11. (Wave.)

Today, boys and girls, we're going to talk about music.

There are a few things that I will argue to my dying day should be considered universally beautifully. A low note on a cello. A perfect snare-roll. A four-mallet chord on a marimba. An impeccable French horn solo. An Italian female opera solo.

The list goes on. I won't bother listing all of the things that, aurally, I consider to be splendid. It would take me forever to properly formulate such a list.

But these things... these things specifically, will, when done properly, send chills down my spine the likes of which you would not believe. Absolutely beautiful.

I think this is why I'm a musician--or was, however you want to semantically break it down, really. It's not so much as I love making this beauty, I love hearing it. It is the epitome of my existence. It is everything that fills in the messily-torn holes in by being.

temporary solution? Of course. But sometimes, that's all a person needs.

Long love the music.

10. (There is no cause for this.)

It's like childhood. I hope I never grow out of it.

It's Christmas Eve! Tomorrow--less than 12 hours from now, in fact--I'll be at my folks', tearing into presents, watching them and my brothers tear into their own. I love it. I love it. I'm such a kid sometimes.

I love getting things. I love giving things. Christmas is just... I dunno. I just like making people happy. Material goods are only one way to do it, but it's an easy way.

I'm just a big sap, I guess. Family time is good time.

And that's all I've got to write tonight. Have a nice holiday, you crazy kids you. I'll see you on the flipside.

9. (In which Jayson pulls a post out of his ass.)

So I did my Christmas shopping today.

I'm not gonna rant about the evils of consumerism and hardcore capitalism. Everyone does that and, honestly, I'm sure that by the end of this post I'll have found something more entertaining (to me, at least, as I'm among a tiny group who read this) to write about.

I can't wrap. I'm wrapping-deficient. You can tell which gifts in the pile are from me because they look like utter crap on the outside. Seriously. I don't know why, but I just can't get wrapping paper to behave properly. I bag as often as I can, but, this year, there just aren't any bags left. So now, there are five ugly packages sitting on my couch, next to one too-large bag.

"What did I get you?" (haha, no one who reads this is getting any presents from me! MUAHAHAH!), you ask. Well, if I told you that, I'd spoil the surprise, wouldn't I?

Not that it really matters.

Though, for once, I'm actually happy with the gift selections I made today.

8. (Cold sugar, minus the sweetness.)

Snow.

I wrote about the cold and everything earlier, but... now it's snowed. Not... super-deep snow or anything--I mean, come on, this is fucking Oklahoma. It almost never really snows deep here. We're lucky to get any snow at all, in general.

Which brings me to today's rant: what the hell is up with the weather around here? I mean... Oklahoma is pretty nefarious when it comes to weather. It fluctuates. Like nobody's business. But...

Monday--the day before yesterday--it was warm and sunny. I went out in a T-shirt and jeans and was comfortable. I drove with my windows down. It was a gorgeous day. Now? Two whole days later? It's cold and windy and bitter and snow-covered. Two days. Two days, for fuck's sake. This is so utterly ridiculous.

It's looking up for Christmas, though. An almost-white Christmas? I'll take that. Never really had a real one before. But, knowing Oklahoma, it'll be frelling sunny and bright and warm again by then.

7. (Sunrise, over my shoulder.)

I know I've written about it elsewhere, but again I've been touched by just how lovely the skies here in Oklahoma are at the beginnings and ending of the day.

I think what when I leave (and I will, I hate it here), the one thing (not including people) that I'll truly miss is the sky. I've seen some pretty impressive dawns in my time here. Roses and oranges and vanillas and violets. Streaks and blankets and puffs. Glows so glorious that I've nearly crashed my car, so awed I was. Sunsets, too, are excellent around here. My friend Richard and I have come to an appreciation of the way the autumn sun sets over the marching band practice field. The sky just light up brilliant colors that one might believe to only be possible in an artificial sky.

He sees God. I just see the beauty.

In any case, I've never been able to find a sky to match it. Not over the deserts of Nevada, or over the aborted mountains through California, or over the Pacific Ocean. Only here.

Maybe that's what I'll do, if I live to be an old man. I'll wander the world, looking for sunrises and sunsets to outdo the truly wondrous ones I've seen in my own home.

I'm sure, though, that I'll never actually find anything that'll make the cut.

6. (Textualation.)

I'm a writer.

Have I mentioned that here before? Have I shamelessly plugged my deviantart page? Have I referenced the story I'm most proud of? (The answer to all those questions is 'yes', by the way.)

I'm a writer.

My sense of inspiration is iffy at best. It comes and goes, here and there. Longer works start out one thing, and end up another. Characters change without me needing or wanting them to. Environments transform. Events get completely changed in various drafts.

I'm writing something of a romance novel at the moment. It's not forumlaic bullshit, mind you, and that's sorta why I'm writing it. To prove I can take something simple like that, and make something good out of it. Maybe something great--who knows?

I try not to get stuck in a genre. I've written psuedo-fantasy, romantic-mythology, torment-horror, science-fiction. I like everything. I'll write everything. To stagnate is to die.

I refuse to stagnate. I refuse to die.

5. (Orange.)

You won't get the title, don't try. Of this post, I mean.

I'm hungover, by the way. I still don't like being drunk. Watching a room swing back-and-forth just isn't entertaining to me. I've come to the conclusion that I just like being in control of... well, me, and being intoxicated takes that away from me. Like... Seriously, you can get drunk people to do anything. I've done it. Some non-drinking buddies and me, a couple years ago, when I as a non-drinker still, once got a guy to wander around in a hotel looking for a non-existent girl who had a crush on him. Funny shit. In any case, me being drunk last night lead to events that I will not relate here, for the simple fact that the people I was with and I promised to not ever talk about it again (and for good reason--though, it wasn't nearly as bad as this sentence is making it out to be!). Events that Sober Jayson wouldn't have been in for. Suffice to say, I did have a good time, despite being quite dizzy and out-of-it the whole time.

I am rather angry, though. I feel, and have felt since before all the crazy and rather surreal happenings of last night happened, that my friends (I almost use 'so-called' there, but I'm not quite that angry) pretty much used me for their own entertainment, and honestly I am offended. This is why I don't like being drunk. This is why I didn't plan on drinking much when we went out last night.

Damn you, Spaghetti Warehouse. Whatever the fuck was in that shot totally led to insanity. Jaeger? Cherry Schnapps? And that was a big glass. Oi.

Oh well, you only turn 21 once. I shouldn't complain.

I said I would deny enjoying last night (while still drunk, of course), and here I am denying it. I did have a good time, despite being used. Or at least feeling used.

And, all of my emotional and psychological problems (which I haven't and won't write about here) have been totally fucking amplified. Damn it, guys, I protested for a reason.

Well, what are friends for, after all? I need a shower. I smell like smoke and dirty people and booze.

4. (Sand.)

You know what I want? A dune buggy. Not one of those little sissy-things that kids drive, a real dune buggy. I wanna just hop in my buggy and go tearing across the sands, ramping up and down the dunes, spinning in circles, jumping pits... ohhh, man. What a dream that is.

The desire, though, isn't so much for the buggy as it is for the dunes. I've got a certain... obsession with the desert. Go read Lost. That whole story just started out from a dream I had of being adrift in the desert. And from it sprouted a whole dichotomy about living in harmony in the desert and invading it... Or something of that nature.

The desert...

I don't know what it is about it. It just... draws me. A couple years ago, riding a bus to California, we went through a desert. I was awe-struck. I don't even know why. Maybe... it's the lack of everything. I've always been awed by the interactions between man and nature, but... the desert, in a way, lacks both. It's a land of emptiness (okay, not completely, but compared to--say--a forest), almost completely devoid of both nature and man. It's pure. It's pristine.

I could live in one my whole life.

3. (Boozed.)

I don't understand the point of getting drunk.

Okay, wait, back up. Before you laugh at me, I do understand the point of drinking. It's a "social lubricant", as a friend put it. It loosens you up. It makes things funny. I like drinking, really I do.

But I don't get the point of getting drunk. Maybe it's just a personal thing, but I don't particularly enjoy being nauseated and dizzy and feeling like there's some kind of evil, evil thing living in my belly, poking things and trying to find its way back out through my mouth. It isn't fun. I don't enjoy the act of waking up already feeling like shit. It's just not fun being sick and hungover all day. This could, of course, just be because I've become very much a morning person, and as such I enjoy being awake in the morning, and the thought of waking up with a headache just turns me off. Why put yourself through it? I don't see the upside. You get all nauseated and icky-feeling, so you can wake up feeling ickier?

Call me crazy. I can't so much argue with you, because I'm hardly what I would consider sane or normal.

Being somewhat anti-social doesn't help much, either.

2. (Fictional science.)

It's amazing how sci-fi TV has changed over the years. I'm sitting at home, watching Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and I can't help but marvel at how utterly bad it is. The acting, the camera-work, the stories, the robots--oh, fuck, the robots! How cheesy can you get? I mean, the fact that the women all run around dressed like tramps--eighties tramps, even--but the robots only add to the cheesiness. This robot has a clear, British accent! He sounds like a man in a robot suit! Look at that guy's body armor! Look that the helmet!

That was then. What's now? Even the crappy shows--Star Treks Voyager and Enterprise, specifically--look and feel better than this shit. But the good stuff? Farscape-caliber television? It makes Buck Rogers look like fucking garbage. The name of this episode is "Schgoraxtch!" What the fuck kind of bull-shit geek-pandering nonsense is this?

I won't rant about Farscape specifically, though. Not here. If you want to know what I think about Farscape, go digging around in my early devArt journal submissions and find the rant I posted the morning after the Season 4 finale.

Holy freaking crap. Midgets! There's a squad of fucking little people who are way too similar to the munchkins from The Wizard of Oz. They're speaking in sequence! The black one is trying to be a 'cool cat'! How common-denominator is this crap?

Ugh. Let the eighties stay dead, people. They're only cool in retrospect. From a distance.

Because the sci-fi back then was terrible.

Blame Star Wars. Everyone was jumping on the space-based bandwagon at the time. Well, at least the shit we're getting now is half-assed, and not no-assed.

1. (It's a chill night.)

My hands are cold. I love it. I love the way my skin feels when it gets chilly. I love that dry-sharp feeling I get on my arms and my face. I love it when my hands get all trembly and can't type properly. I love Winter. I love cold. I love ice. I hate heat. I hate Summer. I hate sweat and stickiness. I hate how nasty things get when they get hot. Cold is sterile. Cold is clean. Cold is dry. Heat is wet. Heat is dirty. Heat is tainted.

It's Winter now. I feel alive. I feel my joints protest every time I stand up. I feel my fingers getting stiff and popping much more often. I see myself in my perfections. As such, I feel my self in my body's failings. Each creak, each pop, each wave of stiffness, each twinge of pain, it all reminds me that I'm a human being and, as such, I've only got so much time to do what it is I want to do with my life. Every day is a ticking time-bomb. Every day could be my last.

And that's why I live.

The moral to this story? Live each day for everything it's worth. Leave no day behind.