some ideas

came up with two story ideas today. may try to fuse them into one.

the first one is about a man who vaguely anticipates the arrival of a stranger. he doesn't know why, but he has a feeling--some kind of psychic hunch--that someone he's never seen or met before is going to arrive at his front doorstep--he even knows when it's going to happen--on what date and what time.

he waits in bed all morning (this is when he expects his visitor) while his wife is busy cleaning the house. the doorbell rings and he rushes down the stairs. there is a bearded man waiting outside (in the movie-version of this story i imagine this part being played by zach galifianakis). he opens the door and the two lock stares. the bearded man begins to cry. he lunges forward and hugs the man, whose wife is watching from some vantage point behind the door and is by now completely confounded at the whole spectacle.

the second story--i can't remember. i thought of it in the shower when i got home from work this morning. i think it involved a father and a son. my mind is foggy right now. i'm sure it will come to me later.

more crap

i wish i knew what it was that kept me from expressing myself as fluently as i'd like to. my mind is filled--chock-full--of pretty images and words but i can't seem to find the right way to articulate it--to translate what i see. it could just be that i'm thinking too hard about--that i've dug myself into a hole (constantly fixated on writing the perfect song, the perfect lyric, etc.). i don't know.
every time i set pen to paper or start to type something out it comes out as scrambled and amateurish. perhaps i need to disrupt my routine--get out and walk; start talking to people; about things i have no interest in. maybe then i'll come back to whatever it is that allowed me to be creative in the first place. it seems like there always needs to be a contrast--a reaction to something. maybe that's what i need. less stimulation of the senses, trivial indulgences. more of the mundane.
lately, it's been hard to tell the difference.

every girl you know is a photographer

i've been having a sort of recurring realization this past year or so. it comes every now and then, when i find the time to actually stop and concentrate on myself and my future trajectory. not that i don't already spend a lot of time thinking about myself, this sort of self-reflexive thinking is different. it's not so much rooted in the present--what i lack and what i have now--but where i'll be in the future--how this current way of living will shape me so many years down the road. the thing that really scares me is this feeling that i have no idea who i am--that i am so vulnerable to outside influences. i feel like, though my identity may be there, tangible as something of this nature can be, it's never really definite. there's a constant voice in my head which informs a lot of who i am but there's this other part of me that thrives on vicarious reinforcement--imitating qualities i find great in others--attempting to make them my own.
it's something i've been called out on. in fact, i'm pretty sure it's something a lot of people get called out on. "quit acting like so-and-so!" "you know who you remind me of?" etc. etc. i just wander if i'll ever develop my own sense of self. or if i'll constantly be redefining myself, my entire life, adjusting to the transient ebb and flow of things, constantly modifying, self-editing, changing what i believe to match up with some new ideal.
i want to locate my voice and exploit it. i want to feel comfortable in my own skin, as they say. i guess it just takes a fair amount of observation--picking up on things i like, noticing when and what i like and then adding these things to my repertoire.

i don't know.
i don't know.
whatever.

sketch

There was something familiar about her. Familiar and alluring. Alluring, perhaps, because she did seem so familiar. Seeing her now, for the first time, didn't feel like the first time at all. He felt like he'd seen her before--somewhere, in some other time. It was a trite feeling--one he'd expect to find in a romantic comedy (films that were neither romantic or funny)--and he acknowledged this, but he still felt something profound stirring up in his being and he completely indulged this feeling to its full sap-flooded limit, letting it consume him wholly.

She got up and sat down at his table. She was smoking a cigarette--in a way he wanted to imitate, in a way that made him forget entirely that he was already a smoker, himself. It was attractive enough to make him want to pick up the habit all over again, from the beginning, when it was still a fairly new and unexplored sensation. He lit a cigarette--half out of nervousness (to have something occupying his hands--a distraction just in case) and half because he wanted to feel what she must have felt, emanating the essential lifeforce of all mankind at the other end of the table, the smoke almost an extension of her physical self which he couldn't separate from her radiant energy.