers to eagerly rifle through them. It’s here that I just went off on my own and started looking around. Alan wanted Kevin and I to each pick out something so we could listen to it together. Alan, Paul, Kevin, & I spent many hours solely listening to music together. Music was our language. I just wasn’t feeling it, though. I didn’t know what I was interested in picking up — because I wasn’t interested at all. I just wanted to get out of there.
Then I watched them look through the Metal section, and walk away from it without anything in hand.
I thought to myself “Well, if there’s nothing interesting for them, maybe I can find something.”
That’s all it took. I walked over to the left most box in the section that was facing the wall and started flipping through each record. I’m the kind of person that loves to judge a piece of artwork by the cover chosen for it. If you don’t put effort into your presentation then don’t expect me to put effort into what is behind it. “Don’t judge a book by its cover” has been far more relevant to me in life when it comes to people than when it comes to actual books.
And then I saw it, Tempest, by Lycus. There was something about the album artwork that just spoke to me. It felt like something that if showed to Paul he would not allow me to put down. He would grab my shoulder vigorously and bring his head close to my ear with a “Duuuuuuude! That’s wicked!” So I called Kevin & my brother over and they did something really similar. It was everything I wanted it to be.
Lycus is a specific kind of Metal, Doom Metal. It’s very melodic, deliberate, and patient. There’s a lot of chanting, and it just had a way of worming into my bones when we listened to it. It’s a kind of music that really allowed me to embrace my torture and grow with it rather than fight it.
Since the three of us first listened to that album my connection with music has been like a tarp full of water with a small tear in it. It starts as a small drip, but as it continues to rain, and slowly drops — that rip ever grows.
I realized today after having reconnected myself with music like Bullets & Octane, Coheed & Cambria, and even the original World of Warcraft scores — the tarp is almost entirely gone now.
I can bask in the rains of music again.
It’s a really liberating thing to be honest. I missed it quite a bit. I’m pretty sure human beings as a species in general share this same connection with music that I have. So you can understand when I tell you that having music dead to me is maybe the worst thing out of this journey that I have experienced.
The greatest gift I can give Paul in his passing is what I am doing now. I am using his loss, and my heartbreak from it to make me a more complete person again. It’s what he would want. He would be so excited to hear that I am going to the concert this summer. I only wish I didn’t have to carry him with me and that I could actually have him there next to me.
Thank you for inspiring me, Paul. Thank you for bringing music back to me. I miss you.
This was something I wrote August, 2008. I remember sitting in the shade of a tree with the moleskine my group teacher, Leslie, from high school gifted me. One of the greatest gifts ever given to me today.
When she gifted it to me, she told me that I reminded her of Ernest Hemingway. That may be the highest compliment anyone has even given me.
I just sat down to write something, anything, and it ended up being about a girl in the dorms I had a crush on. I can’t remember her name, and she never heard it.
I was feeling very alone and scared at this time. I had just recently moved to Hawai’i and I am a fairly strong introvert. I had not yet met the people who were to become my close friends.
Thoughts.
I plan to finish this whole notebook.
As I sit here writing in the fine lines that fabricate recorded thoughts.
On pre-cognitive set pathways that lead to nowhere.
And nowhere?
Led me somehow through all these pages of turmoil, to you.
Why you?
Because the mind tends to wander to those emotions,
that incite feedom,
and hope.
The burning fire…
colorless,
but with untamed form.
A full frontal force that fascinates the multifaceted shatters,
that are my feelings.
One of the things I am doing with this site to keep me inspired even when I am not — is to find words I love and write about them. I want to take one word and turn it into something more.
Recently I was incredibly inspired and am feeling a bit drained. However, I feel like a difference between a successful writer, and a hobbyist — is that they can push through times of drainage and learn to force inspiration out of themselves.
So that is what I am doing today. I picked one of the tens of drafts of words saved during times of inspiration and am looking to find more within it. I believe I have chosen a good word for my first drainage since starting this website.
Today I want to write about the word imagination and what is has meant to me as a person.
My imagination has gotten me through just about every day that I can remember. From as early as nap time making finger fights between knights and dragons — which truthfully just looked like two hands kicking each other.
Imagination is something I never, ever want to lose. It’s something that I feel I have certainly lost sharpness to over the years. Even feel like part of me starting this website was to fight for it back. To not just sit on the couch and satisfy my creative desires by consuming others’ hard work. Not to say that is a bad thing, but I have spent a lot of time in the last few years just consuming media wracking my brain for what I could do with myself.
What I could apply myself to on my free time that could be supported with my full-time job, while not distracting me from it. I’ve needed a true outlet for my imagination for some time. I work in design for a living, but there are guidelines, and decisions that are not my own. I do not begrudge these things, this is part of being a working professional and I quite like what I do and how I do it.
I did need something that is 100% completely my own however. Where I make the decisions, and choose how things look, feel, and express.
When I first created this website I didn’t even know how it would be perceived. And I am not saying it is a success, far from it. However it is already a success in the way I have wanted it to be.
I have spent the last week crying, almost daily, about the things that have been written. I have broken through a wall of creativity that has been blocked (excepting small, important doses) for nearly 10 years. I’ve been able to use my imagination again.
I love to use my imagination in my writing, even when writing non-fiction. Which I seem to be writing a lot more lately and find funny. I grew up always wanting to use my imagination to write fiction, but believe I am better served using it to illustrate real things, and real perspectives. At least at this time, that’s what’s pushing me to write more.
I don’t necessarily think people deserve to or should read these things, but want to get them down. I want them out of my head for more space for more imagination so that I can continue to do things with these words that have been missed so much.
Words and imagination go hand in hand in for me. My parents spent a lot of time teaching me the value of money growing up — but one thing they also valued was books.
My Mom would take me to the book store to buy one any time I finished the one I was previously reading. No chores needed, nothing. They would buy me books without question while growing up and I cannot thank them enough for this. I was reading adult literature like the Lord of the Rings by around 11-12, and studying it.
That is how I learned to love words and how they can be used to paint any kind of picture for any kind of mind.
Books and books and books and books. So many books that I don’t even really read them any more. I read way more comic books. Almost 100% of my actual personal reading for entertainment comes from comic books these days.
One of the reasons for this is that I really don’t want my own imagination, and my own prose affected by another’s. I really need to keep myself away from those things if for no other reason than I am terrified of accidentally being influenced by something — and then being looked at as a fake because of it.
I know I am already influenced by everything I have ever read. Though now I feel like I have a strong grasp on the English language, and would be better served by speaking to an editor to learn more.
Maybe this is a bad choice, I am not sure of it, but I am not interested in reading books so much right now. We still have a bit of a library in our house — sometimes I will pick up a book already read and crunch a good 250 pages into it before it goes on the stack next to my side of the bed, almost certain not to be cracked open again.
I’ve been trying to find some larger meaning here, but this time I’m not so sure there is one.
I just love the word imagination, and what it brings with it. I want to make sure I never lose mine, because I feel if I do I will lose a very large piece of what makes me.
Trevor's Notepad 