lots of long walks and beaches. friends. sore backs, sore legs. working on patience. working on hope. pretty negative spaces within positive spaces. what a bullshit blog entry, thank god for this:

existence before essence

all my days on this planet have been spent developing a certain perspective, chosen freely but also gifted to me by chance. completing a book, ive realized, (though maybe it was once told to me and i'm recycling the concept, as it seems so often to turn out with my apparently and appallingly not-so-original thoughts), can be the most lonely experience i can possibly imagine. minutes and hours and days spent enveloped in the world of someone else, voyeuristic, experiencing the how and why of the way their world has been compartmentalized and ordered, only to come to its inevitable end, leaving me back in my own harshly concrete and unfantastical completely material 3 or 4 dimensional banal reality. words never quite transcending their inadequacies at transporting me totally inside of them, i'm left with my own disorganized cloud of swirling conjectures about what has brought me to this place in time. i'll never be able to live anyone else's life. this thought drains me. leaves me pondering the directionless meaninglessness of everything, just like my 11 year old self did with my first real flirtation with the idea that death exists. micah, a boy who i barely knew, but was certainly a friend of friends, fell from his rope swing, snapped his neck, died on the spot. the reality of his death coming so unexpectedly, it shattered any previous conceptions that the world was in any way ordered and intentional. this has been followed by the occasional relapses through the years with other friends of friends, marissa, eli, etc etc, no rhyme or reason to their deaths. the world just simply happens, with or without our compliance.

last night i danced alone in the dark on the top of a deserted and barren grassy hill overlooking the city of san francisco. absolutely no holding back, arms flailing and hips twisting and legs scuttering and sliding and slamming on the rocky path. transcending meaninglessness to a world of fuck the world, fuck meaning, fuck drama and insecurity and earthly worries like how the fuck am i gonna afford to go on living like this and how the fuck am i gonna live any other way and how the fuck will i ever transcend this limited world with anyone else, ever. can i share enough of the same actions and contexts and physical constraints to ever understand anyone else totally, completely?

i work to break down the walls. barriers that divide, keep us isolated and individual. i work to relive the life of my dead best friend without consciously meaning to, his the only death that could in my opinion be classified as intentional, with a purpose. on further reflection, i have questions. am i hoping that i will finally share communion with him, doubting that i ever had, knowing we had something but not sure what it was after all these years, nostalgia clouding my memory, left only with a few pages of writing, a list of favorite authors, a couple of watercolor paintings. the lonely thought of am i only reliving the emotions that our shared time together once evoked inside myself. am i trying instead to communicate with that which i claim to not believe in, the ghost of devin risley, stuck in suicide induced purgatory. am i hoping to be proved wrong by its or his supernatural appearance?

and then i become conscious of myself again, wondering why it is i feel the necessity to post this on the internet, versus in a private notebook which will never be read by anyone but myself, or simply keep it up in my head. at first i justified it as the easiest way to organize my thoughts, but now questioning my belief that people show themselves for recognition, so called artists really just souls in need of a little recognition. some may think this sort of thing is a call for recognition, attention, response to justify whatever it is i need justification for but can not find said justification within my own self.

i've been thinking about how much i love people. how much i love their lives and their perspectives and their willingness to let me in for a glimpse. but then that leads to the same feelings i have when i finish a really good book, the flood of consciousness that i also exist, leaving me isolated and separate, walled and barricaded off. some may take this kind of talk personally, and maybe you should, but it should not hurt the way you may want to let it hurt. if anything it is a celebration of all that we've worked for. all that we've achieved. that despite the odds, the 100 to none guarantee that yes, we're going to die, we continue to work and strive and grope for the light that shows itself in both bright explosions and dull glimmering flickers between you and i. i love you and you love me and if that isn't enough then fuck maybe we should just give up.

all my days on this planet will be spent working on developing the compiled perspective of a million and a half other perspectives, since right now at this moment in time, this is all matt-"existential"-chris-smith has figured out.

resizing pictures has been pissing me off so i'm sorry i ruined your fave blog with ugly layouts, oh wait, now its fixed. tada!. . .

boshington to waston MEGALOPOLIS

Is there really anything you're looking to read that i have written, because if so, you should tell me. i have no new news, no conclusions drawn, no drama no worries no news. the days are flying by and i'm participating in them and so are a few other people. its kinda like vacation i guess, or maybe just the last 2 days. i've been taking a break. from taking a break. i don't know if there's anything else though, so why try to find it? ugh, ugh, forcing out blog entries when really i just want to be reading your blog entries, and i mean not to be cryptic but rather provide a space where you can see your own damned meaning seeing as how thus far i have found next to nothing. feeling close to devin risley a lot lately. don't know what it means but i feel more and more like him and less and less like anything else.

i've been sitting around inventing dialogues with friends that i should or could or would have if the chance to have them arrived but mostly just thinking about my place in other people's lives that might not be as fulfilling as their's in mine, or mine in mine. trying not to call out for attention but more to sink into obscurity. wondering if this is the tendency that uncle melvin feels every few years when he goes into reclusive hermitage until his family (my family) digs him out into our presence and i wonder if he hates us for it or loves us for it or just kinda goes with the flow, just kind of enjoying the ride. buttercup thinks i write like devin but i think we write like al burian or maybe we write like we used to talk to eachother. i have to go get vegetables. . .

sometimes i will end up putting all of my insecurities out in the open for everyone to see, even when i don't really think its all that appropriate. sometimes i think that a blog is not the proper medium for this also, but sometimes i forget and write these long entries that get edited down a few hours later when i come to my senses.

"who's skateboard is this" asks an unfamiliar voice from the kitchen. the newly arrived visitor intimidates me already and i'm sure i'll mumble out a hello that i then criticize myself for, for hours after. i do like hearing the response of the housemates letting me know i'm "a guy who's staying here who's friends with jesse and raven", confirming my forgettability.

all in all i am doing really really good, sorry to leave you with the impression that that was not the case. it is, i am loving california and my friends here and my life in general. a while ago cease told me to "stop being so god damned dramatic"

people in love want only love. even at the cost of pain.

today i am wandering around aimlessly in san francisco, but earlier i had a 2 hour coffee hang with my newest friend kyle, who happens to be dating my friend also called kyle. i am feeling niether witty nor funny nor smart, but the weather is so totally great it kinda doesn't matter. not much to report, tomorrow i have a date with walter the straightedge bartender to go skate. is this travel life just the same thing as santa fe life only with new people and architecture? no, its just that i end up talking about such things because the rest of everything has yet to be categorized by words in my brain. but maybe that's it?

all my dawgs stay real

never grow up. never surrender.

i left portland on a good note laughing about junior high with buster and alex. boarded the oakland bound bus at 6, got the last available seat, next to behemoth frog man//santa claus who was taking up the majority of my sit along with his own, telling me about running from his p.o. to central america where he'd spent the last four years drinking inconcievable amounts of rum and getting the shit fucked out of him by hookers. moved to a new seat as soon as possible, slept about one hour, got off in sacramento at about 7 am and went after some coffee and early morning skateboarding. got on the new bus at 10, and sat next to my newest friend maryjane, a girl from spokane who has a thing for travelling for free. we talked and talked and were silent in ccomplete sleepless greyhound delirium for the ride, and made a pact to meet up in a month, where we will be travelling to "the south" together, as it's the only place in the us niether of us have really been. spontaneity that feels really really good like exciting and fun and new friends but also learning and growing in a real life kind of way instead of a reading a book and maybe talking about it kind of way. super stoked on this, we get out at oakland and find sunny 70 degree weather, tell some jokes, then molly picks me up and we have a pretty epic day of scenic drives and yelling at each other and bagels and hills and raven and pizza and the beach:

i sewed on an "addition" to my hood which is why it looks so stupid. its comfier now. the beach and the ocean had a totally different effect on me this time, not all loneliness and dark. stayed up late late late and now i'm still exhausted but i'm feeling real good in life. busy like never before catching up with friends i haven't seen for years in a few hours then moving on. tonight dinner at kyle's which is soooo exciting! hopes and positive attitudes and way too many cigarrettes. questioning myself a million times a day. learning (AGAIN) to be confident and cool. whatever dork.

i'd rather be ashes than dust

portland is a bunch of people hanging out non stop all the time like a lot of people and i like a lot of them but i think its too much for me. i am still feeling in transit and not settled and not knowing what's going on ever sleep deprived and confidence drained, it is great and it will be greater when things are a little more settled. keeping my eyes out for neon rainbows and striped rocks.

snake plushkin

not leaving oly anytime soon but i guess that's ok cause i'm having lots of fun and also oakland is rioting so i might not want to be there right now anyways. lots of sewing and today it was SUNNY! and tomorrow i'm gonna read a lot probably. which is great. ps dogs gods. beatiful pooches loving me and me loving them.

derek jensen/911 truthers

so get this, watch. in about june-ish this dude armageddon went out to some newish bar on the southside that he had been wanting to check out for a while and ended up meeting this total fuckin hag named reality but armageddon had had a few and the ugly witch started lookin better as the night went on and sure enough they ended up nailin that shit up and then all of a sudden nine months later aka last night out popped this little fuck known as UPPER WASHINGTON STATE IS NOW AN ISLAND AND NO YOU CAN NOT GO EAST FROM SEATTLE BECAUSE THERE ARE AVALANCHES AND NO YOU CAN NOT GO EAST FROM TACOMA BECAUSE THERE ARE LANDSLIDES AND NO YOU CAN NOT GO SOUTH FROM OLYMPIA BECAUSE THE WHOLE OF THE GOD DAMN SOUTH IS FLOODED OVER AND YOU MIGHT AS WELL GET USED TO THE GOD DAMNED GREY AND THE GOD DAMNED EVERGREEN TREES CAUSE YOU ARE NOT FUCKING LEAVING ANYTIME SOON!


so i'm in olympia with alex gaziano and last night amidst what could have been the end of the world but really is probably (hopefully?) only a sign of how fucked the world could be, we listened to really old memory songs and had lots of awesome. portland today! oakland. . .tomorrow?!

canada oh can i die?

don't really wanna be here but i'm stuck here and i can't really do anything on my own and then i also can't use my phone cause i'm in international waters now which makes everything kinda feel like i'm floating off into an ocean on a little boat that can't fight the tide any more with my little boat's little oars. here's a picture of one time when i was really happy. here's a picture of one time when i was being a little less dramatic:

mountain winders

miles deep into the snowy mountain wilderness of northwestern wyoming, cozied up in a most warm and bright cabin playing derrivatives of scrabble and showing off new shoes! christmas sugar cookies and red wine (but not me)!