Ethan

The end of an era, or not

2001-06-26T07:40:41Z

Well, I'm keeping this journal alive so that people can still read my old entries if they want, but all new entries will be at http://www.livejournal.com/users/ethics/ so you can mark that on your friends if you so wish...

Breathe, Ethan

2001-06-23T22:53:42Z

Well, I just didone of the ballsiest things in my life...which probably means that my life hasn't been very ballsy, but hey, it was a big step for me. I sent of that letter to Michelle telling her how I feel about her, and sent her the things I've written about her. Included are 'the goodbye wave', the poem I think I titled imperfection (the one where I ramble and lose my train of thought), the letter about night swimming, You Don't See, and No Tears. Now it's just waiting and hoping. Cross your fingers guys. Er, gals
Plus I got some pimpin avaitor shades at longs today for 10 bucks...
Here something I've been writing in my head.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A woman sits in front of the crackling fire, wondering why there aren't any chesnuts roasting 'cause, y'know, it's that time of year. She sinks a little lower beneath the quilt and understands why know one else lies underneath it, cause it's, y'know, that time of year .
Her mother made the quilt for cold NYC winters, but she lives in a cottage in Pennsy now and her mother is coughing violently in a bed in Georgia. The fire crackles and burns a little and she understands why apartment buildings were no longer and option and why snow on the city streets couldn't stay beautiful forever. Even when it melts in the spring it burns her hands where she threw snowballs and stuck carrots and corncob pipes into snowmans faces, creating life out of nothing but cruel weather and warm soup waiting for her back at home. On the seventh floor.
The door was missing a hinge but still worked fine if you put some muscle into it and there was a window but no balcony, but there were still flowers growing beneath the sill, perrenial or seasonal, she can't remember but it doesn't matter. You couldn't see up to the seventh floor from the streets, and that's where everybody was anyways.
As she watches the fire lose another ember, a man walks along a street in San Francisco, pulling an elbowpatched sportjacket tighter around strong shoulders. His jaw is hardened from the work he does but his shoulders just don't tire. He's not that kind of man.
He has a bouquet of roses he bought for the girl who just dumped him on his cell-phone and steps over puddles so that his pantlegs won't grow wet. The roses are a bakers dozen. The pants are freshly ironed. He stops at a random stairwell, sits and ponders. Thinks a little about every cell-phone break up, every blind date set up, every promise gone awry, and how he now sits in a random stairwell watching the street traffic and how incomplete he is fighting against eyebrows wanting to sag with the age of twenty-nine and alone.
And she feels the warmth of the fire diminish and the comfort of the quilt dissipate and knows that her mother has stopped coughing violently. Stopped breathing. She thinks in incomplete metaphors how loneliness is a dying ember in a quiet cottage and suddenly life is a drastic measure in itself, juxtaposing the quiet calm with the dissarray of thought jumbled in to minds in two cities following the same track down the same road.
It's a wicked twist of fate that would leave two people so alone, her a dying ember in a cold cottage and him a bouquet of roses just searching for a destination. It's a sad story, but I guess that's just the way that life can be.

hmmmn...

2001-06-23T06:28:41Z

Well, tonight, for the first time in my life, I was told I was beautiful. It came unsolicited, and from a man. No, not a man, 4 men. This table of 4 gay dudes at my work (french restaraunt) were blatantly hitting on me. It was...interesting. It wasn't really scary, or disturbingly wierd. Just a little odd. And it wasn't like *wink-wink, nudge nudge on the DL. I mean, they asked me how old I was and said "damn" when they said I was 17. They invited me to a bbq tommorow. It's a little odd. Hell, I've never had four people hit on me at once before, much less four men. Frankly I'm a little flattered. There was another pair of guys, who I can't be sure were gay, but they were putting out some strong vibes on the gay-dar, and I think they were checking me out too. I bleached my hair on Tuesday, I think it may be putting out a gay vibe. Hmmn...maybe it'll help me get some female action though, if I spin it right...as the Bloodhound Gang said 'chicks dig guys that are queer'

This is one of the few rhyming poems that I've written that I actually like

2001-06-21T05:06:25Z

Left Alone

Left alone and now it seems
these wicked lies entombed in dreams
fly quickly from my holy land
and carry me from a friend indeed

Slender fingers grace my spine
but still I know the hand is mine
the others will not walk my sand
the beach is rough, though grains are fine

But still I long to pleasure in
the innate warmth of your tan skin
If you would close me in your hand
I'd be content to live within.

To watch you dance, to make you smile
to, by your aid, my fears exhile.
If you would hold me in your hand
I'd be content to stay a while.

this was written sometime last winter...I remembered it earlier today, and wanted to post it.

expirimentation

2001-06-20T23:12:15Z

This is paragraph one of the body on html

this line is second

the third line is in italics

this is bold

this is emphasized
~~and scratch that~~

this is strongly emphasized

this is italic bold

Is blinking textannoying?

ethanissad @ 2001-06-18T23:18:00

2001-06-19T06:21:56Z

You don't know me well enough to patronize me

No tears...

2001-06-18T06:06:43Z

A boy plays guitar in the bed of a truck.
A starry night.

Girl lays head on cold metal,
feeling almost found,
vibrations move through the night.

Boy strains fingertips.
Girl, relaxed, eyes close,
world haze fades and tapers.

Boy's eyes redden, no tears.
Boy breathes a whisper,
a song of a river, water,
cold and invititing.

Boy's eyes redden, fights
back tears. Girl, one
eye opens, sadness
ensues, rivers consume,
whole is gone, and only
two seperate shells, empty
on the bank, can mark the
passing, tiretreads, tearless
starry nights and betrayal,
boy's fault. Boy loses himself,
girl does not feel found.

Boy's eyes redden, no tears,
salt on banks, accumulated salts,
years of quiet passings, whispers,
breaths, losing of oneself beneath
cool waters, never to be found.

Girl finds loss too profound, lays
head on cold steels, closes eyes.
Boy's eyes redden, no tears,
whispers, sad songs too lost
for shorelines and truckbeds.

You don't see

2001-06-17T08:38:48Z

I'm finding
it hard
to breathe

effectively.

You see, it's written on his arm,
and she clings to it.
On his arm, and she hangs on it.
And if I,
if I, wrote it on my hand, would
she cling, hang, drape herself
on me?
Would she, maybe,
help me hang on?

Help me, hang on.

I seem to be losing control.
You see, I'm not as stable
as I look, and I don't know
why you can't seem to see
the pain in my eyes, it feels
so apparent behind such
a thin guise, but you just
allow me to dwell within
lies, but I can't seem to
feel the gaping wound in
your side only wait
to see you just to feel my
heart rise, but hope

BUT

HOPE.

I should know by now not to hope.

I should know myself.
A little better than that.
Because hope is for those
who still
have
a chance.

And I don't see why it's
so hard to see
me;
a lonliness so profound
that it nips at the heels
of half-written mental
notes to loved ones,
suicide scratch-pads of a
healthy young boy, feet
that won't stop walking,
a mind that won't stop
ripping
and tearing
and shredding
itself, whole.

It's in the eyes.
Jesus Christ, can't you see?
It's in my eyes.

Searching for something.

I'd settle
for complete
loss
of muscle control.

You see, I'm not
as stable as I used
to be. I am not a walking
epitome of charm, humour,
a divine creation of
influence, ability. Or
any
such
attributes.

You see, it's written on his arm,
and she clings to it.
On his arm, and she hangs on it.
And if I,
if I, wrote it on my hand, would
she cling, hang, drape herself
on me.
Would she, maybe,
help me hang on?

Help me, hang on.

I missed sunrise
watching you breathe
softly,
quietly.
Beneath his arm.
and peaceful
-ly
tearing pieces of me
away.

I can't seem to find them.
You see, it's in my eyes.
Deep down,
below the thick matted
brow, beneath tattered
lids.

You do see, don't you?
Please?

Here's a woohoo for the graduating (now graduated) class of 2001

2001-06-16T21:09:36Z

And yep, yesterday went from good, to better, to Black Thursday. I just want to roll up into a little ball and die. The day started nicely, went in to school sometime around 10:30, found I did pull off a 4.0 this semester. It's good to finish my last semster of senior year strongly. From there I went to graduation practice, sat with Michelle and Steph and Monica, the group that seems to be becoming my new friends. I'm not sure how much I fit with them, but it does feel like I fit with them more than I have anywhere else since middle school, except maybe this year, when I just hung out with myself. Alone seems to be the best fit for me.
Okay, okay, so we're are just hangin out at grad. practice, talking and the such. The conversation came around to "Night Swimming", which I now know Michelle (and the others too, but especially Michelle) also love that song. Well after grad. practice I went with them to Stephs graduation party. Monica drove herself, me and Michelle rode with Steph. It was a good ride over, a nice little shindig, and a nice ride back to graduation.
So from there we graduated. Semi-exciting, but by the end of the ceremony I was a little malaise. I went home and talked with relatives for a short while, and then was off back to Grad. Night. I was hanging out with Michelle and Steph and Monica still, and Mike was there now too (he was at the party to, I just forgot to mention it).
Well Grad. Night started out fun, but a couple hours after it started Mike and Michelle seemed to be, I dunno how to say it: overfriednly to each other. That's not a great way to put it though. Here: Mike and Michelle have been a couple before, before I knew 'em, and it looked like they were in the process of getting back together.
And that, that on its own, was enough to send me off into one of my damn depressive moods for the rest of the night. I just wanted to sit alone and roll up into a fetal curl. I was just in a bad mood the rest of the time.
It would have been a lot easier if Mike were a total asshole or something, but he is an all around good guy, and I can't hold it against either of them. But what do I do now? I'm still seriously pining for Michelle. It hurts so bad just to see Michelle with someone else just when I felt like I was starting to get close to place where I would be comfortable enough to make my move.
I'm not sure what to do now...I'm torn between telling Michelle that something else came up next Tuesday and I can't go to her party (because I don't know how much I can handle being there and watching them be a couple)...or going to the party and then sometime shortly afterwards send Michelle a letter and the things I wrote about her and see what happens. The only thing that is not an option is to do nothing, just go to the party, keep trying to hang out with them throughout the summer and just try to bear with it. And knowing myself that is probably what will happen. It's not easy, it's not easy to be me.

And here I am, with no one to talk to but my indigestion

2001-06-15T17:09:53Z

Some of the Spanish may not be correct, I took two years of it, and that way over two years ago now, so excuse any mistakes, and let me know if there are any...

Summer
------------
Tacos y mariscos
sold aqui

warmth

sun-glazed skin, the
type of honey-laquer
brown, baked in through
years
and years,
round-bellied boys,
shirtless, warm
through and through

y la sol y la panaderia,
los ninos, los hombres.
Las cantadoras.
En la sol,
the odor of fresh-baked
bread, losing itself
through mottled lawns
to dimple-cheeked
round-bellied
brown boys and girls,
el requinto en la izquierda,
lively plucking at the strings
of the warm spanish ghetto.

It's easier to be alive
with the window rolled down,
and feeling summer
fading in and out
of espanol.

Driftwood

2001-06-12T21:33:51Z

this is a story I wrote earlier in the semester in my creative writing class

Driftwood

Before we set sail, America always seemed so far away, but the dream was closer. Twenty-five years later Cuba is just a next-door neighbor, but the distance seems the same. I know that I can't turn back the years now, but at the ripe age of 7, the crashing of the waves seemed just as inconquerable. Here I sit now in an eighth story corner office, in all the faded glory of pinstriped suits and power ties. And from this eighth story office
in Miami, I watch the calm lapping of the waves against the shorline every day and I remember.
My Mama and Papa hadn't told us that we were leaving Cuba. They said we were going on vacation. So me, my brother Matthew, and my sissy Alicia all packed one pair of clothes into an old mahogany suitcase. Matthew brought a Bible, Sissy brought an old picture of herself and my uncle Enrique. Enrique was me, Matthew, and Alicia's favorite uncle. I don't remember much about him, just the way his olive-tanned skin was always warm and how he
would smile consistently every day when the wind would rustle through the palm trees. Enrique had left for America too, the year before, but we didn't know if he'd made it. I still don't know.
So we took that heavy mahogany suitcase and loaded it into the back of our old beaten stationwagon. My mother and father handled the rest of the packing, so the three of us were oblivious to the shabby life jackets and makeshift navigation charts stuffed amongst the clutter of the back seat.
We sang songs at first during the hour long drive, until a calm silence washed over us, sinking each of us deeper in our reflections on the 'what ifs?' and 'how comes?' of our innocent young existence. None of us were sure what exactly was going on , but we knew that something big was in the works. Somtime, five or ten minutes before we got to the beach, the silence became awkward, but us three young children were all too frightened to
desecrate a quiet that was the height of either holiness or unholiness. We didn't know which, and it didn't matter anyways.
So three scared children and two desperate children pulled up to the beach in a rusty stationwagon, with only the cough and sputter of the engine to mark our presence. Matt, Alicia and I stayed in the car, glancing solemnly at each other while our parents unloaded the contents of the car onto a rusted red platform with a hand-sewn sail. Calling it a boat would be a stretch. I remeber the fight my mother got in with Papa when he loaded his
old guitar into the boat. They yelled for ten minutes, the fight ended abruptly. I'd never seen such anger in Papa before. I didn't know what to make of it, only my mother was never the same afterwords. She just seemed....lonely I guess, but not exactly.
That's when we set off from a white-sand beach in a rusted-metal dreamship. Destination: America. Time passed quickly the first few days. The dream was fresh and we could taste it in the pungent, pervading salt-air. Papa would play the energetic, warm tunes that the local Mariachis had played. My mother sat at the other end of the boat and stared into the choppy seas. In the noon heat of the third day, Papa broke a string. We heard a
sudden snap and looked to see Papa craddling his guitar and praying frantically, his body shaking as he rushed repeatedly through Hail Marys. A storm came in that night, swirling about us and forbidding any hopes if just a quick flurry. I was the youngest so I was stuffed down beneath the pile of life jackets.
When I awoke the next morning Matthew and my mother were gone. I didn't ask questions. No one would have answered. A melancholy sadness prevailed. Not the kind of sadness that overwhelms, but the kind that consumes you and makes you listless: the kind of sadness that you can't fight. Papa played long, sorrowful songs for me and Alicia. He broke two more strings that day, and two more the next day, spiraling downward a little more each
time. When Alicia and I went to sleep that night Papa was still plying whatever he could on his one remaining string and starin of into the distance with glazed eyes.
When we woke again the last string was gone and we couldn't wake Papa. We said a short prayer and sent him out to rest with the ocean. From then on it was just holding on. Alicia read silently from Matthew's Bible and I, I clung the that stringless guitar like driftwood, humming the tunes that the local Mariachis had used to play. We floated two more days before we hit land.
There was no white dove with an olive branch, no grand entrance. This was the American Dream, and it tasted bitter like the salt-air.

This is one of those things I wrote that she will probably never see because I am a chickenshit

2001-06-12T20:35:26Z

Michelle,

"Night Swimming" is one of the two songs that can almost bring me to tears. I put it on tonight and thought about your beauty. I can picture us sitting in the bed of a pick-up truck, and you would know that I am prone to quiet contemplation and how I smell like lawn clippings, and I would know how cold your hands are by the way they rest on my stomach. And I would let you know that all I know of Keruoac I read off of a jacket cover, and I would know that you are as beautiful as the way Micheal Stipe's voice cracks when he intones that "night swimming deserves a quiet night."
It really does, and it just makes me feel like me and you, the water and the night and the quiet would all fit so well together into something that I've never had before.

Ethan

note to readers: to get the total effect of this, listen to REMs "night swimming" (number 11 on the drive cd)

help!...I'm dying of foodlessness

2001-06-08T22:41:01Z

And this is about...[dramatic pause]... (you guessed it) Michelle

You,
you have squinty eyes,
and I,
I have bad teeth.

And I'm not sure what
I'm doing or what I'm
wanting or where I'm
going or what is it about
you that just makes me
want to say look: here's
me in all my imperfection
and if you can just accept
that then I know that
everything'll be all right, but
I don't know why I'm
still talking but not really
saying anything, I just
know I'm rambling and
shit I lost my train of thought
and all I see now is you.

And you,
you have your bad circulation
and I,
I have my bad skin.

And shit man,
what else could we really need?

For a laugh....

2001-06-06T23:04:47Z

This is the first thing written in my first writing notebook. I found it funny when I stumbled across it the other day...written circa de May 2000...laugh at my crap...it's a song, it's got a crappy rythm too

I'm the loser
Who never had a friend
I'm the has been
that has never been
I need to start again
I need to make amends
Things'll be better once I begin anew
Once I begin anew

I was the poor kid
who never had enough
Can't be the popular kid
without the popular stuff
I think I've had enough
I'm gonna give it up
Things'll be better if I just get a clue
I need to get a clue

I'm the happiest man
I have ever known
When I'm with myself
I am never alone
I need to let it go
so I can let it show
Then I know my problems will fade away.
I wish they'd fade away
Just like you
-------------------------
Note: I'm not really horny, I just wanted to see what the little face would look like...

This is about Jessica(see, I said I'd write about her...)

2001-06-06T22:49:08Z

You have such

pretty

intestines.
Don't you?

Your pitch has such a
fervid
disarray

(I see who you are)

You long but you don't
You scream at an unwilling host
and twist square hips for liberation

(but I see who you are)
You don't smile
when you dance.

this is about Michelle

2001-06-03T05:53:54Z

yeah, yeah, yeah, so I'm smitten again...shutup..heh

The Goodbye Wave
--------------------------------
Cool water. Warm air,
long summer nights.
Beads off my skin like rain.

Subtle drifts of summer wind
through casual autumn locks.
Soft smiles and pale-skinned laughs/

Ad how you left me smiling,
bathing in the warm afterglow
of a goodbye wave.

...

2001-06-02T07:21:12Z

Nothing like a school dance to make you want to put a bullet in your head...

Note to Jessica

2001-05-31T22:39:58Z

Fuck you for trying to dim the shine in my eyes.

whap-a-whap-a

2001-05-29T02:16:01Z

heh, I wrote this on the back of one of my precious poems yesterday night in a dimly lit cafe in San Francisco waiting for the poetry slam (which was awesome) to begin...

Erapt in a burlap sack.
A chronic coughing, walking, longing.
Quiet composure, near peace of mind,
smiling, eyes beeming, light energy feeding.
Our pulse is a rythm, our blood screaming:
music
music
music.

Our veins are a narrow conscience,
our blood is a turbulent scream,
a death worth dying over,
screaming, life teaming in corpulent veins,
seething and breathing an unreleased pain:
music
music
music.

Life is not made
for punchbowls
and wallflowers.

Semi-Prose

2001-05-24T23:44:59Z

Cigarette

Woman with protruding cheekbones draws at her cigarette with a diminished fervor. She fixes an impetuous glare on the half-eaten New York 9 oz. in front of her, medium well. She remembers every 3 month romance.
"Take this back, it's overcooked"
"Take this back, it's undercooked"
"Take this back it's overcooked"
Just right, the steak in smothered onions sits before her, half-eaten, leering at her in twisting flashes as she takes another drage from a cigarette that burns with a diminished intensity.
The creaking meal car offers no sanctuary and the click clack of railway wheels is only another clock. The clock on her watch is wound to tight. The band on the watch is latched too tight and her hand is red like the embers of a dying cigarette she holds with diminished circulation. The train rolls on at dusk with windows shut and tinted tight. Coal burns hot in the engine down to coal ashes rising smoke from the smokestack.
She stifles a diminished cry of admiration at a sincere smile from a waiter, red vested and desperately seeking validation. She looks away, straining eyes that burn with the same fire as the dying cigarette ember to see through tinted windows.
diminshed glory fades finaly away into the night, and she puts her cigarette out on the table.

I am Desperately Seeking validation...

2001-05-24T23:30:47Z

Mis-shapen

She is a girl of undeveloped hips
all straight lines and stares,
beaming white lies through happy eyes
in listless sockets,
walking heels on linoleum.

She is girl of subtle breasts,
dimpled and longing.
She is a naked child,
cold but not shivering.

She is not entranced.
She is not hypnotized.
She is a girl of small words,
pert lips and large nipples.

Misshapened and malformed,
beautiful.
She is a small, soft girl
of undeserving
and undeveloped hips.

Michelle is a beautiful thing

2001-05-21T23:25:07Z

She is. She has the type of soft white skin that just makes you want to glide your fingertips along it. Y'know, the find of lips that you just want to grace your own with, not suck face or anything but just a soft, barely touching kiss. She's an all around cool person, peacefull, calm, but has a sense of humor. She's intelligent, she's not whiny or bitchy in the least. I'd love to know her, to experience her...and not in a pervish way at all....just to have something like that in my life...But knowing myself, I'll never have the balls to approach her in any way...graduation will come and I'll go off to Fresno, she to Humbolt, we'll probably never see each other again. I probably wont even see her over the summer before moving out time comes...sometimes I hate myself for being a stupid shit like that.

New stuff, yeah....yeah....yeah

2001-05-20T16:02:23Z

You Are Famine
------------------------
Planet-eating supernova,
you are famine.
Slide peacefully, quietly
into a brand new disease.
You are my beautiful contagious.

My face throbs calling
for a new taste, but
your are not the flavor
I desire. You are bitter
and shrewd. And weak.
You are carcinogen.

I am a quiet longing.
You are a pestilence.
The night is a battleground.
and a ballroom. And a Mecca.

But if you'll please excuse me,
I have something in my eye.
(I think it's you).

And you win.

She's pissing me off...

2001-05-19T07:02:15Z

Jessica now totally aviods eye contact with me. Why can't girls be a little more honest when they shoot me down? Why all this 'lets just be friends' bullshit and then totally avoiding each other? Bullshit...girls suck, man

Nonfiction...

2001-05-19T06:42:42Z

Aurora's eyes whispered to me that she's cheating on Rudy with Salvador, and she hates herself for it.

And on another note, I want to have sex with Jenny, in a very shallow and meaningless way...