The Pately

The Beginning....

2009-10-25T22:52:00.000-07:00

There's not much I really want to put up right now, it's too late and I really should be asleep, but when I come back tomorrow I'll make sure to explain what's going on in my life right now. It's been a number of rollercoasters but I'm pretty sure I'm getting back on track. Six weeks to make life a whole lot better. One step at a time.

What I Pray For

2009-09-11T10:50:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago I had a simple epiphany while walking home far too intoxicated for a week day night. As I stumbled among the throngs of people that are present at any given time on the UT campus, things just began to click.

I've understood, for some time now, what exactly I wanted to do with my life. The reason why I'm here in Knoxville, why my major is what it is, and where all this work is eventually going to lead me.

I love culture. I'm absolutely, 100% obsessed with culture of any variety. Modern, Ancient, Alien any culture I can study I will. What's most interesting to me, however, isn't the individual cultures themselves and how unique they are, but rather how similar each and every one is. We all express the same ideas, the same values, the same dreams.

A lot of anthropologist study culture in the past tense, trying to figure out how those that came before us are like ourselves. I've never seen this as a particularly accurate way to explore the past. I rather ask the question "How are we like them?" Who are the pantheon of gods we pray to? The sacrifices we make to guard us against loneliness or safe travel.

It baffles me how people don't see this today. Granted, this particular interest is rather specific and it's not everyone's dream to see the world both in the present and in the past, but looking around me now (in the midst of midday in the UT library) I wonder if any of these people identify themselves with the cultures they clearly take part in.

This girl, completely without makeup, in a plaid shirt and thick, black framed glasses hair unwashed and nose piereced. Shoes off and a 3/4 drunk starbucks iced mocha latte resting on her desk. Does she think herself a hippster? A punk? Does she herself as unique or individualized when I've seen her 1000 times before in East Nashville? What are her daily rituals? What makes her read what she is reading?

Or this boy, dressed to the nines in a oxford, powder blue button down neatly and gently tucked inside his chinos, a creamy color of beige with simple boat shoes emblazoned with matching blue anchors spaced neatly around each other. Hair short but styled and unmoving, a crest white smile and a deeply tanned skin tone. His j-crew messenger bag buldging softly with his books for class. How does he see this world he walks in? What values possess his mind and his life? Do either of them take the time to see the other? To see me taking the entirety of them in?

Perhaps I'm just over analytical, because in truth I'm certain I subscribe to some form of culture or other, in fact I know I do. Though I cannot say I identify with any one group, I just take my favorite parts from different culture until I have a nice hodge-podge of perfection. Still, I can accept my part in the world of changing cultures but the point is, this is what I want to write.

I want to show the world itself. Not what it once was or some minute by minute view of news or economic strife, I want to show people who they are on a day to day basis. I want to show the girls, and boys, with eyeliner and lip gloss how they are the modern day Egyptians. Show these frat boys with their self proclaimed pride and superiority that they are no different than the boys who played grab ass in Rome and still found time to rejoice in philosophy and the mind.

The law of conservation of mass comes to mind, because we may be 7billion strong and doubling every 35 years, but we're the exact same people just poured into different shapes and forms. I love culture. I want it to be my life.

Laundry Time Is Truly Blogging Time

2009-08-28T15:30:00.000-07:00

Not to be too similar to one of the the four other blogs I read, but I'm sitting here waiting for my laundry to be done and figured I would catch up on this blog.

Clearly much has happened in the time since I last wrote. I'm in college now. I'm an actual college student again. I have classes. I have a dorm. I have issue with the idiots in my classes and more so with the people I have to deal with on a day to day basis, but what else is new.

I can't really describe what I've been going through recently, however. It's all very simple, and all very familiar. It's all what I expected it to be, but still I find myself disappointed. I feel better off than I was in Nashville, I feel happier and with more freedom. Still, though, the gays here are questionable at best. I've found one or two that are worth my interest but I am not sure whether they will pan out to be anything more than pretty faces reflected across the surface of very shallow pools.

I'm not much worried about the future right now, which is new for me. I am much more concerned with my present, but it all seems to linger. I worry about my friends, those without direction and those without passion. I don't want to loose the people I love, but I have a very distinct path with which I want to travel, and I can't imagine (short of cancer or mass extinction) anything pulling me away from that path, and if my friends aren't willing to grow up and if nothing else decide they want more than just the day to day of a life wrapped up in themselves (and No, Sparky this one isn't about you), then I don't know how much longer I can let them be a part of my life. That was an awful run on sentence.

I finally feel like I'm growing up. I feel like this is where and when I'm suppose to be. I may not find love for some time, I may be fated to simply love myself until I find the right guy to love me on his own terms, rather than mine, and if that's the case I'll be okay. The buzzer just went off. I've got to put another load in. Aah, metaphors.

Lonely Can Be Such a Lovely Word

2009-07-12T21:20:00.000-07:00

I made a mistake a while ago. See, I got entrenched in a very different kind of life than I've been use to. I was involved, I interacted and I was interested in other people. I was drunk and I was happy. So much, in fact, that I started to think that was what being happy had become.

As we walk through life, happiness follows like sunlight. When young it's to our backs, out of our eyes and warming each step, leaving our brows dry. It's only once we start to weigh ourselves down with the concerns of others that the sun rises, beating down on us. Hair damp with sweat, sticking to our foreheads, we struggle to enjoy the warmth of happiness but it quickly turns on us. While trying to walk at another's pace we get lost in the heat. I've been sweating for a long time, and for a short while I finally got the sun behind me again, and ran to keep it there.

That time ended and I felt my eyes begin to sting again with the drops of salty boredom. I hate sweating, so I stopped playing in the sun. I stopped talking to people. I stopped calling. I just stopped everything. Now, though, I've started looking out my windows, again.

I'm not made for nights with FLASH and drinks in bottomless glasses. I don't wear glitter and I don't swagger, but I can still sip and smile. I can't fake interest or tolerate idiocy in people. I just expect more from them than they're willing to provide, but that's not to say I was made for this, either. This quiet existence of nights spent alone twiddling my thumbs and letting the lightening shattering the sky be the thrill of a Sunday evening. I may be neither of these lives, but the point of all this is that I'm happy.

I don't know who I am right now. I don't have close friends near to me, and I don't particularly fancy living a life confined to the characters I write in my notebooks and read from the stack of books by my bed, but I'm still happy. Happy isn't the regularity of blackouts or days gone without eating solids. Neither is it waking up alone, working out and writing until your legs forget what walking on a stable surface is like and your fingers crack from holding the pen all day.

Happy is not owing anyone but yourself anything other than what YOU want, and I have that. I may be weightless in time, right now, softly shuffling across emptiness, waiting for life's gravity to kick in, but that's OK. I have the BEST FRIEND that anyone could ever ask for and I am nether starving nor obese with hedonism.

I love my life, though it may not be in city lights or back lit southern canopies with sun rolling behind the hills. It is MY life. As long as I can live it under my term, then I am Happy.

The Fight for Sobriety....

2009-07-02T22:13:00.000-07:00

As the early night wrapped around my car with a gentle breeze and coolness unseasonable for southern summers, my shoulders shrunk over my knees and I clenched the glass bowl in my fingers. In my other hand I struck a match and as it burst into life I dipped the flame into the tar laden curves of red and white glass, simultaneously praying that I might find a substantial, caked in gold mind of resin to fill my lungs and lighten my thoughts.

I struggle with sobriety. I want it so bad. I wish that I could find joy in the day to day, so much so that I don't simply reject the influence of that which can change the rules I live by, but am to busy for it in the first place. I could, actually. In fact, I have. When I surround myself with people, when I watch them and see them react to their own worlds I am higher than weed has ever made me.

Still, I loathe people. So often I find myself weighed down around others, either by their pointless topics of conversation or their being oblivious to others' existence. I don't mean to seem cynical, I like to think I'm an optimist. It's not like I do not try, but people never seem to try back. Thus I turn to those that have never said no.

So as the silver flakes of ash fell across my dashboard and I felt my lungs tighten with the cool air, I let out a rolling mass of gray smoke that tripped out the window like a tipsy sorority sister. I envied it. I envied the people I saw in the smoke. There's a reason it dries out your mouth. You'll want to have a drink.

This is what boys do to me

2009-06-17T10:31:00.000-07:00

Queens have not slept
the way I sleep with you.
Crowns have never graced
Royal pillows, laced in gold,
as softly as my head has fallen
to your chest.
Neither Pharaoh's cotton nor
Eastern silk sheets have warmed
Divine bloodlines like your heartbeat
does mine.
Your arms fit firmly around my frame
more than any NASA grade foam
or exotic feather ever could.

Your body is clam and collected.
You weigh like smoke,
filled inside my lungs,
intoxicating and familiar.

No surprise then,
why I'm writing.
The sores from my bed
are still sunk deep into my back.
The restleass memory of breathing you in
shake my mind into a sleeplessness.

My body is buckling, breaking down.
I'm jonesing for my fix
of pale skin and gentle kiss.
Like rain scattering across a window,
you lull me back to your quiet,
body of comfort.

-Body of Comfort

Rough draft, enjoy, hate, do whatever. Just had to get it out. I haven't written in months, and it's been a while since I've been proud of a poem. It may just be today, but at least it happened.

-dp

The time for change is now

2009-05-15T11:57:00.000-07:00

I need a new computer. Badly. I think after I get into UTK, and my travel plans are set (this still may be a lost caused) I will be aiming to buy this....

It's the new macbook pro and it's super earth friendly. It also starts at 2000 dollars for the 15 inch, which is all I'd really need. I will be saving my money and what not to get it because I am over this PC and its janky-assness. I don't buy a lot of big things, but if my parents don't get it for me this semester, then I will just get it for myself.

-dp

I know that I should let go, but I can't.

2009-05-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

I think it begins this way, with a sunrise on a beautiful day. I think that says enough.

-dp

2009-05-15T00:57:00.000-07:00

To be so beautiful must certainly be a way of life. Not simply skinny or tan, but to be absolutely beautiful. Those flawless individuals that live life day to day as the most stunning among us. I simply wonder if they see themselves as Gods or as mortals. The truly beautiful, I suppose, would be no more aware of their beauty than one is on the single hair growing from the exact middle of the back. Still, what a life it must be to be something beyond pretty, cute, or chic. To be beautiful must be a wonderful thing to be.

-dp

He had one original thought last year. It died of boredom.

2009-05-13T23:56:00.000-07:00

It's extremely odd to me that something I was told almost four years ago still holds the weight it did then. Moreover, I'm surprised by how true it has been both to my life and in general. I, now, pass this singular insight into pure wisdom to any who seek to better themselves.

fake it 'til you make it

I was in a lower case mood. It seems too simple or pointless, but it's true. I think it ties directly into Shakespeare's "all the world's a stage..." People rarely see anyone for who they are. Most of the people I have ever met, even those who consider me a good friend, have never been able to look pass the me I pretend to be when I'm around them.

It's not that I do or say things the "real" Drew wouldn't when I'm with them, but it has been my experience that very few, and I mean VERY few, people tend be worth time. Not my time, not your time, not anyone's time. What is often seen as my arrogance or pompous attitude is actually my desire to just not waste my time or the other person's time in trying to maintain a friendship that won't go anywhere.

These people, these time wasters, get the fake drew. The lower case d Drew. It was originally a drew I wanted to be, someone I thought was how "cool" or "interesting" people acted. drew is an arrogant ass hole. Overtime, however, I realized that the real Drew is much more appealing, but that lower case drew served a good purpose, maintaining friendships with those Drew can't stand, but that drew will tolerate so his social life won't be completely based on IM conversations with Ryan and smoking in his car alone. To that end, drew was successful.

However, drew did more than that. drew taught me how to fain confidence, and imitate bravado. I found that the longer I was able to stay in character, the more I started to believe myself. I actually started to think the things I thought as drew were true. My dilemma now is that I haven't been that character so long, and I can hear the subtle whispers of my internal critics returning and blurring my vision.

Thus I am considering going back to drew, for a short time, faking myself out again. Perhaps it would just be better if I were able to ignore the critics and see myself as truly flawless. If that happens, drew will let you know.

Hoping to find words to end on
-DP

Considerations

2009-05-13T15:02:00.001-07:00

I took my first dive into the political journalist pool, I followed the White House Press Briefing today on Ana Marie Cox's(AMC) blog. It was dreadfully boring, I'm really just not much for political commentary. I loathe it in fact. However, I am a sucker for AMC.

I think it goes back to my obsession with strong women, mainly because the females in my life (friends not included) have all be nut cases and directly influenced my development into a homosexual.

Just FYI, THAT is AMC with out makeup and she's still a fierce bitch. Granted she reps the shorter hair now, but damn if those cheek bones don't make me want to be a journalist. I'm patiently waiting for the lil' siren to get her own show.

I'm really needing to work on the look of my blog. The one thing I absolutely cannot stand about my BFF is his ability to start some blog, online site, or just anything as far as social networking goes and immediately makes it looks 100000 times better than mine, so I'm hoping he helps me out after he reads this.

So they can't all be intellectual or even really serve a purpose other than to help me pass time. I know all one of the people reading this are probably really disappointed. Sorry, Ryan.

Hoping to find words to end on
-DP

2009-05-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

I keep going over and over in my head what I am going to do with this blog. Why did I start it? What is its point? In an age with a myriad of different ways to keep friends, most of whom I either see/talk to on a regular basis, or have lost all contact with, in touch with my life, why a blog?

In short, this is not for those people to read. This is not for anyone to read, really, at least not yet. In a way this will be a sort of day to day update of my life, my thoughts, and how I generally perceive the world around me. What I want this to help me do, first and foremost, is develop an idea of reporting. I want to read articles, see programs, and respond with a passion on my blog. Eventually, as in after college and presumably my masters, I want to start my own magazine. Tentatively I want it to be a sort of modern National Geographic (NG), in that I want to try and report on culture and historical periods in our present lives in the style that NG would in about ten or twenty years.

Culture, to me, is infinity interesting, and offers a virtual cornucopia of endless subjects about which to write. What I think is difficult to do, however, is acknowledge and admire the cultural aspects of the modern world, or present day as it were. I agree with some who say it is a struggle to identify cultural ideas in their prime, rather than waiting til after the fact. However, where I diverge from those critics is in my strive to, in fact, identify these cultural characteristics of modern day. I can understand how presently it may be hard, even seem pointless, to discern what I mean when I use the word "culture", and in truth I have a variety of definitions both predictable and unusual. However, in the posts to come, I hope to actually get into my definitions of culture, and as my study of cultural anthropology begins to mature, I hope I can intellectualize my perception of the concept as a whole.

First things first. It is sad, yet painfully obvious, that before the mind can win over those you aim to please, charm must be that first foot in the door.

Hoping to find words to end on,
-Dp

Day One

2009-05-11T02:42:00.000-07:00

This is the first of what I hope to be many posts in this new idea of journalism. That is what I first and foremost want to do with this blog. I want to use this site to help me establish a voice in my reporting on whatever interests me at the time, be it calculus, Japanese, or some novel for english. Even if the only thing I can find worth typing about is my day to day life, bare it any matter or not to the rest of the world's existence, I still hope to write in such a way that even those unimportant seconds I describe seem worthy of the time it takes to read them. For now, a simple introduction is gine for me, a lingering whisper that might hint at what will one day be something more than a link on a facebook status or little blue bird's tweet.

Hoping to find words to end on,
Dp.