Don't Get Lost in the Universe Alone

Stairing out of this second story doorway, overlooking a classic South Minneapolis alleyway, I marvel in the beauty of life, of nature, of reality. An interesting vibe is running through me. Picking it up, as if some black star deep in space had sent it through the ether to my conciousness. It is nice to see I can still recieve such vibes, been awhile since I've gotten lost in one.

The sun of the past few days has helped render some of the most beautiful imagery my mind has processed in quite awhile. Minnehaha Falls are awesome now, as they always are. The frozen crystals of ice spiraling off in some complex fractal pattern, while glowing a warm hue of blue. A small ecosystem of mosses and ferns exists behind the falls, primitive life thriving in the Minnesota winter.

A little on love. Love, this concept that had been associated with pain for awhile in my mind, has spun around and is now being examined with a very fresh perspective. It's wonderful. I don't know where I'm at for sure, but I feel the Universe has at least decided to put me in this awesome place, might as well enjoy it.

This blog will be taking a new turn for a bit. My father and I are doing a comic book together, and I've been writing a lot lately on my own. I think this will be the testing grounds for all that. I'm not wanting to overanalyze my life anymore, I'm sure I will again at some point, but for now I think I wanna do some storytelling.

The next 6 posts are gonna be the literary equivalent of the the Comic Book project, once my dad does some art for it, I'll put samples of that up as well. Just to get you started off...

Organic Mechanics
A Brief Introduction

Organic Mechanics(OM), is a story I'd thought up maybe three years ago or so. It is a complete work of fiction, but in it are some of the bare veins of my being. The thing is, the story never really came together. It was all over the place, various files of thoughts on my computer, long handwritten scribbles in various journals and comp books, and even music I'd recorded based off of the story. I started something in a script format at one point, but now, looking through all of this junk, I'm not sure there ever was a coherent story there or not. One of the big problems was that it was based off of raw thought patterns, so it felt very autobiographical. I don't think I could really write it until I got out of that pattern of thinking. The story had to complete itself.

The story follows a character, much like me, through a point in his life when he makes some discoveries about himself and the world around him, that seem to strip away reality.

It's a journey from day to day life, to the inner reaches of one's own mind. From thinking you understand, to actually understanding. It's dealing with what feels like insanity, getting into the circuitry of your mind and doing the rewiring your self. Letting go, moving on, accepting, embracing, etc...

Figuring out who you are, all that stuff. In this story, the character slips into unconciousness and takes up residency in his own mind. The mind in this case is an elaborate organic space, seemingly constructed from pure universal chaos. There is conduits and tunnels, infrastructure, layers of complexity layered upon one another. The residents of his mind are self-images, spanning into infinity with diverse traits and characteristics. The mind appears to be a place where the single mind of the character shares his existence with counter part minds from infinite universes with infinite possibilities. A place that is nothing and everything all at once. A core, or center, that seems to also be apart of something larger.

In this elaborate setting, he gets distracted, but the more he learns about himself and how things "are", the more he remembers and misses the beauty of the reality he left behind. It then becomes a struggle to climb back out of the rabbit hole, back to his life, back in reality.

Like I said, this will just be a rough over on here, I'm just writing to get the idea out, then I'll break it down into a more structured comic form.

I hope you all enjoy, and please leave comments.

Mark

Tuesdays on the Cheap

Aww, Minneapolis, what a wonderful city. I know that the story is the same no matter where you go. That in every city, all around the world, there are pubs and people get drunk and have a blast. Minneapolis just happens to carry some weight with it.

Odd recollections this morning as I tip toe around my friends who insisted on playing "Drink till you die, Mother fucker" last night. How is it that you can sit around a table of people you hardly know, drink some good crisp Hardcore Cider, and then converse in a way that makes you feel you've known each other all along. Why are some of us men so inept at talking to women we like? Why does alcohol continue to affect you into the next day, refreshed by that badly needed glass of water that you drank down due to dehydration. You are in bed, not feeling great, not feeling bad, then you drink a bunch of water and try and make your way downstairs, BAM!, it hits you, you can't fucking walk, you are still very much drunk.

Last night my good friends, Joe and Becky, and myself went out to see "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang" at the dollar theatre in Hopkins. A decent flick, it certainly was better than I expected going into it. Afterwards we pick up another good friend, Nick. From there it's off to the Triple Rock for Tuesday 2 for 1s.

I know I have kept many in the dark on how things been going lately, just got caught up in the moment. I'm sure I'll get all deep and introspective soon enough and I'll let more out, but for now I'm just riding the wave and looking for a job.

It's nice that this blog has finally taken a turn from the tortured soul shit, but for some reason happiness is an emotion that's not so easily given up. I want it all to myself, it makes me greedy like money, I want more once I get a taste of a little. I'll try and get it out soon enough.

Mark Vollrath
Minneapolis

A Rock, A Star, A Dream

Standing here, on a rock,
gazing up at a star,
asking those things that humans ask,
when they are in such positions.

In the dream, her dark eyes,
orbs of mystery, look back into mine.

Staring endlessly, I come back down.

The star has her secrets, I have mine.


Absolution. Peace. Contempt.

Something snapped in me, and all is well as of now.

Down tempo in a minor key...

Another Man's Done Gone

Good song Jeff Tweedy and Wilco resurrected. Unrecorded thoughts that Woodie Guthrie "scribbled" down at some point. A deep passing thought.

Something I can feel a connection with at this point. Moving back has had it's side effects. This past weekend after attending a party in my old neighborhood, I was takeing some friends home, and inadvertantly pulled into my old Apartment parking lot. A stupid, human thing to do. It shouldn't have had as much weight or relevance, but it busted me down. The up and down slide of my bi-polar mind balancing itself out. I am surronded by people now, interesting, imaginative, free thinking people, but I feel so damn isolated and alone. I want to open up and communicate, but at this point I worry about boring another with my issues, or not coming through clearly. Self-esteem issues, self doubt, that kind of junk.
I wanna girl to help me forget my past, I'm scared to death of long term relationships, I'm shy as fuck. I'm way too open, like why am I writing this shit? I am standing on a high cliff overlooking the rugged terrains over which I just came, seeing the errors I have made, how I could have better approached that situation/conversation/concept. I stand with my back towards the direction I am heading, forever reveling in the terrain of the past. If I could swing that perspective around and analyze where I am and what could be possibly ahead of me. How to navigate that future terrain so I won't have to analyze so much in retrospect.

I think there are times when I am riding the flow of the universe, and then there are times when it's going against me. Like standing in a blizzard in strong winds.

Denial is a powerful drug. Accepting something one doesn't wish to acknowledge can break a man down. Opening the mind to some new outlook on the universe can do the same to some.

I wish it was spring, I am not in the mood for Febuary at the moment.

The zit that sits at the top of my ass crack!

The escape felt great, the breath of life filled my lungs once again. I moved some of my junk up to Minneapolis this last weekend. Had a blast Partying in a Storm Drain, it was great to just hang out with such a wide variety of people. Coming back home, even if it was only going to be for a few days, was hard. But soon I'll be leaving this place behind for good. I'm gonna miss my family and friends down here. Not alot to say at this point, I gotta finish some junk. Maybe I'll touch on my current social dillema next time.

Mark

Dante's Inferno and my 1997 TV!

So it appears that my time spent hiding out in hell will soon be over. I think I wanna pour my heart out now and document this stuff for posterity.

So something like four months ago I felt as if my world had finally collapsed in on itself. And I guess in a way it did. Adjusting was hard enough, but then I somehow surrendered myself to the family home in the amazingly small and rural home town. I know others have done it, and it's not the most pathetic thing in the world. Damn is it unhealthy and a breath of fresh air at the same time. Unhealthy because my social life went straight down the toilet. Sure I got out from time to time, got drunk a few times even, but the level of comfort and communication with others that I enjoyed in Minneapolis was lacking. It's not that there isn't people I can connect with down here, it's just I've been away from them for so long I barely recognize or even feel at home in their worlds. And I fear that is happening with all of my seperate groups of friends, the Explorer bunch up in Minneapolis, the MCAD bunch that are strung all over the nation, the Worlds of Fun Bunch here in KC. I've been the ramblin' man for so long I haven't developed any real strong roots that keep me tied down. And now this road weary wanderer is feeling a bit lonely while everyone else seems to have this niche they fit into perfectly.

It is also a like standing in a very sharp gust of wind, things are happening around me, spiraling along their fractal helix paths. Particles of existence bumping along randomly, but also with some sort of intelligent purpose. My brother dealing with being a newlywed and already having problems with his spouse. My mother figuring out her life. My dad feeling as if he's a failure, contemplating suicide. Friends bouncing along in their own little lives. My grandfather having dizzy spells that leave him immobile in the yard as he's fetching the paper, and then after he recovers he freaks out about being blind in one eye, forgetting it's been that way for three years now. My grandmother living for TV and birdwatching out the kitchen window. The salesman, the dentist, the alley cat, the cute girl at Subway, my six year old XBOX playing friend, Austin, who thinks I'm the "best person he knows at this game", the road raging asshole on I-70, all of these individual particles, these lives, these bits of conciousness all seem connected. I stepped away from my life and just examined life at large for awhile down here. Got back in touch with my family and oldest friends. It confused the hell out of me at first, how complex it all is, how all of this was coexisting alongside my own chaos. How the Christian god my Grandparents believe in, is somewhere in the mix with the Quantum Strangeness and the loose knit philosophy I follow. How every single beacon of light that we as humans find to cling on to is exactly the same as the pins and needles that keep us at bay.

For the most part I don't even care about the "How's", the "Why's" occupy enough of my wandering mind as it is. Often a general, "What the fuck is the point?" will wash over and I'll just resign to go to bed. Forever retiring the axioms of the naturalistic paradigm to my subconcious slumber. Other times I'll just sit and watch my television set that only plays programming from the end of 1996 and the beginning of 1997.

So yeah, I live in my grandparents basement at the moment, amongst my dad's crazy complex abstract art sculptures, his piles of sci-fi and meta-physical books, a television set that gets no reception, a vcr and a stack of VHS tapes of random programming from the mid/late 90's, including nightly news, tv commercials, Tonight Show, L.A. Law, Fraiser, and my favorite, Northern Exposure. This little slice of life, a chapter in my biography, will soon be closing and I'll be back up in the Twin Cities amongst friends.

As I climb back out of this period, I can only think of one suitable closing.

Down there, beginning at the further bound
of Belzebub's dim tomb, there is a space
not known by sight, but only by the sound

of a little stream descending through the hollow
it has eroded from the massive stone
in its endlessly entwining lazy flow."

My Guide and I crossed over and began
to mount that little known and lightless road
to ascend into the shining world again.

He first, I second, without thought of rest
we climbed the dark until we reached the point
where a round opening brought in sight the blest

and beauteous shining of the heavenly cars.
And we walked out once more beneath the Stars.
-The Inferno-
Dante Alighieri
(John Ciardi Translation)

Take Care!
Mark

God Damned Fractal Patterned Universe!!!

Neptune's nipples are fucking amazingly sharp this time of year. The infinite spirals that make up every imagineable thing in this universe seem to have gotten the better of me. What I'm saying is the proverbial floor disentegrated right out from under my fucking feet. September ended with a nice harsh mind fuck. A combination of Jennifer(my ex-GF of 5 yrs.) saying she didn't love me anymore, lying to me about being with someone new, getting the shit beat out of me on a street corner for absolutely nothing more than a single dollar bill, and returning to my hometown. I should mention I turned 25 during the middle of all of this, and that I moved 500 miles from Minneapolis to my small ass hometown near Kansas City. Oh yeah I'm currently living with my father and grandparents. It's seriously a fucking hoot. I'm registering in the negative spectrem here, Sorta suicidal, wanting good change, and suffering through all at the fucking same time. I think the only honest thing I could say is that I'm fucking lonely as shit, bored as shit, and depressed as shit. Problem is that there is still this dim microscopic ray of hope kicking around. Fucking pushing or pulling my ass through this shit. I fake the emotions of happiness and content. It's a mixture of Calvin and Hobbes, Wilco, and Dead Like Me that keeps me distracted. Thank god for Poets, Artists, Musicians, and FilmMakers. Uh, I need to get drunk or something, gota finish some shit and get my ass to Denver. I feel like snowboarding and getting one of those Rocky Mountain Highs, they always talk about.

Eh, sorry for the fucking dramatic lament, but it's not like anyone actually reads this anyway.